Voter-ID laws are a good ole fashioned poll tax

Rank-and-filed Republicans can never be convinced that there has never been an incidence of group voter fraud, much less an incidence that swayed an election. (Republican leaders know it's a sham to give them an excuse to suppress voting.)

So my conservative friends, just read this parallel in Hong Kong that Beinart found. It blew me away, because this Leung guy is speaking aloud what Republican leaders are saying behind closed doors:

If Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters succeed in booting C.Y. Leung from power, the city’s unelected chief executive should consider coming to the United States. He might fit in well in the Republican Party.

In an interview Monday with The New York Times and other foreign newspapers, Leung explained that Beijing cannot permit the direct election of Hong Kong’s leaders because doing so would empower “the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month.” Leung instead defended the current plan to have a committee of roughly 1,200 eminent citizens vet potential contenders because doing so, in the Times’ words, “would insulate candidates from popular pressure to create a welfare state, and would allow the city government to follow more business-friendly policies.”

And for those who say getting a new photo-ID just to vote (not for any other use by the voter) isn't a poll tax, consider this:

Acquiring that free ID requires showing another form of identification—and those cost money. In the states with voter-ID laws, notes a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, “Birth certificates can cost between $8 and $25. Marriage licenses, required for married women whose birth certificates include a maiden name, can cost between $8 and $20. By comparison, the notorious poll tax—outlawed during the civil rights era—cost $10.64 in current dollars.”

It's not like poll taxes are OK if they are "affordable" by somebody else's standards. No. Poll taxes are forbidden, period. 

Should the Poor Be Allowed to Vote?

By Peter Beinart

October 22, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/the-new-poll-tax/381791/?single_page=true

News digest / Catching up on news (08.24.2014)

Here's a news roundup from the past few weeks. Sorry I haven't had time to re-post these with the thoughtful and incisive commentary that you've come to expect from me:

"How Isis came to be," By Ali Khadery, August 22, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4xx9z  -- FASCINATING, ESP. CONSIDERING THE U.S. HAS ARMED ISIS TWICE ALREADY

"Obama's legacy could be a revitalized NATO," By Anne Applebaum, August 22, 2014, Washington Post. URL:http://wapo.st/1p27Z8v -- A SCARIER RUSSIA DEMANDS A STRONGER NATO

"New Study Debunks Big Corporations' Tax Inversion Arguments," By Ben Hallman, August 19, 2014, Huffington Post. URL:http://huff.to/1vdX4Ow  -- THE FACTS DON'T SUPPORT INVERSION

"Left out in the cold by the ice bucket fad," By Michael Hiltzik, August 21, 2014, Los Angeles Times. URL:http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/21/237217/michael-hiltzik-left-out-in-the.html --  DONATE MONEY; CONSERVE WATER

"US still has time to stake out a position of strength in Ukraine," By John Bolton, August 21, 2014, Los Angeles Times. URL:  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/21/237223/us-still-has-time-to-stake-out.html#storylink=cpy -- USUALLY I DISAGREE WITH 'YOSEMITE SAM' BOLTON, BUT HE'S BASICALLY CORRECT

"Shoddy US roads, bridges take a toll on the economy," By Don Lee, August 17, 2014, Los Angeles Times. URL:http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/17/236762/shoddy-us-roads-bridges-take-a.html  -- WHY LIBERALS AND DEMOCRATS CAN'T RUN AND WIN ON THIS SIMPLE FACT IS BEYOND MY UNDERSTANDING

"Among world leaders, the trend for acting like Vladimir Putin is catching on," By Adam Taylor, August 14, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/1mKGRLp  -- JUST TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF IF YOU WANT TO BE LIKE PUTIN!

"The GOP’s war on voters continues in Virginia," By Editorial Board, August 14, 2014, Washington Post. URL:http://wapo.st/1sHGEjf -- PESKY VOTERS! WISH THEY'D JUST STAY AT HOME!

"The case for free tampons," By Jessica Valenti, August 14, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4vjeg -- IT GENERATED A LOT OF BUZZ ON THE INTERNETS

"City-Run Gas Station Makes Waves In Southeastern Kentucky," By Emil Moffatt, August 13, 2014, NPR. URL:http://www.npr.org/2014/08/13/340085122/city-run-gas-station-makes-waves-in-southeastern-kentucky?sc=17&f=1001&utm_source=iosnewsapp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=app  -- IN A TRULY FREE MARKET GOVERNMENT GETS A CHANCE TO COMPETE WITH PRIVATE GOODS AND SERVICES!

