Republicans Escalate Voter Suppression Efforts

What do you do when you belong to a political party that finds its message and policies rejected by the majority of voters?  You try to limit those who can vote to those who are buying your agenda of exclusion, racism, homophobia and economic war on the poor, the non-white and anyone your base deems "other."  This is precisely what the Republican party is seeking to do across the country, especially in states where Republicans still control state legislatures.  As a column in the Washington Post notes, Texas - where the growing urban areas are increasingly voting Democrat and are nearing a point of being able to out vote the backward rural regions of the state - is a prime example.  Rather than change their agenda, Republicans simply want fewer and fewer people to be able to vote if they might not be buying the GOP's toxic agenda.  To be totally candid, the GOP no longer believes in democracy. Here are column highlights on the GOP voter suppression effort:

MOBILE POLLING places that popped up on college campuses and other population-dense areas were “the most effective program we had,” Dana DeBeauvoir, the chief elections official in Travis County, Tex., told the New York Times. That would explain why Texas Republicans shut them down.

The Times reported last week that, as Texans head to the polls, it will be substantially harder for college students to vote. A new state law required all polling places to remain open for the state’s full 12-day early-voting period. Localities could not afford to keep the pop-up sites open that long, so colleges in Austin, Brownsville, Fort Worth and elsewhere have had to close them. That guarantees lower turnout among people whom Republicans do no want voting: Democratic-leaning students.

Early voting is meant to enable more people to vote: Shift workers, for example, who cannot wait in line at a polling place on a Tuesday can still have a voice. Texas’s law turns that vote-enabling system into a vote-suppressing weapon. Republicans throughout the country have embraced voter suppression as a strategy for party survival, and this is one more sad example.

In Florida, Republicans have tried repeatedly to end early voting on state campuses. They also tried to circumscribe the reach of a law that allows former felons to vote, even after voters overwhelmingly approved the law in a referendum. Republicans in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin have made voting difficult for students in various ways; Republicans often use voter identification laws to exclude student voters, rejecting forms of ID that college students are likely to have. Typically, the pretext is the need to block in-person voter fraud — a practically nonexistent problem in the United States.

Citizens are citizens, whether they are 18 or 88. All should be encouraged to vote. But year in, year out, even jurisdictions not run by people seeking to discourage voting have trouble keeping lines reasonable, equipment functional and the experience less than excruciating. As 171 George Mason University students who recently had their registrations rejected can tell you, as The Post reported, registering from a campus address can be particularly difficult.

States should be trying to fix such problems, starting with competent staff and convenient polling locations and hours, rather than removing opportunities for eligible voters. Congress should require states to register people automatically when local government authorities have the information needed to do so — DMV records, for example. And the Republican Party should stake its future on offering policies and candidates that can attract voters — not on keeping potential voters away from the polls.

The GOP in its present incarnation needs to die - the sooner, the better.  This from a former Republican.