Open Elections.....NOT!

The GOP’s need to game voting has spread like political cancer. Republican-controlled legislatures have gone to great lengths to complicate many aspects of the voting process, from registration to ballot-access rules. The goal is to suppress perceived Democratic voting blocks, particularly people of color, the poor and students. What’s especially pernicious about the best known of these tactics, stricter voter ID laws, is that it adds a nasty twist to the otherwise simple requirements to be a legal voter. Instead of satisfying age, residency and citizenship status and showing that one is mentally fit and has no felony record (as in most states) these new laws say you cannot get a ballot unless you also have a specific kind of state government photo ID. Not everybody has that ID, or the documents needed to obtain it. The right to vote has never been based on plastic.

This anti-democratic trend is larger than just photo ID laws. Florida passed laws imposing fines and filing deadlines on voter registration groups, which, despite being blocked by a court recently.

Today’s majority Caucasian dominated GOP knows it cannot hold onto power in an increasingly multicultural America unless it keeps communities of color, young people and women from voting.
You would think today’s Republicans would be more confident in their ideas, stand by them and trust the voters to decide. But that is not the case.