"Economic inequality, not just wages at the bottom, needs to be addressed," By Harold Meyerson, August 13, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/1kCqWmT  -- AMEN BROTHER

"WATCH this to understand the level of Russia’s sickness," August 9, 2014, YouTube. URL: http://youtu.be/EwwBFJkwZ_Q --EVER WONDERED WHAT FASCIST STATE THEATER LOOKS LIKE?  HERE YOU GO

"Teenagers in US prisons: it's time for the savagery and neglect to finally end," By Sadhbh Walshe, August 7, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4vh3h -- OUR COLLECTIVE SHAME

Civil War redux over Southern voting rights

Yeah, well, this pretty much says it:

[W]hite southern Republicans enact voter ID laws because they do not want Democratic constituencies to vote, particularly people of color. Rather than embrace the changing demographics in the US and adopt platforms to address the needs and concerns of voters of color, Republicans have chosen to eschew these voters and wage an assault on civil rights, immigration and policies of diversity and inclusion. This is the endgame for the Republican Southern Strategy of race card politics. The GOP was able to win elections on the margins by appealing to the racial insecurities of disaffected working class whites. In the process, southern whites fled the Democratic party, and the GOP became the party of the white South. Now, this marginalized base of angry white voters is all that is left of the Republican strategy and of the GOP as well, so Republicans must remove the segments of the electorate that will not vote for them.

What the GOP is doing to itself, employing short-term, racist fixes like gerrymandering, voter ID and anti-immigration, reminds me of one of those over-injured, desperate, ageing athletes who keeps on taking cortisone and steroid shots in the hopes of eking out one more winning season, but in the process is destroying his bones, rupturing his tendons, and basically killing himself.

This voter ID thing may work for the GOP in 2014, but blacks and Latinos will remember it; and birthrate wins. They won't trust the GOP for another generation, at least. The Republican Party is killing itself to save itself for one more go-round.

The US civil war is playing out again – this time over voter rights

By David A. Love

August 2, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3hytm

Democracy denied: 4th phase in U.S. voting rights history

History will not look kindly on what we're doing to restrict and suppress voting in America today.  

The argument on its face that we are justified in spending so much effort to make voting harder and more inconvenient in order to prevent fraud is absurd, considering it's a crime that doesn't exist.  It's a hyper-partisan attack aimed at the heart of our democracy: one man, one vote.

Incidentally, today I'm in another country with its own national elections.  It's a Sunday and polling stations are open from early morning till late evening.  Administrative judges are required to work all day to resolve, immediately, any questions about voters' registration.  Meanwhile, the United States routinely criticizes other countries' elections for not being free and fair.  Matthew 7:3-5 comes to mind.

Democracy denied: Millions of Americans blocked from voting

Voter suppression efforts today echo 19th century efforts to block urban immigrant working class from casting vote.

By Paul Rosenberg

October 28, 2012 | Al Jazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/20121022125746737657.html

Cincy ads scare, confuse black voters over a crime that doesn't exist

Yep, Cincinnati's showing once again it's the most conservative big city in America...and perhaps the most racist.

In Ohio, Signs of Voter Suppression Go Up -- And Come Down
By P.G. Sittenfeld
October 24, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/QGfbcA

Ex-chair of GOP admitted to voter suppression of blacks

You don't have to take my word for it that the GOP, election after election, tries to suppress black voter turnout.  Take it from the GOP itself....

Former FL GOP Chair Testifies That Party Discussed How to 'Keep Blacks From Voting' in 2009

Deposition recalls FL Republican whistleblower Clint Curtis' 2004 affidavit on 'reducing black vote' before 2000 election...

By Brad Friedman

July 27, 2012 | Brad Blog

Well, this sounds familiar, and for good reason...

