The "Patriots" Are Suppressing The 2012 Voter Turnout. SOME PATRIOTS.

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.nationofchange.org/blogs/jerry-landay/patriots-are-suppressing-2012-voter-turnout-%E2%80%93-some-patriots-1314988424

As far near the edge as you can get on the far-out right wing, “su­per-pa­tri­ots” are work­ing over­time to poke a stout stick through the spin­ning spokes of this democ­racy – or, what’s left of it. They have been hard at work, over a year be­fore the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, push­ing hard to get new laws through state leg­is­la­tures to sup­press the votes of cit­i­zens who tend to vote the De­mo­c­ra­tic line. At least a dozen states will in­sist that vot­ers dis­play photo IDs at polling places be­fore they can cast bal­lots. Other states are busily at­tempt­ing to shorten vot­ing hours, as well as the num­ber of days vot­ers may cast early bal­lots. Both strate­gies are de­vised to curb the vot­ing of the job­less, the young, mi­nor­ity vot­ers, the needy, the ill, the el­derly, all folks who lack the funds to pay for photo IDs, or the time to spend on vot­ing lines on elec­tion day.

This tac­tic has been on the books of ul­tra-con or­tho­doxy since Re­pub­li­can pol­i­tics went ex­treme in the 1980s dur­ing the Rea­gan years. That’s when a pi­o­neer­ing far-right or­ga­nizer, the late Paul Weyrich, got hefty do­na­tions from the likes of the Coors fam­ily and Richard Mel­lon Scaife, big spenders off their beer prof­its and the Mel­lon bank­ing for­tune re­spec­tively. Weyrich began build­ing a pop­u­lar-front of hun­dreds of far-right ac­tivist or­ga­ni­za­tions whose ac­tiv­i­ties media have yet to begin re­port­ing on. Here’s what Paul Weyrich told a meet­ing of the re­li­gious right in Dal­las in 1980 about the power of sup­press­ing voter turnouts:

“Many of our Chris­tians have what I call the Goo Goo Syn­drome: Good Gov­ern­ment. They want every­body to vote. I don’t want every­body to vote. Elec­tions are not won by a ma­jor­ity of peo­ple, they never have been, from the be­gin­ning of our coun­try, and they are not now. As a mat­ter of fact, our lever­age in the elec­tions goes up as the vot­ing pop­u­lace goes down.”

Weyrich’s first cre­ation was the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the faux-aca­d­e­mic think tank, in 1973. Next he founded the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Ex­change Coun­cil (ALEC) of Wash­ing­ton, DC. ALEC’s mis­sion, as Weyrich de­signed it, was to spread ul­tra-con or­tho­doxy to GOP leg­is­la­tors of the 50 states.

More at the link --

[brooklynite]

1. Why?

I'm told here regularly that all the voting machines are rigged. Why make trouble if you can generate whatever outcome you want at back end?

[Shandris]

4. Simple.

News organizations sometimes have this annoying tendency to doublecheck results, sometimes even a year or two later (Hello, Al Gore Won The Election). Having the power to alter close outcomes is a final tack, not a first-line solution to the problem. People have to believe an illusion, and sometimes the trends are simply far too powerful for even raw data manipulation to overcome. Much better to affect a precinct here, a county there, and adjust the end to fit the need. Also, not universally applied yet.

Really, was that a question? It seemed more like a snark.

[Turbineguy]

2. Hitler's brownshirts

were patriots too.

[madrchsod]

3. they are going after the electoral college in republican swing states....

they know the democrats are well aware of what happened in wisconsin and ohio is next. there`s enough time for the democrats to organize against these new/old tactics and enough time to challenge in federal courts.