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With blinding speed, Florida Republicans have moved through the state legislature a set of electoral changes that will make it harder for people to vote. From the Orlando Sentinel:
The bill would cut the time for early voting from 14 days to eight. County election supervisors could keep their early voting sites open anywhere from six hours to 12 hours per day.
That would allow a maximum of 96 hours of early voting — the same number allowed today, but over fewer days.
It would also eliminate a long-standing provision that allows people to change their address or name at the polls. Under the bill, you can only change your registration at the polls if you are moving within the same county. Otherwise you have to cast a provisional ballot.
Other changes would require third-party voter registration groups such as the League of Women Voters to turn in voter-registration cards within 48 hours or face fines. Voter groups have said that requirement would be difficult to meet if they are registering thousands of voters at a time.
This restriction on third-party voter registration drives would have a seriously chilling effect on volunteers and non-profit groups that would probably produce a serious drop in new registrations.
Not surprisingly, these changes will make it harder for groups that lean Democratic, like young people, to vote.
This has been a trend this year with Republicans all over the country. In states where the GOP won big in 2010, they have been using their margins to push through state laws that will make voting harder for groups that tend to vote against Republicans. Similar actions have been taken in Kansas and Wisconsin.
Despite the excuses, the GOP is using this as plain voter suppression for partisan gain, democratic principles be damned.
24 Comments
why do conservatives always cheat?
why do they hate our system of governance?
Elections have consequences. What did you think would happen?
Republicans control the Governor’s office and every elective Cabinet office. Republicans have a 2/3 majority in each chamber of the state legislature.
Republicans achieved all of these advantages without the current round of changes.
Because they will win by doing it.
Republicans know their base is dying off and that nobody else like their policies. The only thing that got them any majorities in 2010 was the perceived, (and actual), ineffectiveness of the Democrats. This might be their last shot at relevancy so they are pulling out all of the stops and doing unjust and in some cases, downright illegal things, hoping that either SCOTUS will uphold them or that by the time they wind their way through the courts, they will have become a fact of life.
That’s my take anyway.
Where was/is the DNC? The republicans have been suppressing votes for 40 years and the Dems have failed to develop a long term strategy to counter it.
Florida sux rocks big time which is why I am leaving the state ASAP. People here these days are looney toons.
As the man said “It’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. I know, I live there.”
Going after their piece of the citizens united pie.
and
“third-party voter registration” doesn’t refer to a political party other than the Big Two (such as Libertarian or Green), it refers to an entity other than a political party or the voter/registrant.
(One of those instances when a term means two essentially different things and can be easily confused.)
Democrats have only themselves to blame. We’ve known for over 10 years now that Republicans are prepared to do ANYTHING to steal elections. But the Democratic establishment has done nothing to counteract or challenge Republican election stealing and manipulation.
Gore meekly acquiesced to the stolen election of 2000. His lack of spine and failure to challenge a coup d’etat bought us 8 years of Bush and the apparent permanent loss of civil liberties. In any other country, a stolen election would have meant civil war. Not here. The democrats even assisted in the stealing of future elections by going along with black box voting.
In the last decade, massive evidence of vote rigging and flipping has accumulated. Smaller blogs like Bradblog have made a heroic effort to cover this issue, but the Democratic establishment and the mass media have almost universally ignored it.
There is evidence that the Georgia Senate race 2002 was stolen. The presidential election 2004 was almost certainly stolen in Ohio. I suspect that 2008 was stolen as well, not as far as the presidential race is concerned, but through the Senate races, to deny Democrats a 60+ supermajority. I can’t prove these assertions, but the point is that no one can disprove them either. Many of the ballots in question never existed as physical entities. They were just numbers in computers. Recounts consisted of simply adding those numbers again, as if that proved that the primary data wasn’t manipulated to begin with.
Raise these issues, and you will be accused of being a “conspiracy theorist” by all the Very Serious People.
So you’re saying that making it harder for citizens to vote is A-OK with you. Mussolini would be proud of you.
But once they lock in the proposed changes, a Wisconsin-like backlash becomes much more difficult in Florida. Clear-and-hold is the GOP strategy. They don’t want the ebb and flow of electoral control; it inconveniences their Owners.
There is evidence that the 1960 presidential election was stolen. And Nixon in 1968 secretly promised the North Vietnamese a better deal so they wouldn’t settle with LBJ and his proxy HHH, who barely lost. Same secret deal in 1980 with the Iranians and the hostages.
After the apparent 2004 flipping in Ohio, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann devoted several Countdown reports to the irregularities. So?
“In 1988 Ronnie Dugger wrote the definitive article on computerized vote fixing“, published in The New Yorker.
2010 28 Repubs and 12 Dems
2008 26 Repubs and 14 Dems
2006 26 Repubs and 14 Dems
2004 26 Repubs and 14 Dems
2002 26 Repubs and 14 Dems
2000 25 Repubs and 15 Dems
FL Senate 40 members
FL Governor has been Repub since the election of 1998
Criminy, I hope I don’t get washed away in the ebb and flow.
“I can’t prove these assertions, but the point is that no one can disprove them either.”
Absurd. You know a crime has been committed and all of the possible suspects can’t prove they’re innocent.
All eligible voters vote. A lot vote “I don’t care” or “Either 1 will do” or “It makes no difference to me.”
http://archive.flsenate.gov/cgi-bin/View_Page.pl?File=index.html&Directory=Publications/Archive/SenateHandbooks/&Tab=Welcome&Submenu=2
This is the source of the info @13, about the FL Senate, prior to the 2010 election.
Then why make the changes?
The Republican party gave up on winning the hearts and minds of voters a long time ago, and instead began working at simply winning elections, by whatever means necessary. Their goal is not governing for the benefit of all, it is political power and the benefits of that power. But I see blowback coming, if Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio are any indicators.
Dems have a registration edge in FL: 4.6 million to 4.0 million Repubs.
Other than general griping about Republicans, can anyone explain why these proposed changes are actually bad ideas on the merits? For instance I think it’s a superb idea not to let people change their voter registration address at the polls – that only invites would-be fraudsters to vote multiple times. People who really do have a change of address cast a provisional ballot, their vote is not discarded. I don’t see why this is a bad idea.
As far as early voting,here in New Jersey and in New York,both very blue states,there is no early voting except by absentee ballot. You go to the polls on election day,no big hardship.
When your entire agenda serves a greedy fraction of 1% of the country, then you have to use whatever means you can to gain an unfair advantage. The backbone of the Republican strategy, however, is to capture the stupid vote.
Because their proposals are a solution in search of a problem. Voter fraud is non-existent. In fact, the majority of the few actual voter fraud cases involve Republicans, not Democrats. Take the latest fraud taking place in Wisconsin, where Republicans have falsified signatures on recall petitions. Bill Pocan – father of Republican State Rep. Mark Pocan signed a recall petition, even though he died years ago.
The goal of the GOP is to suppress the opposition vote. Go to a few right wing think tanks and read their articles. They aren’t worried about voter fraud. They want to limit the number of people who vote and they are very clear about it.
Here’s Paul Weyrich, founder of The Heritage Foundation, speaking at an annual gathering.
“I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
What’s going on in WI in regard to recall petitions is not voter fraud. I also hope you’re not saying that no signature submitted on a petition to recall a Repub will be found invalid.
Who doesn’t know that Repubs want to suppress turnout? Dems are much better at self- suppression that Repubs will ever be at suppressing Dems. Dems should focus on how to turn out their squirrelly voters.