In a 630-page deposition, released to the press yesterday, former Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer described a systemic effort by Republicans to suppress the black vote. Referring to a 2009 meeting with party officials, Greer said "I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting." He also said party officials discussed how "minority outreach programs were not fit for the Republican Party." Florida is currently embroiled in a controversy surrounding Gov. Rick Scott's (R) voter purge program, which disproportionately affects voters of color. Fifty-eight percent of Scott's original list of voters who were supposedly ineligible to voter were Hispanic while Hispanics make up only 13 percent of Florida's eligible voters. Greer and the GOP cut ties in 2010, and he is currently facing felony corruption charges.

The summary above comes from ThinkProgress' Alex Brown who offer a hat-tip to Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald who opens his report this way:

In the debate over new laws meant to curb voter fraud in places like Florida, Democrats always charge that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote of liberal voting blocs like blacks and young people, while Republicans just laugh at such ludicrous and offensive accusations.

The entire matter echoes back to our initial 2004 exclusive on then Republican software programmer turned whistleblower Clint Curtis who had filed a sworn affidavit charging Florida Republican Tom Feeney had asked his company, Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), to create a vote-rigging software prototype in 2000.

At the time of his alleged meetings with Feeney, Curtis says the Congressman --- who had been Jeb Bush's Lt. Governor running mate in 1998 before becoming Speaker of the FL House and one of the most powerful elected officials in the state by 2000 --- discussed methods that he said the Republican Party had in place to "reduce the black vote" in the 2000 Presidential election.

According to the December 6, 2004 affidavit [PDF] filed by Curtis, just days before he would testify to a U.S. House Judiciary Committee panel...

10. In my role as a technology advisor at YEI, I was present at subsequent meetings between Mr. Feeney and Mrs. Yang [the company's owner]. In several of those meetings, prior to the 2000 election, it became clear to me that Mr. Feeney was well aware that by artificially reducing the margin of victory of the opposition party in areas where they were the strongest, the overall outcome would then favor his candidate. As well, he bragged that he had already implemented "exclusion lists" to reduce the "black vote". He further mentioned that the "proper placement of police patrols could further reduce the black vote by as much as 25%." I didn't know at the time, if Mr. Feeney had meant that as a racial joke or actually part of the plan.

In 2001, The Orlando Sentinel described Feeney as "one of Florida's most powerful elected officials." In 2000, Time Magazine called him "the only man more influential in Florida than football king Bobby Bowden."

Curtis' claims under penalty of perjury in his 2004 affidavit, about Feeney's statements on minority voter suppression in the Sunshine State before the 2000 race, sound as if they are right in line with former FL GOP Chair Greer's remarks made in his own sworn deposition about his time with the party in 2009.

The BRAD BLOG has also been covering FL Gov. Rick Scott's recently failed attempt at purging some 182,000 registered voters he had identified as "potential non-citizens" in advance of the 2012 election. Earlier this week, we filed a special investigative report detailing how, of the thousands of registered voters Scott and his hand-picked Sec. of State Ken Detzner believed to be "non-citizens", just 9 of them --- out of 11.2 million registered voters in FL --- have so far been confirmed as "non-citizens". Of those 9, none appear to have cast a vote in any election.

* * *

• Our index page listing of the most notable stories in our many years of coverage of the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney vote-rigging scandal is right here.

• Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story, the award-winning documentary film on the Curtis/Feeney story and our coverage of it, isright here.

• Video and transcript of of Curtis' sworn 12/6/2004 testimony before the U.S. House of Representative Judiciary Committee Democrats' hearing is right here.

Texas voters plead: 'We're not dead yet!'

Before they can vote, 80,000 citizens have to prove to the Republic of Texas that they're not dead yet.  This absurd scenario reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail:  "You're not fooling anyone."

Many Texans Bereaved Over 'Dead' Voter Purge

By Wade Goodwyn

September 16, 2012 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/OuTj6w

Michael Moore: Our optimism v. GOP cynicism

So true:

So, what's a Rightie to do now that we've turned [America] into Sodom and G? They have to suppress the vote! They have to stop as many liberals from voting as possible. So they've passed many voter suppression laws to make it hard for the poor, the minorities, the disabled and students to vote. They honestly believe they can pull this off – and they just may. The only "positive" thing about this is that their need to have such laws in order to win the election is an admission on the part of the Republicans that they know the U.S. Is a liberal country and that the only way they can now win now is to cheat. Trust me, if they believed that America was a right-wing country they'd be passing laws making it so easy to vote you could do it in the checkout line at Walmart.

