Category Archives: vote!

GOP leaders admit new election laws were aimed at suppressing Democratic voters

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The new laws have NOTHING to do with fighting voter fraud.

Huffington Post: Jim Greer, the former head of the Florida Republican Party, recently claimed that a law shortening the early voting period in the state was deliberately designed to suppress voting among groups that tend to support Democratic candidates, the Palm Beach Post reports. “The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told the Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only…‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us.’”

Raw Story: Former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida confirmed that GOP officials had sought to limit early voting in an effort to suppress Democrat turnout. He told the Post that the effort seemed to be aimed at ethnic minorities, a key demographic for Democrats. “The sad thing about that is yes, there is prejudice and racism in the party but the real prevailing thought is that they don’t think minorities will ever vote Republican,” Greer said. “It’s not really a broad-based racist issue. It’s simply that the Republican Party gave up a long time ago ever believing that anything they did would get minorities to vote for them.”

Florida’s disgraceful early voting: a feature, not a bug

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Steven Benen: “GOP policymakers want long lines; they want to make it very difficult for voters to participate in their own democracy; they want Americans to get discouraged and walk away. As one Republican state lawmaker argued after the 2010 election, “I want the people in the State of Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who is willing to walk 200 miles for that opportunity he’s never had before in his life. This should not be easy.”

This should not be easy.

This affects every voter, regardless of party or ideology, but because Republicans benefit more from lower turnout and higher disenfranchisement, this is a purely partisan scheme to rig an election in the GOP’s favor.

OK, you’re thinking, early voting in Florida has been disgraceful, but at least voting on Election Day itself will be smoother, right? Wrong — due to Republican budget cuts, there will be fewer polling precincts this year than four years ago, meaning more long lines.

I’ll just conclude with Rachel’s conclusion:

“[I]t is frankly an outrage that there are forces at work in our politics right now that not only make this type of situation possible, but that make it inevitable — who see problems like this and go out of their way to try to make it worse…. If you are one of those people being forced to stand in those long lines tonight or tomorrow or on Election Day, honestly, your country needs you to do it. Your country needs you to do it, not only because it’s your civic responsibility, but also because there are people trying to profit politically off of you not doing it.”

 

Romney’s negative, white space of a campaign

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“Mitt Romney appears to be running on the message that first of all, Obama hasn’t accomplished anything, and second of all, he’s going to repeal all the bad things that Obama has accomplished. And then Romney himself, as a practical businessman, is going to … something something, small business, something, restore America, growth and jobs, tax cuts, something. It’s a negative campaign in the pictorial sense: a blank space where the objects would go. A white space, if you will.”

— Mitt Romney, white vote: Parsing the narrow, tribal appeal of the Republican nominee. – Slate Magazine

Related: 

How butt hurt is Mitt Romney?

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First Chris Christie praises Pres. Obama all over the airwaves because of the help and assistance he received from the President after the hurricane. THEN Christie gets to meet Bruce Springsteen — Christie’s a big fan of Springsteen — because of Obama, so Christie gushes over that. Now, apparently, Romney wanted Christie to come over to Pennsylvania and campaign with him. Gov. Christie, who kind of has his hands full, declined.

Can you believe Romney would even ASK Christie to go to another state right now — for friggin’ politics — and then cry to the media? As one of Christie’s aides told the Huffington Post:

“New Jersey still has 700,000 people without power, the state is on an odd-and-even day gasoline rationing system, there is still massive flooding in parts of the state, and many residents remain displaced.”

Here’s what one of Romney’s aides said about it:

“You can’t tell me he couldn’t have gone over there for a night rally.”

REALLY. As Josh Marshall says,

“[D]oesn’t this strike people as the comment of someone who’s really lost it? I really mean that.”  And “It’s frankly such a crazy request that it shows just how deeply Romney’s been stung by Christie’s praise of President Obama.”

I think Mitt Romney’s feelings about this situation are best summed up in sign language by Samantha Bee:


via: comedycentral

Also, too, an aide to Christie says Romney’s campaign never asked. More lies from Willard.

Please VOTE and make Mitt Romney go away forever.

Charles P. Pierce on Election Day 2012

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“But the election is still within an eyelash, one way or the other, because Romney’s money, and all the other money that lined up behind it, made him credible. Exactly forty years after anonymous corporate cash became the first loose thread that would lead to the unravelling of Richard Nixon’s presidency, anonymous corporate cash is the coin of the realm. It is the measure by which we determine the fitness to lead the nation, to command the armed forces, to who gets their hands on the nuclear codes. It used to be popular to complain that we had turned politics into an advertising design competition, that we sold our candidates “like soap.” Now, we’ve turned the elections into investment opportunities, and we sell our candidates like beachfront condos or cattle futures. I am not at all sure this is an improvement.

But, recently, watching things on the ground here in Florida, I’ve come to think that there is an even bigger story than the money, that the money is merely the only story within the only story. I have watched at close range how very far politicians will go to use their institutional power as elected officials to deaden the instincts of self-government. It is the money that got them into place to do it, but what they’re doing is something far more insidious and dangerous. Actively keeping people from exercising the franchise is bad enough. But to continue, over and over and over again, to make the process harder and harder until a critical mass of people decides that self-government is not worth the bother, I think, is far, far worse.”

The case for President Obama: we can NOT reward the current GOP strategy

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Mike Lofgren, former Republican staffer on the Hil:

The most compelling argument to support Obama has nothing directly to do with him or his performance in office, but goes to the heart of what self-government is supposed to mean. Since Obama’s inauguration, Republicans have engaged in an unprecedented—in my lifetime, anyway—campaign of obstruction, feral negativity, and brinksmanship. On one occasion, they brought the country to the edge of default and a resultant credit downgrade. “The worse the better” has become, in fact, a Republican political strategy whenever they are out of power. To reward a party for such obstructionism would be like rewarding the Southern fire eaters of antebellum congresses for their efforts at shutting down the debate over slavery with the gag rule.

VOTE!!