I'm writing this so I can post it on my wife's facebook page. I've noticed that a pretty good percentage of my wife's friends are Romney supporters, and this post is directed at them.
Now, maybe it's not a good idea for me to ruffle any feathers, but if you support Romney in particular or the GOP in general, there's one question I just have to ask ...
How can you support a political party that consistently votes against democracy?
Look, I understand that people can have different political philosophies, and while I completely disagree with with almost all of the Republican Party's ideas about government, I can respect that some people sincerely believe in those ideas. However, I can't respect the GOP's concerted effort to suppress the vote.
Republicans have been suppressing votes for so long in so many blatant ways that I shouldn't even have to justify my claim of voter suppression. Republican voter suppression should be obvious to anyone who's been paying any attention for the last few decades. However, since many GOP supporters will certainly want to defend the GOP against these charges, I'll go ahead and play the role of the prosecutor.
Like any good prosecutor, I'll start by establishing a motive. Why would the GOP want to suppress votes? How would it benefit the GOP to keep voter turnout low? How would it benefit the GOP to make it harder for certain categories of people to vote?
Well, for starters, it's long been accepted by both political parties that people who are not registered to vote are more likely to support Democratic candidates. You can tell both parties believe this because Democrats are always making efforts to increase voter registration while Republicans almost always try to curtail voter registration. If you want to know why both Democrats and Republican's believe this, take a look at this article. It shows that unregistered voters prefer President Obama over Mitt Romney by a margin of 43% to 14%. I'm sure you could find other similar polls online if your searched a bit, but the specific numbers are not important here. What's important is that the GOP believes that increasing voter registration hurts their chances to win elections. Even if polls showed that unregistered voters supported Republicans over Democrats ( which they don't ), the actions of the Republican Party over the last few decades makes it abundantly clear that the GOP believes that unregistered voters are more likely to vote for Democrats. Congressional voting records provide hard evidence of this - evidence I'll reveal later in this post.
It also clearly benefits the Republican Party to restrict the votes of certain categories of voters, and that's where voter ID come in. Now, I know that the common argument in favor of voter ID laws is that they prevent voter fraud, but voter fraud is exceedingly rare ( if you don't trust that link, try one from FOX News ), and voter ID laws make it harder for many low-income people to vote. Now, I know that people can dispute numbers and claim that certain studies are biased, so let's spend a little time looking at this from a common sense perspective. Clearly, voter ID laws can go a long way towards eliminating any voter fraud that currently exists. If voter fraud is a disease, then voter ID is certainly the cure. However, common sense tells us that the GOP isn't really interested in the cure, they are interested in the side effects of that cure.
If the GOP was really interested in curing voter fraud, they would focus on the easiest way to commit voter fraud - absentee voting. Think about it - if you really wanted to commit voter fraud, why would you do it any way other than absentee voting? If you want to commit vote fraud via absentee ballot, all you really need to do is get your hands on the proper forms, forge a signature, and drop the forms in the mail. I'm not saying it's easy to commit voter fraud via absentee ballot, but it's certainly a lot easier and safer to commit voter fraud via absentee ballot than it would be via in-person voting. Let's say you felt like committing voter fraud in-person. You'd have to go to the polling place and claim you were somebody else. Then the polling worker would go ahead and check the list of people in the district so you could sign next to the name you were voting under. What if the person you were trying to impersonate had already voted and signed his or her name? We'll you'd pretty much be busted at that point, and unless you thought of a good excuse real fast, you just might be headed to jail ( OK, you could probably just run away, and those senior-citizen poll workers would never catch you, but if they got a good look at your face ( or your car license plate if you drove to the polling place ) you still might be caught eventually ). My point is that it doesn't make much sense to me that an individual would go through all that potential trouble just to steal one vote. I'm not saying that nobody would ever bother to do it, but if you really wanted to commit voter fraud, why wouldn't you do it using an absentee ballot so you would never have to show your face? Sure, voter fraud via absentee ballot might not work if the person you were trying to impersonate also had voted, but the chances of you getting caught perpetrating absentee voter fraud is practically nil ( Plus, a single person could steal multiple votes via absentee voting, which would be much harder to do via in-person voter fraud ).