And so optimistic:

I'm going to go with my optimistic side here (sorry, cynics, you know I love you) and imagine a Second Term Obama (and a Democratically-controlled Congress) who will go after all the good that our people deserve and put the power of our democracy back in our hands. There's good reason why the Right is terrified of a Second Term Obama because that is exactly what they think he'll do: the real Obama will appear and take us down the road to social justice and tolerance and a leveling of the economic playing field. For once, I'd like to say I agree with the Right – and I sincerely hope their worst nightmare does come true. 

"President Romney" -- Why Those Two Words Should Scare You into Action This Election

Right-wing billionaires are dropping piles of dough on this election ... it'll take people power to save the day.

By Michael Moore  

September 7, 2012 | AlterNet

URL: http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/president-romney-why-those-two-words-should-scare-you-action-election?paging=off

Invisible voters v. imaginary fraud

Wrote Columbia law professor Nathaniel Persily about new state voter ID laws:

The greatest irony of the new crop of voter ID laws is that they do nothing to combat the more frequent problem of absentee ballot fraud.

In fact, they might even make such fraud more likely because the number of absentee voters might increase, given that absentee voters do not need to have a photo ID in order to vote. Worse still, absentee votes are much more likely to be otherwise disqualified because of errors committed by either the voter or the vote counter. They present the perfect storm of fraud and mistakes that conjures up images of the cockeyed Florida vote counters in the 2000 election.  [...]

This will all be done in the name of preventing voter fraud. Yet if these laws lead unwittingly to an increase in the number of voters casting absentee votes out of public view, then they will not even have addressed the fraud they intend to solve. Indeed, they might even make it worse.

Voter ID cases: Invisible voter v. imaginary fraud

By Nathaniel Persily

August 31, 2012 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/31/opinion/persily-voter-id-laws/index.html?hpt=hp_bn4

Michael Steele was too sensitive, pragmatic to lead GOP?

Gee, in this interview Michael Steele sounds kind of normal.  No wonder the GOP fired him as party chair and replaced him with a white guy. 

Maybe Steele is not just sensitive to issues of race, but can also read the writing on the wall:

The Republican nominee [Mitt Romney] is doing so poorly with non-whites -- a recent poll even put his share of the black vote at 0 percent -- that, as reported in the National Journal, he will probably need to win three of every five white voters in order to win the White House. ("This is the last time anyone will try to do this," a Republican strategist told the Journal, of trying to win the presidency with a primarily white coalition.)

This is the last time anyone will try to do this.  Wow.  So we're witnessing the end of an era, folks.  I wonder if it'll work this time?...

Michael Steele: Voter ID Rhetoric Is 'Irresponsible,' Party Needs New Approach To Black Voters

By Gene Demby

August 31, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/PHBJq3

Voting should be preceded by an obstacle course

Hey, Democrat-district voters: your polling station is on the other side. 

"By and large, election officials, it's our job to make it easier for people to vote, not harder," said a Greene County election official in Dayton, OH.

Au contraire!  The ordeal of voting is a test of one's economic station and democratic mettle.  You should be willing to risk losing your minimum-wage job, and even swim across a moat full of man-eating alligators if you really want to get to your local polling station.  (Ideally, they'd have to pass through the Game like Kurt Thomas in Gymkata, but that would be too expensive to organize, unfortunately....)

Naturally, if you're fortunate enough to have a salaried position and your home county has excess funds to pay for early and extended voting, well... that's just one of the benefits that accrue to upstanding Americans who work hard, live right, and live in the right place.

To make sure that only the right people vote (wink-wink), we should make voting downright inconvenient and during work hours, when wage-earning commoners are least likely to go to the polls.  Because if they do vote, they'll just choose the candidates promising more government benefits that we property-owning lords of the manor must pay for.  And I say, harumph-harumph and tut-tut to that!  

Republican Voter Suppression Campaign Rolls Back Early Voting

By Dan Froomkin

August 18, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/QbM3q3

An oldie but a baddie: Restricting the franchise

Ay-ay-ay.  In uncertain economic times even 18th century junk ideas get dusted off and put up for re-sale to credulous political consumers.  

I'm ashamed but not surprised that this Bill Flax person is from Cincinnati, one of the most reactionary cities on Earth.  Correction: the mostly white area surrounding the City of Cincinnati.  

