Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Exercise Your Right

There's an election today. The Republicans are doing their best to limit your ability to have a say, between enacting (the currently blocked) voter ID law and gerrymandering districts to make them uncompetitive. Make the effort anyway. Bring an ID along, if you have one (just in case the court rules today to lift the injunction).


Don't bother commenting about the voter ID law being needed to "stop voter fraud". Cases of voter identity fraud are extremely rare. Most illegal voting involves felons still on correctional supervision (using their own names) or individuals voting in the wrong district (using their own names and an old or phony address). The ones who do the latter often have ID tying them to the address they are claiming. I believe that voter fraud and voter suppression are equally wrong; both dilute the votes of legitimate voters. A law that stops two incidents of fraud while disenfranchising 100 legitimate voters is an affront to democracy.

4 comments:

Beer, Bicycles and the VRWC said...

Voter fraud is "extremely rare" because it's undetectable without voter ID. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

To allow for the potential for fraud in the most sacred part of our democratic representative republic is nothing less than treason.

Lick the boot of your master that he might give you a crumb from the table. Hand him your body and soul in hopes he might assure your health. I choose to live and die a free man. I choose to exchange my labor for my needs with those willing to pay for it. For the able bodied to rely on government for their daily bread is cowardice and theft. Those who choose to allow it are complicit.

Anonymous said...

"Lick the boot of your master that he might give you a crumb from the table. Hand him your body and soul in hopes he might assure your health."

Isn't that what the Republicans want us to do? Bow down to the Koch Brothers and the other almighty "job creators" in the hopes they throw us a $9 job and remain subservient to them?

Dan said...

"Isn't that what the Republicans want us to do? Bow down to the Koch Brothers and the other almighty "job creators" in the hopes they throw us a $9 job and remain subservient to them?"

Tin foil hat on a wee to tight today?

Ordinary Jill said...

Deekaman, do you really think it's OK to block 100 legitimate voters to prevent 2 cases of fraud? I'm trying to figure out if your bizarre comment about "treason" is based on a belief that fraud is much more rampant than the evidence suggests or if you really think it's OK to block legitimate voters. And identity fraud can be detected without requiring ID -- if someone shows up to vote and finds that the poll workers think they already voted, that would be a good indication. But that almost never happens. Inside the right-wing bubble, however, belief in widespread voter fraud is inversely proportional to belief in global warming.