A bunch of you have been asked, as well you might, whether former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer ever made good on his promise to turn voting rights into an issue "absolutely" and immediately. You'll remember that in October, presidential hopeful Mr. Roemer went to Occupy Wall Street and got challenged on what he thinks about his own Republican Party's rollback of voting rights.
Roemer: [Y]ou asked me had I made this an issue. I have not. I've not made it an issue.
2nd Protester: Will you? Will you?
Roemer: Absolutely.
2nd Protester: Immediately?
Roemer: Absolutely
I caught up with Mr. Roemer about this before he appeared on our show this week. He sounded chagrined, in a friendly way, about the month-old promise to do something right away. "I've not yet come out on that," he said. While Mr. Roemer said he would like to see some kind of standards put in place to prevent voter fraud, he also told me he's still doing research on the issue (which I think will show that voter fraud is really, really rare and even more rarely fixed by requiring new forms of ID).
This morning, as Mr. Roemer begins his third-party bid for the presidency, I noticed him talking about voting rights on the twitters. "Voter suppression is misguided, futile, and wrong," Mr. Roemer wrote. "We should be encouraging people to vote, not creating barriers." I'm guessing that's still not Mr. Roemer's final answer, but he clearly does hear you. And to his credit, he responds.
(The link goes here.)
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The only real electoral fraud we ought to be concerned about takes place during the counting phase of the election. Those Diebold voting terminals are easily hacked and yet they remain in use. That is something we need to be very concerned about. All these laws to protect us from voter fraud are not only keeping citizens from exercising their right to vote, they are also misdirecting our attention from the actual threat.
About time someone in the GOP decided to say something positive about this.
The whole voting rights situation looks and sounds exactly like the civil rights issues that caused my parents to leave Oklahoma.
Redistricting, literacy tests, and ID requirements are voter fraud.
Too bad that the party that freed the slaves has become so unpopular that they have to tie a pork chop around their neck just to get the dog to play with them.
Go ahead and vote in 2012, tweedle dum or tweedle dee, both have the same chance of defying the Wall Street masters who run the western world. We are in the midst of the 2nd great world wide depression and these clowns are running around putting bandaids on mosquito bites. Prepare for more fascist legislation at the Federal and State level, more on the ground resistance an escalation of force to suppress dissent and a 2012 that is going to make 1968 look peaceful.
Actually, I see nothing wrong with requiring some kind of I.D. as long as it is a uniform requirement and there's a process to provide that I.D. for people who've never had to have it before. I know everybody says there's little fraud, but I'm reminded of one woman (when I lived in NH) who was appalled at the casual checking NH did/does?? on voters. And so she experimentally voted twice and then wrote about it in the newspaper.
Reaction? Nothing about how come she could do that?? No, no, they threatened to arrest her even though her motives were clearly NOT to have the second illegal vote counted. But feel would be very easy (if you chose to do that) to vote more than once in NH as a new voter.
Now I live in Florida, and I must show my driver's license here. I see nothing wrong with that! I think it's just always been this way so perhaps people just automatically know they MUST have I.D. What I dislike about Florida, howeve,r is that I don't think I.D. is required all over the state--makes no sense at all!!
I have followed what's happening in Wisconsin and that is clearly a governor set out to limit voting rights--new requirements, and then limiting driver license hours to make it difficult for people to comply, changing rules on college students, etc. THAT IS AWFUL.
I don't approve of that. I just think by this time -- for god's sake it's 2012 -- by this time every citizen ought to easily have a routine form of identification acceptable in every state and community.