Less than a year before the 2012 presidential voting begins, Republican legislatures and governors across the country are rewriting voting laws to make it much harder for the young, the poor and African-Americans — groups that typically vote Democratic — to cast a ballot. ...NYT
The effect will, of course, be to keep Democratic voters away from the polls. Old fashioned corruption allied with corporate interests are driving this effort to fake a political win. For every vote lost, there is a voting Republican whose vote is made illegal by party officials.
A survey by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that 11 percent of citizens, 21 million people, do not have a current photo ID. That fraction increases to 15 percent of low-income voting-age citizens, 18 percent of young eligible voters and 25 percent of black eligible voters. Those demographic groups tend to vote Democratic, and Republicans are imposing requirements that they know many will be unable to meet.
Those are big numbers -- plenty to create a single party "democracy" in America. The state-by-state drive to insure Republican majorities is brought to us by the American Legislative Exchange Council, the same corporation-driven conservative group that brought us prison profiteering in Arizona, and the Republican drive to eliminate unions -- and the Democratic base -- in Wisconsin.
Don't look to the Supreme Court for help.
The Supreme Court, unfortunately, has already upheld Indiana’s voter ID requirement, in a 2008 decision that helped unleash the stampede of new bills. Most of the bills have yet to pass, and many may not meet the various balancing tests required by the Supreme Court. There is still time for voters who care about democracy in their states to speak out against lawmakers who do not.