If On The Dole Why Do You Still Get To Go To The Poll?

By Bill Flax

August 4, 2012 | Forbes

URL:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/2011/08/04/if-on-the-dole-why-do-you-still-get-to-go-to-the-poll/

GOP restricts voting because it can't win on ideas

"What Obama and Biden and the Democrats represent are their own ideas, and they have to be met with the competing ideas, and we have the winning ideas. This is a battle of ideas, ideology," said Rush Limbaugh on his show a few days ago.

Bulls**t!

The last thing Republicans want is a fair contest of ideas.  They want to use their political power, like states Attorneys General, to purge voter roles of Democrats and give early voting privileges only to Republican-leaning districts.  

It's amazing Republicans have to resort to these dirty tricks in the midst of such a bad economy.  Any Republican with a pulse and a smile should be able to manhandle Obama at the polls.  But, 1) Republicans fight to win and they don't take chances; and 2) their ideas suck. 

I am cautiously optimistic that enough Americans will realize that, as bad as thing are under Obama, they would only get worse under Romney-Ryan, whose "brilliant" economic plan consists of: 1) cutting taxes on the richest Americans, who are already richer than they've ever been, (and raising taxes on the middle class, if you believe Romney's promise to make his tax cuts revenue-neutral);  2) deregulating Wall Street so they can blow up the financial system and get bailed out, again;  3) deregulating extraction industries like coal, gas and oil;  4) decreasing environmental protection; and, of course 5) eliminating Medicare and privatizing Social Security.

Or, as I like to sum it all up: Cut, Deregulate, Pollute.  Somebody should paint that slogan on the side of Romney's campaign bus.

If you see something in the GOP's plans that connects to the good of the middle class then you must be a Grand Master at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Editorial: Overt Discrimination in Ohio

August 14, 2012 | New York Times

If you live in Butler or Warren counties in the Republican-leaning suburbs of Cincinnati, you can vote for president beginning in October by going to a polling place in the evening or on weekends. Republican officials in those counties want to make it convenient for their residents to vote early and avoid long lines on Election Day.

But, if you live in Cincinnati, you're out of luck. Republicans on the county election board are planning to end early voting in the city promptly at 5 p.m., and ban it completely on weekends, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer. The convenience, in other words, will not be extended to the city's working people.

The sleazy politics behind the disparity is obvious. Hamilton County, which contains Cincinnati, is largely Democratic and voted solidly for Barack Obama in 2008. So did the other urban areas of Cleveland, Columbus and Akron, where Republicans, with the assistance of the Ohio secretary of state, Jon Husted, have already eliminated the extended hours for early voting.

County election boards in Ohio, a closely contested swing state, are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. In counties likely to vote for President Obama, Republicans have voted against the extended hours, and Mr. Husted has broken the tie in their favor. (He said the counties couldn't afford the long hours.) In counties likely to vote for Mitt Romney, Republicans have not objected to the extended hours.

This is just the latest alarming example of how Republicans across the country are trying to manipulate the electoral system by blocking the voting rights of their opponents. These actions have a disproportionate effect on blacks, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities who struggled for so long to participate in American democracy.

Cincinnati, for example, is 45 percent black, and Cleveland 53 percent. Butler County, however, is 8 percent black, and Warren 3.5 percent. This kind of racial disparity is clearly visible wherever Republicans have trampled on voting rights during Mr. Obama's term.

In Florida, more than half of black voters went to the polls early in 2008 largely to support Mr. Obama. So, last year, Republican lawmakers there severely curtailed the early voting period. In Pennsylvania and other states that have imposed strict voter ID requirements, the impact will be felt hardest by blacks, Hispanics, older citizens and students, all of whom tend to lack government ID cards at a higher rate than the general population. At the trial in Pennsylvania over the constitutionality of the state's voter ID law, the plaintiffs introduced clear evidence, compiled by a geographic data analysis firm, that registered voters in Philadelphia who lack government ID cards are concentrated in minority and low-income areas.

In Ohio, as in other states, the Republican Party is establishing a reputation for putting short-term political gain ahead of the most fundamental democratic rights.

