Pryce for Congress/Flickr
As a rule, Republicans engaged in voter suppression remember their talking points. Sure, they're imposing the most sweeping voting restrictions since Jim Crow, but it's not about rigging the elections to help the GOP -- heaven forbid -- it's about protecting the integrity of the process.
Any serious look at the underlying policy -- using voter-ID laws to combat imaginary fraud, for example -- exposes the arguments as a sham, but at least Republicans appreciate the value of lying well, knowing that systematic disenfranchisement of minorities might be frowned upon.
Once in a while, though, conservatives slip. In Pennsylvania, the state House Majority Leader, confessed in June that the Republican voter-ID law would "allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania."
And in Ohio, where early voting opportunities have been expanded in Republican counties and limited in Democratic counties, we're seeing some additional accidental candor.
[Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted] said he based his decision to bar weekend hours after consulting with local elections officials, many of whom were concerned about cost. But Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, told The Dispatch that "we would make that work" if directed to stay open until, say, noon the Saturday before the election.
Of course, such decisions are at least as much about politics as policy. [...]
"I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban -- read African-American -- voter-turnout machine," said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. "Let's be fair and reasonable."
Got that? If black people are allowed to vote the weekend before the election, it would be an undue "accommodation."
Accidental candor is a remarkable thing, isn't it?
Preisse, incidentally, isn't some random player -- he's an elections board member who's also a "close political adviser" to Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R).
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It is a Well Know Fact that African Americans are not 'informed voters'. As evidence we need only look at what party they vote for. . .
And Republican voters are told how who when where why and what they are informed of correct? Anything else, like any sense of self-informed intelligence, should be shunned. Try reading between the lines sometime in your life!
Well, there is a degree of intelligence among Republicans, or, at least the leaders. They know how to get the dimwits to vote against their own best interests, empowering the wealthy elite. But the uninformed (you) vote for them anyway, since the critical thinking skills necessary to discern intentions is missing.
Gary: I think you managed to miss the fact that Day was snarking. You need to be here awhile and know the community before passing moral judgements that make you look like an idiot. Unless of course you are an idiot.
Come come now! What do righties know about facts?
Yes, that is why the more informed white voter keeps voting against his own self interest. You are a fool.
Yet is very odd that people seem to know about Romney, and the party he is affiliated with?
How do you write such a stupid email to a newspaper? Seriously, I would really like to know!
Wellll.... he did pass the IQ test low enough to be a Republican.
While I understand and appreciate the comedy in your remark, it must be noted that there is no "passing" or "failing" an IQ test. The test determines where your rank among other people in terms of intelligence. It is like a test to determine your gas mileage in your car, it can't fail or pass the test, it just can score higher or lower.
Can't wait to get out of this idiotic state. You morons who voted these people into office are going to get what you deserve.
If there is too much access to voting, people will take advantage and make sure that more people vote.
What I'd like to know is why these people still have jobs and are allowed to continue pushing their disenfranchising ideology? The public needs to push for their dismissal from office.
Absolutely, ZR. They need to get out this November and ...
Oh, wait.
I don't know what's worse to me...the fact that this man is helping to run elections or the fact that there are so many republicans that are willing to blindly follow this sort of reasoning to shut out an entire community based on race.
s-c-a-r-y.
Gee and just imagine we had a conscientious MSM who would see and report this for what is was .
Watching democracy disappear at the hands of the Republican Party.
If a third world government was pulling this shmitt...there would be howls of outrage..
He's just saying what unthinking people are thinking.
The attack on early/weekend voting is not only to limit the numbers of people voting, a ploy that favors the GOP, but it also inadvertently demonstrates that black people are working long hours at low paying jobs and cannot afford to take time off.
Good point - I had not thought of that .
Or perhaps it demonstrates that, regardless of skin color, people who work long hours at low paying jobs and cannot afford to take time off are inclined to vote inappropriately.
I'd say it demonstrates that the Civil War isn't over yet.
This is far from the only indicator that the War of Northern Aggression is still being fought.
Another is the shift in the politics of the plutocrats (long piece on this a few months ago). Time was when the New England "noblesse oblige" theory of great wealth (think of the Rockefeller or Carnegie Foundations) dominated. The alternative is the "plantation" theory: liberty means that there's nobody who can tell me what to do -- even if that means that there's nobody to protect you from me.
That's kind of the thing. Contrary to the rapidly solidifying Republican mythology of a vast idle, parasitic underclass sucking our economy dry by voting themselves bread and circuses, the fact is that unemployed people are a lot less likely to vote than people holding down two and three jobs--at least since the advent of early voting.
I was a poll monitor in 2008 two different precincts in predominantly black neighborhoods (primary and general) for the Obama campaign. In both, about half the votes cast were early votes.
We build statues and memorials to honor our fallen soldiers who died fighting for
Democracy, and then we dishonor our fallen heroes by taking away the free and
equal right of every person to participate in our government. The actions of the Republican Party are an effort to control all three branches of OUR government. By silencing Democrats and Independents, we are no longer a government based on Democracy, but rather become a government ruled by a Regime.
Isn't it great that those people died for freedom so that I don't have to worry about it?
But those heroes fought for Freedom -- and letting you people tell me what I (and the Koch brothers) can and can't do would dishonor the sacrifices made by those heroes. So you see why it's important for the sake of Liberty to keep people who don't have skin in the game from exerting influence on the country, don't you?
DC Sessions: It was never "The war of Northern Aggression." It was The War Of Southern Treason.
Their "support the troops" mantra that they so often use as a club against us "unpatriotic" liberals is nothing more than empty lip service. Do we need any further proof? They should be ashamed, but I know they aren't.
One of the scariest aspects of these candid and revealing comments is that the folks making them - whether politicians like Doug Preisse and Mike Turzai (the "allow Romney to win PA" guy), or less public folks like your average GOP wingnut - is that they see absolutely nothing wrong with what they are saying. They feel perfectly confident that their extreme and even xenophobic ideas are the norm. Functioning in an effective echo chamber, nothing gets through that tells them otherwise.
Not only this, but they will cry persecution if they're called out on it.
this is who they are. plain and simple.
It looks like Republicans do not think the Emancipation Proclamation and those pesky post Civil War amendments were such a good idea.
Repub think: Romney deserves to win, because he's a real American, one of us, and we need to take our country back, etc. So anything we do to ensure that is OK. And those darkies have been hypnotized by that Kenyan fascist socialist Muslim atheist.
Even better--early voting is somehow "undue accommodation" for African Americans when it happens in predominantly Democratic counties and must be restricted in those areas in order to be "fair", but it is somehow not when they are actually EXPANDING early voting privileges in predominantly Republican counties! These people can't even keep track of their lies and hypocrisy anymore! Even as they are bending over backwards to accommodate Republican voters they are saying that the same accommodations are unfair when they happen to anyone who is dark skinned and/or a Democrat!
This country is doomed. I think we may be past the point of no return for a totalitarian regime in this country, and I worry that it might take generations for people to stand up and fight back.