Voting Rights Uprising: Activists in Three States Help GOP's Targets Get Voter ID

[Lakhota]

By George Bauer

Grassroots groups in Wisconsin, Tennessee and Colorado help GOP targets obtain credentials to vote in 2012.

The GOP-led effort to disenfranchise likely Democratic voting blocks by enacting tougher state voter ID laws has run into a new obstacle: targeted populations are fighting back as voting rights advocates are helping people obtain the necessary ID.

Grassroots efforts in Tennessee, Wisconsin and Colorado are profiled in a new report, "Got ID? Helping Americans Get Voter Identification," from Common Cause, Demos, Fair Elections Legal Network, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The report is an important counterpoint to persistent progressive messaging about the GOP’s attack on voting rights that typically has not informed people how to overcome the barriers.

“This report gives Americans the tools they need to fight back and make their voices heard,” said Jenny Rose Flanagan, director of voting and elections at Common Cause.

The battle over tougher ballot access is a years-long fight where proponent’s arguments are not supported by facts on the ground and mask their partisan goals—shaping the electorate to achieve or maintain political power. There is nothing new about enacting laws (or running campaign ads) to discourage voting.

More: Voting Rights Uprising: Activists in Three States Help GOP's Targets Get Voter ID | | AlterNet

 

[Clementine]

Getting ID is not fighting back, it's something people should have anyway. Unless the Dems are still handing IDs to illegal aliens that allow them to pass as citizens, then they should encourage people to have a valid ID. How the hell do these people get through life without one? You can't open a bank account, write a check, get into a bar, get a loan, get a credit card, drive or get a job. My 16 year old daughter had to have a valid ID to get a summer job working at a camp.

It just amazes me that people who are able to show up at the polls to vote claim they need help getting an ID.

Are Democrat voters really that ignorant? Even the elderly have managed to obtain IDs. I honestly don't get it.

This voter ID idea is not to disenfranchise citizens, rather to protect our voting rights by ensuring that the millions of illegals here don't vote. I do realize that there is a class of people who can't function without a government bureaucrat telling them what to do. I have no doubt the nannies will be working overtime.

 

[Lakhota]

As usual, you deserve an A for presentation and an F for content.

 

[Oddball]

Funny how the authoritarian left is fine with requiring ID to check into a hotel, get on an airliner, buy smokes and liquor, get a legit job, open a bank account, get a fishing license, on and on and on, yet showing one to vote is a conspiracy by republicans so they can "attack voting rights".

 

[Lakhota]

Voter ID: State Requirements

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Grassroots efforts in Tennessee, Wisconsin and Colorado are profiled in a new report, "Got ID? Helping Americans Get Voter Identification," from Common Cause, Demos, Fair Elections Legal Network, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The report is an important counterpoint to persistent progressive messaging about the GOP’s attack on voting rights that typically has not informed people how to overcome the barriers.

And these grassroots efforts to help voters obtain ID will translate into votes for Obama.

 

[Oddball]

Grassroots efforts in Tennessee, Wisconsin and Colorado are profiled in a new report, "Got ID? Helping Americans Get Voter Identification," from Common Cause, Demos, Fair Elections Legal Network, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The report is an important counterpoint to persistent progressive messaging about the GOP’s attack on voting rights that typically has not informed people how to overcome the barriers.

And these grassroots efforts to help voters obtain ID will translate into votes for Obama.

Wisconsin has no ID law and in Colorado all you have to do is be in possession of the non-photo voter card they send you in the mail a couple weeks before the election.

What a total non-issue.

 

[Lakhota]

Grassroots efforts in Tennessee, Wisconsin and Colorado are profiled in a new report, "Got ID? Helping Americans Get Voter Identification," from Common Cause, Demos, Fair Elections Legal Network, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The report is an important counterpoint to persistent progressive messaging about the GOP’s attack on voting rights that typically has not informed people how to overcome the barriers.

And these grassroots efforts to help voters obtain ID will translate into votes for Obama.