A heartbreaking voter-ID story for my GOP friends

Conservatives and Republicans are very emotional when it comes to politics, therefore they trust personal anecdotes over statistics.  So here's a personal story for them, to show why new voter-ID laws being rammed through Republican state houses are bad:

Applewhite, a great-grandmother who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s, has worked as a hotel maid for most of her adult life.  She has never had a driver's license.  Her purse was stolen four years ago along with her only copy of her Social Security card.  She was adopted as a child and has been married twice.  As a result, she does not have the necessary documentation to acquire a state-sanctioned voter ID card and if the law is upheld, Applewhite will not be able to vote in a presidential election for the first time since 1960, when she pulled the lever to vote for John F. Kennedy.

OK, and if you're an independent or Democrat, here are some stats for you from just one state: 

Under Pennsylvania's harsh new voter ID law, as many as 20 percent of voters in the state lack the photo IDs required to cast a vote, an estimated 1,636,168. In Philadelphia alone, however, 437,237 people, a whopping 43 percent of the voting population, may be ineligible to vote under the law.

If Pennsylvania is like other many other states, it could take weeks or even months to get a state-sanctioned photo ID, even if you follow all the procedures punctiliously.

Nationwide, "11 percent of eligible American voters lack such ID.  Poor, minority, and elderly voters are especially likely to fall into that group: 25 percent of African-Americans, 16 percent of Hispanics, and 18 percent of Americans over 65 don't have the necessary identification."

Without a preceding drive to inform people about coming changes and help them obtain free picture IDs, these new state laws can be interpreted only one way: a cynical ambush timed for November 2012 on the most basic right we have in our republican democracy, the right to vote.  

If Republicans were serious about picture IDs then they would spend the time and budget resources to institute a national ID card.  Gee whiz, by 2017 every Mexican under the age of 17 will be given a biometric ID card.  Can't we do as well as them?  (And then we wouldn't have to worry about non-current addresses, misspelled names, expired licenses, and other silly obstacles to voting.)

Dems want alien abductions, Bigfoot attacks and voter fraud to continue

Bigfoot says: "We're off to the polls to steal your vote!"

Here's what you really need to know:

The numbers [of blocked state ballots in 2008] suggest that the legitimate votes rejected by the laws are far more numerous than are the cases of fraud that advocates of the rules say they are trying to prevent.  Thousands more votes could be in jeopardy for this November, when more states with larger populations are looking to have similar rules in place.

"But without photo ID law, anybody could walk into a polling station, give them my name, and steal my vote!" I've heard Republicans protest.  

Well, maybe.  But the moment it was discovered that ballot would be thrown out, thus defeating the purpose of attempting such fraud.  (If this hypothetical vote thief voted before you, then his fraud would be discovered when you went to vote.  If he tried to vote after you, his fraud would be detected by the polling official before he could even vote.)  

The success of such an attempt is absurd enough, but imagine -- as many conservative conspiracy-theorists do -- of an orchestrated attempt (by dastardly Democrats, no doubt) to do that on a large scale.  If dozens or hundreds of those ballots were determined to be fraudulent, that would not only cancel their validity, but also set off alarm bells and criminal investigations.  Don't forget, voter fraud in a federal election carries a $10,000 fine and five years in jail, plus state penalties.  Indeed:

Election administrators and academics who monitor the issue said in-person fraud is rare because someone would have to impersonate a registered voter and risk arrest.  A 2008 Supreme Court case drew detailed briefs from the federal government, 10 states and other groups that identified only nine potential impersonation cases over the span of several years, according to a tally by the Brennan Center at New York University.

So, there are zero cases large-scale voting fraud in the U.S.  None.  Zilch.  Nobody can find any, even though Republicans have certainly tried.  Statistically, people are more often struck by lightning.  What all these voter ID laws are really about -- even if you give Republicans the benefit of the doubt -- is preventing a terrible but almost impossible what-if scenario.  Now, weigh that hypothetical what-if against the thousands of documented, proven cases of legitimate ballots being blocked because of new state photo ID laws, when voters weren't aware of the change.  

Which violation is more harmful to our democracy?  Exactly.  And indeed, remembering our hypothetical identity thief, the best defense against such attempts is... having more people vote.  Because the only chance this ploy would work is if the identity thief was fairly certain you weren't going to vote.  Thus, we should encourage voting and make it as easy as possible!

