up significant obstacles to voting, The first is the obvious one that
everyone knows: faced with an ever-shrinking demographic base,
Republicans want to even the playing field by keeping Democratic voters
away from the polls. If you ever doubted that one, then consider Texas' onerous voter ID law, which recognizes gun licenses as valid voter identification, but not a college ID card.
The second is similar, but more cultish.
It's the Tea Party's rationalization for voter suppression. Like the
first, this reasoning has it that too many Democrats vote, but this one
tries to argue that making it harder to vote is a good thing, since then
only the people who really want to vote will make it to the ballot box. These people worry about the "low information voter" (LIV), who -- if they only took the time to listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity
on the Blessed Electronic Gospel Box -- would understand all and see
the Starry Wisdom of the Tea Party Way. It's ironic, since the people
who think this way are actually the LIVs they worry about. They're factually wrong about pretty much everything, but reject any disagreement as heresy and even as some sort of mental defect.
In any case, the result of this cult-thinking is the same as that of
the more reality-based suppressors' thinking -- weeding out Democratic
voters. Only the reasoning behind the suppression effort is different.
Of course, there's a third reason and it's the stated reason: that
democracy is at risk from voter fraud. But that's the excuse, it's not
the reason why. When it comes down to why Republicans introduce
laws to restrict voting, one of those two reasons are at the heart of
it. Voter fraud is just the lie they tell as cover...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
