Why do conservatives hate our freedom and our all-important representative government? Why doesn't the tea party appreciate that core value of no taxation without representation, instead of only focusing on no taxation - a bad idea? Why is it that despite the claims on the right about voter fraud, most of the arrests, prosecutions, and convictions for all forms of election tampering and election fraud appear to be committed by Republicans despite their projection of this misconduct onto Democrats and Unions? You know - the REAL election fraud, not the fantasy election fraud the right embraces, but can never demonstrate (not even in right wing led investigations / partisan politic witch hunts).
What makes us free? Is it people having legal approval to go around armed everywhere, despite a clear lack of any necessity to do so? No. Is it a lack of health care? No. Is it an absence of taxes or government? No.
What makes us free is the right to vote, the right to participate in representative government where there is one vote for each person who is a citizen.
The right, while claiming to revere our Founding Fathers and the fundamental principles of our nation, try at ever opportunity, along partisan lines, to desecrate and utterly trash at ever opportunity those very principles of representative government and one person = one vote. They HATE voting by every legal voter, they hate our freedom, they hate our system of government. Instead they want to rig our elections through voter suppression methods, and turn an election into an auction for the benefit of rich people, because despite a drastic decline in upward mobility, they are aspirational voters, voting for an improbable hope to be rich, without any realistic expectation of joining the 1%.
For the demographic of those who are poor, the expense of getting a birth certificate copy are prohibitive. The cost of $25 might be the difference between whether or not you and your kids eat, or don't eat. Blacks and Latinos are also more likely to be born at home than in a hospital. The administrative processes for them to get a birth certificate is much more expensive, and is routinely described as bureaucratic 'hell'.
For the elderly, many of whom no longer drive, some of them were also born at home and face the same challenges and expense, with the additional problems of mobility. For some of those, records have been lost due to local, state or regional disasters, and because of their age, their birth certificates from the days of purely paper records were not or could not be upgraded to the digital age of storage. And everyone can appreciate the position of students in this regard having special difficulties not faced by full time permanent residents who are more affluent.
What makes us free? Is it people having legal approval to go around armed everywhere, despite a clear lack of any necessity to do so? No. Is it a lack of health care? No. Is it an absence of taxes or government? No.
What makes us free is the right to vote, the right to participate in representative government where there is one vote for each person who is a citizen.
Despite the frequent use and abuse of the word freedom on the political right, they want to take away that right from hundreds of thousands of people in every state where they have tried to force through, along strictly partisan lines, voter suppression laws. These include voter ID, but also reductions in early voting, and limiting or eliminating absentee voting, and efforts to prevent voter registration.
The right, while claiming to revere our Founding Fathers and the fundamental principles of our nation, try at ever opportunity, along partisan lines, to desecrate and utterly trash at ever opportunity those very principles of representative government and one person = one vote. They HATE voting by every legal voter, they hate our freedom, they hate our system of government. Instead they want to rig our elections through voter suppression methods, and turn an election into an auction for the benefit of rich people, because despite a drastic decline in upward mobility, they are aspirational voters, voting for an improbable hope to be rich, without any realistic expectation of joining the 1%.
This is discriminatory and racist policy. It is racist because it has such a strongly disproportionate effect on groups based on race and other identity factors. That was the basis for Eric Holder speaking extemporaneously on the topic at the NAACP convention, from the WaPo :
HOUSTON — Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday he opposes a new photo ID requirement in Texas elections because it would be harmful to minority voters.
In remarks to the NAACP in Houston, the attorney general said the Justice Department “will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right.”
Addressing the NAACP convention in Houston, Texas on Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said despite the Supreme Court's ruling striking down most of Arizona's voter ID law, he remains wary of the provision that allows local law enforcement to verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect to be illegal.
Under the law passed in Texas, Holder said that “many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them — and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them.”
“We call those poll taxes,” Holder added spontaneously, drawing applause as he moved away from the original text of his speech with a reference to a fee used in some Southern states after slavery’s abolition to disenfranchise black people.
The 24th amendment to the constitution made that type of tax illegal.
Holder spoke a day after a trial started in federal court in Washington over the 2011 law passed by Texas’ GOP-dominated Legislature that requires voters to show photo identification when they get to the polls.
Under Texas’ law, Holder noted, a concealed handgun license would serve as acceptable ID to vote, but a student ID would not. He went on to say that while only 8 percent of white people do not have government-issued photo IDs, about 25 percent of black people lack such identification.
