How the GOP is Taking Away Our Right to Vote

During Reagan's rise to power Paul Weyrich made a speech disparaging good government and urging Republicans to make it harder for Americans to vote because the fewer the voters the more Republicans get elected. Paul Weyrich shaped the modern Republican Party around this subversive idea, wrapped it in the flag and went on to found the Heritage Foundation and other antidemocratic groups.

It's still happening. Republicans are attacking voting rights with all the billions of their monied allies. The goal is to reduce our democracy to a plutocracy, in which only the rich can decide policy, in which the rich evade taxes and enact laws to take rights away from workers, suppressing wages as well as voting rights. Imagine a world before Theodore Roosevelt. The bookends of this Republican coup d'etat are voter suppression and billionaires dominating politics via the recent Citizens United decision of the Republican flank of the Supreme Court. Pure politics.

This short video tells the story of an elderly woman's long hard effort to get the GOP-mandated voter ID.

This well-known Tennessee Democrat who left office in 2011 was deleted from the voting rolls in the district he represented for years. If it can happen to him it can happen to anyone.

An 86 year-old veteran found himself barred from voting on Super Tuesday. One of the groups most targeted by Republican voter purges are the elderly.

Who's doing this and how is it being done? It's being done deliberately and concertedly nationwide. The GOP and its corporate allies, notably the multibillionaire Koch brothers and their organization ALEC, which writes voter suppression laws, invites state legislators on junkets to sunny resorts and instructs them how to get their laws enacted. Legislation by remote control.

The actual plan by ALEC to suppress voting state by state, as written by the Koch brothers and their corporate cronies.

A report from Mother Jones magazine

Voter suppression is being prosecuted in a few places, but the effort to hunt down nonexistent "fraudulent voters" is far more aggressive and widespread and it's been legislated and funded by Republicans. But voter fraud is a phony issue, a pretext.

This article is from Washington Monthly.

This is from American Prospect.

How big is this voter fraud boogeyman the Republicans are scaring everybody about? After an expensive investigation in Ohio, it turned out to have happened in fewer than one MILLIONTH of ONE PERCENT of all votes cast. and this is what the Republican Party and ALEC are using to disenfranchise millions of voters. Phantom crimes are useful to right wing politicians. imagined crime frightens people into giving away their rights. And again, there are billions of corporate dollars behind this.

This report from the Brennan Center lays out the pathetic and transparent cynicism behind the GOP's voter purges and voter suppression campaign nationwide. They want power back and don't care whose rights they trample to get there.

GOP Effort to Shut Down Voting

Republicans are moving aggressively all across the country to make it harder for people to vote. The effort deliberately targets the poor, urban voters, young voters, students and people of color. You can read more about it here.

(The Republicans have a funny reason for what they're doing. See below.)

I keep returning to this, but it's crucial and very few Americans know about it. Back in 1980 Paul Weyrich stated the longterm strategy of the Republican Party–––Make it harder for people to vote. (Here's the evidence. They filmed Weyrich's speech.) Prevent people from voting. Shrink the electorate. Shrink the democracy. Shut the American people out of decisions... unless they agree with Paul Weyrich––and are rich and white and right-wing and "Christian" enough.

Killing our democracy was the best way to guarantee Republican domination. Domination was and continues to be their goal.

This came on the heels of the GOP's southern strategy, designed to gather in all the white voters angry about civil rights, and keep them angry.

What's ironic is, the same party that sought to capture the poor angry white vote then set about limiting all voting, especially among households earning less than a few hundred thousand a year.

Doing so while waving a flag made it appear patriotic. But the goals embraced by the Republican Party since the late 70s are deeply antidemocratic.

While worshipping the founding fathers they have pushed an agenda that is fundamentally opposed to the ideals the founders put on paper.

If you don't think voter fraud is the biggest threat to democracy today, you should watch this report from Stephen Colbert. Laughing is permitted, but the GOP isn't a joke, it's controlling America right now.

What's Happening In Wisconsin?

I've been following this story in The Nation, but also in Forbes, which isn't exactly a leftist Maoist Commie rag.

If you remember the 80,000 African American voters Kathleen Harris conveniently removed from the Florida voter rolls in 2000, helping deliver the White House to George W. Bush... it's happening again. This time it's Wisconsin. It's all part of the long term Republican plan to cut non Republicans, young people, old people, working people, brown people, new citizens and others out of elections.

They've already figured out how to hide vote tallies on personal laptops for easier manipulation.

And it's in the works in Florida, Ohio, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, Louisiana and elsewhere. First they make democratic government not work, then they kill it.

When a highly respected historian and UW professor got wind of their tactics and their aims, they came down on him hard. It's easier to do that if most people are too afraid or distracted to complain about what is happening. So complain. Worry. Send letters. Protest. Educate your friends.