Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” revealed Tuesday that the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts will prevent his own father, a veteran, from casting a ballot this fall in Pennsylvania.
“I have a problem,” Cramer said on Twitter Tuesday morning. “My dad, a vet, won’t be allowed to vote in Pa. because he does not drive, he is elderly, and can’t prove his citizenship.”That would mean Cramer’s father is one of nearly 760,000 voters, or about 9 percent of Pennsylvanians who regularly participate in elections, who the state said does not carry a state-issued photo identification. Despite that alarming statistic, a Republican Pennsylvania judge approved the law last month, saying that voters still have time to obtain their ID cards.The Raw Story
Stephen C. Webster
The backlash against GOP voter suppression begins. Never a good tactic in a democracy, especially when one of the leaders says this —
The state’s House majority leader, Republican Rep. Mike Turzai, bragged recently that restricting the vote to people who have photo identification is “gonna help Governor Romney win.”
11 comments:
Tom,
How is having to provide a legal form of identification in order to vote magnified into "supression"?
If many people do not drive and therefore do not have to get a drivers license, if the requirement to have a "non-driving Drivers License" requires the citizen to pay a not insubstantial FEE to the DMV to get one... then perhaps the real problem is that the state charges people a not insubstantial FEE for the documentation to be able to legally identify one self. This service should be free of charge and then perhaps the problem goes away.
And btw, if his father is out taking a walk, and has some type of medical emergency, how will responders know who he is or who is his NOK?
I'd recommend Cramer find a way to take a day off from all of his "important work" of spreading BS inane nonsense on the national cable TV networks and drive over to PA and take his father in to the DMV for a new ID card....
rsp,
Those without ID tend to be poor, old and disproportionately of color: they are the traditional democratic base. Many living on the fringes of the economy and society and are not willing under any circumstance to get IDs.
Vote fraud is a huge tradition for Dems. They have long used dead voters and undocumented voter registration drives to win close elections. Most famously the union and mob bosses that ran the Chicago Democratic party with the Daley machine gave Kennedy the 1960 presidential election when he would have otherwise lost.
Given the Dems colorful history with voter turnout, you can hardly blame the Republicans for being a bit suspicious of the current President when he was brought to power by the same corrupt Daley machine. Bill Daley, was former chief of staff for Obama and now running his campaign as recently as last month was suggesting that Obama needs to prepare get his supporters in place to be the ones doing 'recounts' in elections across the country.
In almost any civilized 'democratic' nation you need ID to vote.
As a spaniard I see it weird you don't and subject to all sort of frauds.
Here in the UK, to register to vote all you need to do is fill out a form. What you put on the form is taken at face value. You do not need to show ID. On election day, if you are registered, you just turn up at the polling station and give your name. Again, no need to show I.D. It's wide open to fraud.
I wear my full burka to vote.
Matt "How is having to provide a legal form of identification in order to vote magnified into "supression"?"
1. Speed with which the new laws were introduced so close to an election with substantial proof of necessity suggests an ulterior motive, and indeed, there are partisan statements in admission of this agenda by party officials.
2. It's a lot more difficult and expensive for many people to get an ID than most people realize. There needs to be adequate provision for this by the state, which will itself be expensive and time-consuming. So obviously the state doesn't want to undertake the burden. That's not good for democracy.
3. This is an extremely bad example of US democracy in action when the US is trying promote democracy abroad with free and fair elections. The perception is that the US is not doing that at home.
the best democracy money can buy! were #1! (no, we really are not #1, just kidding)
Vote fraud is a huge tradition for Dems. They have long used dead voters and undocumented voter registration drives to win close elections. Most famously the union and mob bosses that ran the Chicago Democratic party with the Daley machine gave Kennedy the 1960 presidential election when he would have otherwise lost.
Such is "common knowledge." The facts of recent history indicate, however, that "voter fraud," as in an individuals going to the polling place and casting a fraudulent ballot, is virtually nonexistent. This has been investigated upside down and sideways. George Bush fired 8 US attorneys that he himself appointed for the sin of being insufficiently zealous in going after "democrat voter fraud." David Iglesias one of the fired USA's, having found no evidence of voter fraud, refused to go on a witch hunt for it which is what got him on Karl Rove's shit list. It is simply a non-problem, as has been demonstrated again and again.
I'm not interested in grinding a partisan axe because I despise both parties at this point. That said, the evidence of systematic voter suppression by the Republican party in the last 10 years or so is overwhelming and well documented. So called "voter fraud" is a classic case of manufacturing a false equivalency meme. It serves to distract attention from real crimes and injustices being perpetrated and then sets the stage for "solving" a problem that has not been shown to exist. The recent spate of voter I.D. laws are the result of many years of carefully crafted Koch funded propaganda and lobbying efforts.
If you want to keep busy for a while learning about this stuff tryBrad Friedman's site. Friedman's been on this beat for many years and he's no partisan player as far as I can tell.
Nationwide voter fraud study
I agree, David. It seems a bit irrational fear on the part of the Repubs to worry about non-citizens and dead people voting. Few ever turn out to vote even when they somehow get registered.
The Democrats portray themselves as selflessly protecting the right to vote. And the Repubs portray themselves as stalwarts upholding the law. But most vote fraud occurs when the lawyers aren't watching the ballot box. It happens by purging voter rolls, intimidation and misinformation. As a 'common knowledge' anecdote, in Houston we had large protests a few years ago by undocumented workers and our Representative to the US Congress, Sheila Jackson Lee(D) stood in front of us and told us that we didn't need to be citizens to vote that we simply needed to register. I found that odd. I was there with a couple of my alien friends/coworkers and they filled out their voter registration cards that were being passed out (the cards had a checkbox for citizenship). According to Dems, these events are just a figment of a Repubs conspiracy theorists imagination. About as unreal, I suspect as voter roll purges by Repubs. So these studies of voter fraud, such as the one you point out above, where they find none, It's almost as if they were designed to NOT pick up the sorts of fraud that actually occur when it happens so blatantly by both sides during every single election.
Ryan, I don't think that anyone here is saying that there is no need to erect gates to protect essential processes, such as voting and immigration. Basically everyone agrees with that.
What is at issue here is the perceptions, the motives, the methods and the timing, especially in light of what has been said publicly by officials that seems damning on the face of it.
The US is creating problems for itself unnecessarily with both election supervision and immigration policy — not to mention a host of other things that are multiplying the increase of national weakness. It's counterproductive effort.
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