So, with all this in mind, you would think the GOP folks who want to cure voter fraud would be focusing heavily on absentee ballots. However, the GOP isn't making any effort to cut down on absentee-voter ballot fraud. The GOP is not interested in changing anything about the absentee ballot procedures, because conventional wisdom has always been that a vote cast via an absentee ballot is more likely to be a GOP vote than a vote cast in-person ( The GOP generally believes this because many members of the military need to vote via absentee ballots, and members of the military have traditionally supported the GOP in greater numbers than the Democratic Party. I spent some time searching for studies that gave the Democrat/Republican breakdown of absentee votes on a national level, but I could only find this study which gives the breakdown for an election in California. Clearly, California elections are generally going to have more votes for Democrats than Republicans, but this study did show that an absentee ballot cast in a California election is more likely to be a vote for Republican candidate than an in-person vote cast in a California election. ).
So, if the GOP really isn't interested in curing voter fraud ( if they sincerely cared about voter fraud they would certainly focus on absentee ballots more than in-person ballots ), why are they pushing this voter ID cure for voter fraud? Well, as I mentioned earlier, they are primarily interested in the side effects of this cure. The side effect is that voter ID laws make it more difficult for certain percentage of people to vote, and people that incur this extra difficulty are disproportionately poor.
For most people, the voter ID laws will have zero impact. Most of us have a driver's license that we could use as a photo ID for voting. However, while most of us take our driver's licenses for granted, the same cannot be said for those living in poverty, particularly those who live in urban areas. If you barely have enough money to buy the basic necessities of life, then it's much less likely that you'll own a car, particularly if you live in an urban area where public transportation is available. If you grow up in a family that doesn't have a car, it's much less likely that you'll get a driver's license. So, it's just common sense that poor urban areas would have a lower percentage of people with driver's licences than other parts of the country. Driver's licences are the most common form of photo ID, so it also follows that poor urban areas would have a lower percentage of people with photo IDs than the rest of the country. If you change the voting laws to require photo ID, then it's clear that this will adversely affect people in poor urban areas more than in the rest of country.
So, what political party do you think people in poor urban areas generally vote for? I'm not even going to bother to link to some statistics - you all know the answer. Poor urban people vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic party, so it would clearly benefit the Republican Party if less poor urban people were eligible to vote. Now, I realize that there are ways that these poor urban registered voters can get photo IDs, but it's not always easy to get an ID, particular if you don't have a car. As this link shows, many voters live more than 10 miles from an office where they can get a photo ID and many of those offices are only open during typical working hours on weekdays. If you can't afford to take a day off from work and don't have a car, it can be difficult to get to these offices to acquire a photo ID. I'm certainly not saying it's impossible to do, but these voter IDs laws will certainly keep a non-trivial amount of registered voters from voting, and those voters will disproportionately be people who support Democratic candidates.
If you have any lingering doubts about the GOP motives behind voter ID laws, check out this quote from Pennsylvania Republican House leader Mike Turzai:
“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done”
Of course, if it's your goal to suppress the votes of likely-Democratic voters, you wouldn't stop with poor urban voters. It would also help a lot to cut down on the number of women voters, because women voters support Democratic candidates in much higher percentages than men ( For example, this link from 9/26/12 cites a poll which shows that Obama is tied with Romney among male voters in Pennsylvania but has a 21 percentage point lead with female voters. ). Thus, I wasn't really surprised that the GOP was supporting measures that would make it harder for married women to vote.
Also, considering that college students vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, it not surprising that Republicans are changing laws in order to make it harder for college students to vote.
Republicans have even used the voter fraud argument to try to take 30,000 "dead" people off the voter rolls in North Carolina. Unfortunately for them, when the election officials followed up on the 30,000 "dead" people they found that these people actually were not dead.
While I think the evidence is strong that Republican-sponsored voter ID laws are instruments of voter suppression, I realize that some people will never be convinced of that. I realize that some people will hold on to the voter fraud argument no matter what anyone says. However, even if you reject the argument that Republicans are supporting voter ID laws in order to suppress the vote, it's hard to ignore the multitude of examples of Republican-sponsored voter suppression which have nothing to do with voter ID or voter fraud.
Some of the best examples of this are Republican led efforts to restrict early voting and reduce extended voting hours. These Republican efforts are literally an attempt to reduce the number of hours that people can vote. Reducing voting hours leads to a reduced number of votes, which is diametrically opposed to the ideals of democracy.