For the demographic of those who are poor, the expense of getting a birth certificate copy are prohibitive. The cost of $25 might be the difference between whether or not you and your kids eat, or don't eat. Blacks and Latinos are also more likely to be born at home than in a hospital. The administrative processes for them to get a birth certificate is much more expensive, and is routinely described as bureaucratic 'hell'.
For the elderly, many of whom no longer drive, some of them were also born at home and face the same challenges and expense, with the additional problems of mobility. For some of those, records have been lost due to local, state or regional disasters, and because of their age, their birth certificates from the days of purely paper records were not or could not be upgraded to the digital age of storage. And everyone can appreciate the position of students in this regard having special difficulties not faced by full time permanent residents who are more affluent.
In states like Wisconsin, the conservative legislature mandated the closings or reductions of hours in areas with more Democratic voters, making it more difficult for them to get drivers licenses or other ID, in some cases requiring people to travel 50 miles to do so. This was reported almost a year ago by by the AP in Bloomberg Businessnews:
MADISON Wis. Gov. Scott Walker's administration is working on finalizing a plan to close as many as 10 offices where people can obtain driver's licenses in order to expand hours elsewhere and come into compliance with new requirements that voters show photo IDs at the polls.
One Democratic lawmaker said Friday it appeared the decisions were based on politics, with the department targeting offices for closure in Democratic areas and expanding hours for those in Republican districts.
While in an article this month, Bloomberg News noted in Pennsylvania as a result of Voter ID laws:
Three-quarters of a million Pennsylvanians may be denied a chance to vote in November unless they can come up with an acceptable form of identification, a tally released by the state suggests.While in Colorado going back to at least 2006, courts have struck down voter ID laws as violating peoples right to vote both in March of this year and earlier. This is consistently the partisan action of Republicans, as reported in the Missouri News Tribune.
Lawmakers in 2006 also passed a law creating a photo ID requirement that was signed by Republican then-Gov. Matt Blunt. However, the Missouri Supreme Court concluded the law violated the fundamental right to vote and struck it down.
That FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO VOTE is what makes us free; Republicans and other conservatives hate that freedom and want to deny it to millions of voters solely because they are 'other', they are people who do not share their skin color or ethnicity, or their ideology, or their economic circumstances.
So WHY WHY WHY does the right hate our freedom to vote? Why to they hate representative government? Can't they see past the fact that while it is true that most of the people they are trying to prevent from voting wouldn't vote for THEM, the more important underlying principle of the right to vote is more important than their partisan winning? Why is the right so profoundly UN AMERICAN, so deeply unpatriotic that they would support something so backward, so regressive, so polarizing, so racist, so extraordinarily dark and evil, just to try to win? It should bother them that they only win by lying and cheating - that isn't winning. It's unethical, immoral, criminal conduct by a political segment that surives and thrives on dirty tricks, bullying and harassing innocent people exercising their rights. Bullies are cowards; in this case, cowards who are afraid to compete fairly. Harassers are people who try to intimidate or obstruct others for their own pleasure or gain, instead of respecting genuine freedom - not empty lip service freedom.
It would be one thing if we had a problem with voter fraud, but we do not, by any rational, objective, fact-based measure, except for all those pesky convictions for various kinds of voter fraud and voter suppression on the right, and even all of those many cases of right wing misconduct aren't enough to affect the outcome of elections.
So WHY WHY WHY does the right hate our freedom to vote? Why to they hate representative government? Can't they see past the fact that while it is true that most of the people they are trying to prevent from voting wouldn't vote for THEM, the more important underlying principle of the right to vote is more important than their partisan winning? Why is the right so profoundly UN AMERICAN, so deeply unpatriotic that they would support something so backward, so regressive, so polarizing, so racist, so extraordinarily dark and evil, just to try to win? It should bother them that they only win by lying and cheating - that isn't winning. It's unethical, immoral, criminal conduct by a political segment that surives and thrives on dirty tricks, bullying and harassing innocent people exercising their rights. Bullies are cowards; in this case, cowards who are afraid to compete fairly. Harassers are people who try to intimidate or obstruct others for their own pleasure or gain, instead of respecting genuine freedom - not empty lip service freedom.
It would be one thing if we had a problem with voter fraud, but we do not, by any rational, objective, fact-based measure, except for all those pesky convictions for various kinds of voter fraud and voter suppression on the right, and even all of those many cases of right wing misconduct aren't enough to affect the outcome of elections.
While the left hand is preventing voting, the Right is leaving an absentee ballot registration form and a pen under chairs at events featuring Republicans ... not in America, but in Israel, where the Romney is targeting increasing voter participation by 70,000.
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