Wisconsin has no ID law and in Colorado all you have to do is be in possession of the non-photo voter card they send you in the mail a couple weeks before the election.

What a total non-issue.

You probably should look a litle deeper...

 

[free_speech]

It's so predictable, that when somebody wants to prevent voting fraud, lefties call it "disenfranchising". Lefties need new words to lie with.

 

[Oddball]

And these grassroots efforts to help voters obtain ID will translate into votes for Obama.

Wisconsin has no ID law and in Colorado all you have to do is be in possession of the non-photo voter card they send you in the mail a couple weeks before the election.

What a total non-issue.

You probably should look a litle deeper...

I've looked and you're still a completely hysterical Chicken Little.....And I totally HATE the "papers please" snoop state.

Look at the chart you linked to....The VAST majority of states have no ID law or a very minimal ones like Colorado.

Total non-issue....Grow the fuck up.

 

[Lakhota]

Colorado and Wisconsin may have Strict Voter ID in place for the 2012 elections. You would know that if you moved your cursor over the map.

 

[Oddball]

Waaaaa.

You can't open a non-interest bearing checking account, into which your welfare gets direct-deposited, without ID.

Cry me a fucking river.

 

[Lakhota]

The ugly parallels between Jim Crow and modern vote-suppression laws.

By Risa L. Goluboff and Dahlia Lithwick

An elderly black woman in Tennessee can’t vote because she can’t produce her marriage certificate. Threatening letters blanket black neighborhoods warning that creditors and police officers will check would-be voters at the polls, or that elections are taking place on the wrong day. Thirty-eight states have instituted new rules prohibiting same-day registration and early voting on Sundays. All of this is happening as part of an effort to eradicate a problem that is statistically rarer than heavy-metal bands with exploding drummers: vote fraud.

Many commentators have remarked on the unavoidable historical memories these images provoke: They are so clearly reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. So why shouldn’t the proponents of draconian new voting laws have to answer for their ugly history?

Proponents of reforming the voting process seem blind to the fact that all of these seemingly neutral reforms hit poor and minority voters out of all proportion. (The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that while about 12 percent of Americans don’t have a government-issued photo ID, the figure for African-Americans is closer to 25 percent, and in some Southern states perhaps higher.) The reason minorities are so much harder hit by these seemingly benign laws has its roots in the tragic legacy of race in this country. They still work because that old black man, born into Jim Crow in 1940, may have had no birth certificate because he was not born in a hospital because of poverty or discrimination. Names may have been misspelled on African-American birth certificates because illiterate midwives sometimes gave erroneous names.

It’s true that the most egregious methods of minority vote suppression from the 19th century—the poll tax, the literacy test, the white primary—have disappeared. And we know (and can take some solace in the knowledge) that the worst of these indignities have not been recycled in the 21st century, in part because of the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But a look at the history of voting rights in this country shows that the current state efforts to suppress minority voting—from erecting barriers to registration and early voting to voter ID laws—look an awful lot like methods pioneered by the white supremacists from another era that achieved the similar results.

More: Voter ID Laws: Their proponents should have to answer for the ugly history of Jim Crow. - Slate Magazine

 

[candycorn]

Getting ID is not fighting back, it's something people should have anyway. Unless the Dems are still handing IDs to illegal aliens that allow them to pass as citizens, then they should encourage people to have a valid ID. How the hell do these people get through life without one? You can't open a bank account, write a check, get into a bar, get a loan, get a credit card, drive or get a job. My 16 year old daughter had to have a valid ID to get a summer job working at a camp.

It just amazes me that people who are able to show up at the polls to vote claim they need help getting an ID.

Are Democrat voters really that ignorant? Even the elderly have managed to obtain IDs. I honestly don't get it.

This voter ID idea is not to disenfranchise citizens, rather to protect our voting rights by ensuring that the millions of illegals here don't vote. I do realize that there is a class of people who can't function without a government bureaucrat telling them what to do. I have no doubt the nannies will be working overtime.

The electoral process should be made as sterile as possible. Just like most republicans (just kidding). Seriously, there is no reason to accept voter fraud.

