Here they go again

Republicans have been working on their "Get out and stop the Vote" drive lately.

In Georgia county elections offices have been sending out letters telling people, "This office has received notification from the state of Georgia indicating that you are not a citizen of the United States and therefore, not eligible to vote." That's ok though because they give people a week to prove that they are citizens by providing a birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers. But it doesn't really help when they write the letter on Oct. 2nd and send the letter out on Oct. 9th. 50,000 thousand Georgian voters have been flagged because of mismatched personal information and 4,500 have been told they can't vote because they are not citizens, both US born and naturalized citizens. Who is behind this new system that purges citizens from voting rolls, oh that would be Georgian Republican Secretary of State Karen Handel. In addition to just plain kicking citizens off of voting rolls Federal voting laws say that voters can not be purged from the voting rolls within 90 days of an election. So, Mrs. Handel is breaking federal law as well and this case is probably going to be the second case to end up before the Supreme Court concerning voting this season. Georgia is also being questioned about their request for over 2 million social security numbers to verify registered voters, which is more than any other state, even though Georgia is the 9th most populous state.

In Ohio this year, we've already had a voting issue taken before the Supreme Court. In this case the state Republican party sued the Democratic secretary of state in order for her to generate a list similar to that in Georgia. She refused on the basis it would disenfranchise voters hundreds of thousands of voters. The case made it's way up to the Supreme Court where the GOP lost thier case.

In Florida, the Republican secretary of state had the system implemented and for a three-week period in September 75% of the new registered voters were flagged for mismatched personal information due to typographical and administrative errors. Why are these people not fired then?

In Wisconsin, the Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen sued the state election board because they would not implement the new "voter supression system" that republicans had gotten through in Georgia and Florida. The board conducted a test and found that 22% of the voters were flagged including 4 of the 6 members of the state election board.


As you can see Republicans do not want you to vote mainly because if less people vote they tend to win. This is because people from populous counties where many people register have more information to enter and get mixed up. Populated areas tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. There's just something about living next to different people that leads you to thinking everyone is equal I guess, versus living in the boonies and being afraid of anything that is "different".


Information from CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/26/voter.suppression/index.html