Does Democracy Mean Democracy to the GOP?
May 29, 2012 10 Comments
ThinkProgress is right to sound the alarm on Florida Governor Rick Scott’s attempt to suppress voting in his state. As they pointed out yesterday, he’s trying to purge voters from the voting rolls, using a list of ineligible voters from the DMV that is highly outdated and inaccurate. In Miami Dade, the list of purged voters has already turned out to be over 20% inaccurate, and that’s just based on the people who received the notice and were able to send in verification of their citizenship. How many others did not receive the notice or manage to send in verification for a second time? And what is the GOP doing relying on the Department of Motor Vehicles to secure our democracy? The party that distrusts the ability of government to tie its shoes is putting the future of our democracy in the hands of the DMV?
If you believe that democracy is on the defensive in this country, by all means put the proper resources into determining the accuracy of the voting rolls. If you’re concerned with representative democracy, then you should put the resources into extending voting hours so that voting doesn’t just fall on one day. Make it a week long. Make it on the weekend. There are many ways to bolster voting in the United States, but the Republicans aren’t interested in accuracy, they’re interested in power.
And this is not an anomaly. Rachel Maddow has been banging the drum about the Republican move in Michigan to get rid of local rule and institute Emergency Manager Czars who wield absolute power. Because, again, Republicans are about power.
One of the major reasons I don’t trust Governor Rick Scott is because these efforts come amidst a Republican history of suppressing the vote. Remember, the war against ACORN was motivated by ACORN’s success in registering voters. Heck, if you want to recall why democracy matters, remember that the current depression was brought about by the Supreme Court preventing an accurate count of the votes (in Florida, of course) in order to install George W. Bush as president.
Argh. I don’t know what to do when democracy is actually assaulted. It’s not a metaphor. It’s not hyperbole. I should probably find a wittier, gentler, or snazzier way of putting this all out there. But it’s late, and I’m upset. I gotta schedule this to post in the morning and then go listen to some mindfulness podcasts before going to bed. Rage, rage, rage, then breathe deep, accept reality, and hopefully have a full eight hours of sleep.
Ed Schultz has been covering this as well, and I’ll leave you with his segment from last Friday on voter suppression in Ohio.
About Matthew
Thanks for this post. I shared it to my Facebook page.
Thank you, Anda, and a warm welcome to any of your Friends wandering over from Facebook!
The reason that DMV rolls are used is because that is the most common type of ID. Photo ID’s are required to vote in Florida.
Yeah, but the DMV does not keep updated records of citizenship. When drivers become citizens, no one informs the DMV. If Rick Scott were concerned about accuracy, they would change the rules to do this. But he’s not. He’s concerned about winning, not democracy.
You’re correct that the DMV doesn’t track citizenship, or at least it didn’t until recently when it upgraded the requirements for identification to get a Driver’s license in Florida. The bigger issue is that there are 53,000 dead people on the voting rolls in Florida, and those people have a suspicious habit of rising from the dead in November every 4 years.
Really? Could you provide me with links to research on the dead people voting in Florida? I’ll provide you with a link to Florida’s history of voter suppression.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76443.html
That article talks about the possibility about dead people on the voting rolls. It says nothing about those dead people voting. You said that “those people have a suspicious habit of rising from the dead in November every 4 years” and I am curious where you are getting your information.
I love Florida so much, but I am constantly amazed and disgusted by its governmental dipshittery. I wish they could get a clue up there in Tallahassee. It’s almost enough to make a person give up the beach for the snow and sleet of Canada, just so I wouldn’t have to be subject to this backswamp idiocy any more.
I actually have a couple of friends who are moving to Tallahassee, to teach at Florida State. They’re worried…