For example, Republicans in Ohio are restricting early voting and extended hours voting. Early voting and extended hours voting were added in Ohio during the years between the 2004 and 2008 elections, primarily because of all the trouble Ohioans had casting their votes on Election Day in 2004 ( Some of you might remember the stories about people in Ohio waiting as long as 10 hours to vote or the helicopter shots of ridiculously long lines outside of polling placing in Democratic-leaning precincts. ). However when Republicans took control of the Ohio state government ( in the elections that followed 2008 ), they started to roll back all of the early voting and extended hours voting. In fact, they even went further than that. They tried to make sure that voting hours would be longer in Republican leaning counties than Democratic leaning counties. Seriously, they did that! I'll let John Stewart give some more details below:
The quote below from this news story should erase any doubts about the motives of the Ohio GOP:
“I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”
It's also worth highlighting that Republican election officials have made a point to eliminate Sunday voting in both Ohio and Florida. Back in 2008, early voting was available in Ohio and Florida on the Sunday before Election Day. Back in 2008 many predominantly African-American congregations went straight from Sunday worship to the polling place in buses provided by the churches. This clearly helped increase African-American turnout in 2008, so it was clearly something the GOP could not allow in 2012. Let's face it, the GOP could not allow the "African-American voter turnout machine" to go unchecked in 2012.
Republican efforts like these are the reason why I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Republicans have been voting against democracy. Every time a Republican-controlled state legislature passes a law to restrict voter participation, our democratic ideals are compromised. If you still have any lingering doubts about this, consider the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. This act, popularly know as the "Motor Voter Act", required that state governments allow people to register to vote when applying for or renewing their driver license or when applying for social services. There's really no good reason why anyone should have opposed this act. The intention of this act was simply to make it more convenient for people to register to vote. The intended result of this act was to increase the number registered voters. The intended result of this act was to increase voter turnout. The intended result of this act was to create a more robust democratic system in the United States. Who could possibly be against such an act?
Guess who?
Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against the Motor Voter Act by a margin of 146 to 21.
Republicans in the Senate voted against the Motor Voter Act by a margin of 37 to 5.
It's also worth noting that 3 of the 5 Republican Senators who voted in favor of the Motor Voter Act eventually left the Republican Party ( Arlen Specter became a Democrat in 2009. Jim Jeffords became an Independent who caucused with the Democrats in 2001. In 2005, David Durenberger announced he was an Independent who no longer supported the Republican Party. ). So, if you only consider Republicans Senators who actually stuck with the GOP, the Republican vote against the Motor Voter act was 37 to 2.
Any way you choose look at it, Republicans voted overwhelmingly against the Motor Voter Act ( Sure, it was 19 years ago, but the pre-"Contract with America" Republican Party of 1993 was far less conservative and partisan that the Republican Party of today. If the same vote were held today, it's highly likely that an even higher percentage of Republicans would vote against an act like the Motor Voter Act. ). Any way you look at it, Republicans overwhelmingly voted against an act designed to increase voter participation. Any way you look at it, Republicans voted against the interests of democracy.
I'm not even going to argue about this anymore. As far as I'm concerned, the case is closed. Numbers like 146-21 and 37-5 don't lie. Republicans want to restrict democracy.
So, that being said, let me go back to my original question. How can anyone in the great democracy of the USA support a political party that votes against democracy?
Well actually, I can kind of understand why people would still vote for the GOP. Let's face it, if you want your vote to count in most elections, you really only have 2 choices. Unless you want to completely throw your vote in the garbage and vote for somebody like Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan, you need to vote for a candidate endorsed by the Republican Party or Democratic Party. If you are sincerely against most of what the Democratic Party stands for, I guess you've got no choice but to vote for Republicans regardless of how distasteful their tactics might be.
However, that doesn't mean Republican voters need to deny what is going on or be quiet about what is going on. I know that there's no time to change anything in the short term, but it would be nice if Republican politicians abandoned their voter suppression tactics in the long term. I don't hold out much hope of this ever happening, but if it is ever going to happen, it would be because Republican voters took action.
What kind of action? Well, you could write some letters to Republican representatives for a start ( particularly on the state level, as most of this voter suppression happens at the state level ). You could let your representatives know that you support early voting and longer voting hours, and that you would support Republican candidates in favor of such pro-democracy policies in the next Republican primaries. Heck, if you had the means and the time, you could support or work on the campaign for such a pro-democracy Republican candidate ( or even be that candidate! ).
OK, I realize I'm now being as ridiculously idealist as a Nader voter, but we've got to start somewhere right? A grass-roots bi-partisan effort to increase voter participation wouldn't be a bad thing, would it? Who's with me?
Now, I'll admit, as a worn-out father of two active boys, I'm far too lazy to do anything but sit on my ass at home and write stuff like this ( but hey, at least it's something! ). But I'm sure there are some energetic people out there that could get a bi-partisan pro-democracy movement going. At the very least, there have got to be people out there that could sit on their ass and write more blog posts on the subject. So, if you agree at all with what I've written in this post, do me a favor and share this blog post with your facebook friends and Twitter followers.
If not, I guess it's going to be a bit awkward when I meet some of you at parties and family gatherings in the future.
Rich
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