 

[Rozman]

By George Bauer

Grassroots groups in Wisconsin, Tennessee and Colorado help GOP targets obtain credentials to vote in 2012.

The GOP-led effort to disenfranchise likely Democratic voting blocks by enacting tougher state voter ID laws has run into a new obstacle: targeted populations are fighting back as voting rights advocates are helping people obtain the necessary ID.

Grassroots efforts in Tennessee, Wisconsin and Colorado are profiled in a new report, "Got ID? Helping Americans Get Voter Identification," from Common Cause, Demos, Fair Elections Legal Network, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The report is an important counterpoint to persistent progressive messaging about the GOP’s attack on voting rights that typically has not informed people how to overcome the barriers.

“This report gives Americans the tools they need to fight back and make their voices heard,” said Jenny Rose Flanagan, director of voting and elections at Common Cause.

The battle over tougher ballot access is a years-long fight where proponent’s arguments are not supported by facts on the ground and mask their partisan goals—shaping the electorate to achieve or maintain political power. There is nothing new about enacting laws (or running campaign ads) to discourage voting.

More: Voting Rights Uprising: Activists in Three States Help GOP's Targets Get Voter ID | | AlterNet

The GOP-led effort to disenfranchise likely Democratic voting blocks by enacting tougher state voter ID laws has run into a new obstacle: targeted populations are fighting back as voting rights advocates are helping people obtain the necessary ID.

How is it fighting back by complying with the rules..?
This is what they should have done....
Instead of making a big stink that the GOP was trying to stop people from voting
this is where their energy should have gone...assisting people in getting their ID.
No one was stopping anyone from voting.

 

[teapartysamurai]

As usual, you deserve an A for presentation and an F for content.

Why because you can't answer the points he/she raised?

 

[teapartysamurai]

And these grassroots efforts to help voters obtain ID will translate into votes for Obama.

Wisconsin has no ID law and in Colorado all you have to do is be in possession of the non-photo voter card they send you in the mail a couple weeks before the election.

What a total non-issue.

You probably should look a litle deeper...

Yeah, like how the State of Ohio was before Voter ID.

Where I PERSONALLY witnessed Democrat activists leading in an entire busload of mentally handicapped people from an institution (and these guys had the minds of children it was pretty obvious).

"Now all hold hands, and follow me!"

And they led them into vote and told them how to vote.

The registrations of Mickey Mouse, Mary Poppins etc.

The abuses were so flagrant, the voting public demanded Voter ID.

The Democrats managed to get a repeal of Voter ID on the ballot, IT LOST IN A LANDSLIDE.

NO ONE is going to suffer from Voter ID except liberals wanting to CHEAT.

That is what you libs want and you think you can hide behind "minorities" to do it.

Why don't you quit denying the obvious and just admit it?

 

[Stephanie]

Chicken Little is a good name for Lakhoda..

Does anyone take this person serious anymore?

 

[Seawytch]

It's so predictable, that when somebody wants to prevent voting fraud, lefties call it "disenfranchising". Lefties need new words to lie with.

Can you list any cases of recent voter fraud that would be deterred by these restrictive ID laws?

The fact is that these laws WILL disenfranchise voters. They already have. What is the acceptable ratio of disenfranchisement to fraud? If you disenfranchise 10 voters for every one incident of fraud, is that worth it?

 

[teapartysamurai]

It's so predictable, that when somebody wants to prevent voting fraud, lefties call it "disenfranchising". Lefties need new words to lie with.

Can you list any cases of recent voter fraud that would be deterred by these restrictive ID laws?

The fact is that these laws WILL disenfranchise voters. They already have. What is the acceptable ratio of disenfranchisement to fraud? If you disenfranchise 10 voters for every one incident of fraud, is that worth it?

OH BULL!

Show me all these "disenfranchised" voters?

Every one of them will be an activist just trying to give the Democrat party cover so they can continue non-stop voter fraud as they did with ACORN in my state until they were finally shut down and told to get the hell out of Ohio!

You libs are so full of it on this and it's SO OBVIOUS!