However, I don't give Republicans the benefit of the doubt.  I don't trust them, at least politicians smart enough to know the truth.  This is really about suppressing the votes of the very young, the very old, and minorities -- all groups that tend to vote Democrat.  It's a cynical political attack aimed at the heart of our democracy: the right to vote.  

Indeed, elections are like the holiest sacrament of our democracy... and Republicans want to post a bouncer at the church door.

Many voters may be deterred by tough ID laws

By Mike Baker

July 8, 2012 | AP

URL: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/07/08/2252266/tough-id-laws-could-block-thousands.html#storylink=cpy

No bank + no photo ID = 2nd class U.S. citizen

It may be news to you that at least 17 million U.S. adults have no bank account, and 43 million adults are considered "underbanked."  Taken together, that's about 26 percent of all U.S. households!  These are disproportionately located in the South, of course.

(Similarly, it is probably news to most people that at 25 percent of all blacks and 18 percent of all senior citizens have no picture ID -- because they have never needed one.  And to get an ID, you need an ID, a nice Catch-22.  But since 2008, 15 Republican states have started requiring photo ID to vote, thereby creating a need; meanwhile, there has not been any corresponding government outreach to help poor folks get state photo IDs.  It's all about suppressing Democratic votes.  But I digress.)

As for the un- and under-banked, financial institutions -- including banks bailed out by U.S. taxpayers -- are more than happy to smack them with usurious interest rates, outrageous fees and hidden penalties.  If it were up to me -- and up to them, if Congress would let them do it -- the U.S. Postal Service would be the low-cost bank for all comers.  Japan Post bank, for example, holds 25 percent of that country's household assets!

So by all means, let me join in piling on Magic Johnson (figuratively, definitely not literally) for his apparent blacksploitation.  Indeed, according to the FDIC, 54 percent of black households are either unbanked or underbanked.  But to be fair, Magic isn't alone: recently U.S. banks "have turned to an array of celebrities, including reality TV star family the Kardashians, rap mogul Russell Simmons and personal finance guru Suze Orman" to hawk these awful financial products, which are disproportionately purchased by minority groups.

So Magic, my man, please have more integrity than the Kardashians (who evidently enjoy screwing black people) and stick to more wholesome products for the black community... like Coors beer.  And tell your people to open a damn checking account and stay away from the payday lenders, rent-to-own stores, and money order windows!  Knowledge is power; ignorance is slavery.

Shame on you, Magic Johnson

By Dion Rabouin

July 11, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dion-rabouin/magic-johnson-prepaid-debit-card_b_1663671.html

ID law proponent convicted of voter fraud -- HA!

Well, well, well. Republican and Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White was convicted by a jury of his peers for voter fraud.

"The irony is that White has been an outspoken defender of controversial voter identification laws, which are purportedly aimed at stamping out the kind of fraud he was found guilty of committing." Yep, irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

His conviction is also ironic because voter fraud in America is so exceedingly rare. Even after five years of investigating, George W. Bush's Justice Department "turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections." Yet many Republicans take it as an article of faith that voter fraud -- almost exclusively by Democrats -- is so rampant that it costs (Republicans) elections.

I classify this article of faith in the same category as "welfare queens:" they want to believe that legions of evil poor people, mainly blacks, are subverting our democracy to grow the welfare state. A big part of their political platform depends on this false belief.

(On a darker note, I hope Mr. White's conviction does not signal a trend, as with vocally homophobic Republican politicians who get caught in public restrooms stuffing gay men, where the most pro-ID, anti-voter-fraud Republican is the one most likely stuffing ballot boxes.)

Indiana's Top Election Official Convicted of Voter Fraud

By Corey Dade

February 6, 2012 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/Aril6m

Koch-Tea Party group's dirty election tricks in WI

This reader's comment on this story says it all:

"Voter fraud is rare, has little ability to affect election results, and when it's caught, it's punished severely. Voter suppression happens all the time, has the potential to change election results, is rarely caught and lightly punished. Clearly, the only logical thing to do is force through ever-stricter Voter ID laws [like Republicans want to do] while turning a blind eye to outright vote suppression attempts."

AFP Wisconsin ballots have late return date

By David Catanese

August 1, 2011 | Politico

URL: http://www.politico.com/blogs/davidcatanese/0811/AFP_Wisconsin_ballots_have_late_return_date.html?showall