Isn’t it interesting that the so-called party “of the people” is nothing of the sort? According to the Associate Press (AP), after years of expanding when and how people can vote by state legislatures controlled by the Democratic Party, these same bodies – now under new Republican Tea Party (GOTP) control are moving to trim early voting days, beef up identification requirements and put new restrictions on how voters are notified about absentee ballots. One party seems dedicated to allowing “the people” access to the ballot box, while the other appears to want to restrict that access.
Democrats claim the GOTP is using midterm election wins to enforce changes favorable to them ahead of the 2012 presidential election. They criticize such legislation, saying it “could lead to longer lines in Democratic-leaning urban areas and discourage people from voting.”
Of course the GOTP counters that bolstering ID rules helps prevent fraud. And at a time when counties face tough budgets, they contend local elections officials don’t have the money to keep early voting locations staffed and opened.
Ah yes, so there’s the rub; it all comes down to money; the ever continuing mantra of the true religion of the right. It isn’t about “God given liberties”, it’s about serving Mammon; it’s about the money. And that makes perfect sense considering the greed that has penetrated the GOTP over the years. The need to serve big corporations, oil companies and the Stock Market, all at the expense of everything else. Who cares about the liberties of the plebs as longs as the “ruling class” – the wealthy – are taken care of?
“We’ve had nothing short of a rhetorical firefight for years between the folks who are worried about fraud and folks who are worried about disenfranchisement – a firefight which is pretty much neatly broken down between the two major parties,” said Doug Chapin, an election expert at the University of Minnesota.
According to the AP, “while states typically adjust voting rules ahead of presidential elections, this year provides an opportunity for new Republican governors and GOP majorities to legislate on election issues.”
Put simply, Chapin said: “What’s happening in 2011 is just as much about what happened in 2010.”
One of the more interesting facts is that a lot of the new voting rules have recently cleared state legislatures in what have traditionally been presidential battlegrounds; all the states which appear to make the difference between victory and defeat. The new GOTP motto appears to be, “If you can’t beat him, change the rules midstream (cheat)”.
Already plans reducing the number of days to cast early ballots have cleared Republican Tea Party-controlled swing states, Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin. Legislatures in Georgia, Tennessee and West Virginia also lopped off advanced-voting time. North Carolina has a pending proposal. And Maine has done away with a policy allowing people to register at the polls on Election Day before casting ballots.
Now, lest anyone think it’s only conservatives who change the rules, history shows us that each party, when in control, seeks to rewrite the rules to its electoral advantage.
But why change the early voting rules – besides the alleged saving of money? Well, as it turns out Democratic voters held an edge in early voting during the 2010 elections in spite of the fact the GOTP made gains in the off-year contest.
But the move to shrink the early voting window in some states isn’t the only change the GOTP is seeking; others it appears are also pushing to require voters to show a photo ID at the polls including Kansas, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, all of which have passed strict photo ID laws.
Personally, I don’t have a real problem with needing to prove your identity in order to vote, but I can see how the next step will be that only driver’s licenses or military IDs will be acceptable forms of proof, and that would not favor the poor, it would decidedly favor the rich – or the GOTP.
When it comes down to it, voters need to ask why rules are being changed. The GOTP continuously screams we have to save money, the debt, THE debt, THE DEBT!!! But the party of so-called “fiscal responsibility” is not willing to consider any type of tax increase, even ones levied only against the uber-wealthy which a clear majority of Americans support according to polling data; a recent 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, found 61% of Americans polled said increasing taxes to the wealthy should be the first step toward balancing the budget. But the party claiming to “listen to the voice of the American people” ignores each and every poll that suggests raising taxes – they hold up the Ghost of Tax Cuts Past – Ronald Reagan – but ignore the fact he raised taxes more than any other President in the nation’s history in order to spur economic growth during a huge recession.
This has less to do with savings, and more to do with winning.
The Liberty Tree 