Since the 2010 elections, the US has experienced a tsunami of harsh Republican-led laws attempting to take away the rights of women, workers, immigrants, under served, gays, elderly, non-profits, and voters… to name a few. As far as voting is concerned, many of us have questioned the motives of GOP lawmakers who have pushed through laws that amount to nothing less voter disenfranchisement. There are bills currently making the rounds calling for an end to same day registration, the requirement of voters to show government-issued photo I.D.s, and major cutbacks on early voting.
“There’s barely any voter fraud,” we say. In the voting booth amongst actual voters, I agree. Aside the intentionally deceptive exploits of James O’Keefe, or recently convicted Indiana Secretary of State, Charlie White (R), who made a mockery of Governor Mitch Daniel’s strict voter I.D. laws and who now also claims Daniels himself is guilty of voter fraud, there appears to be very little acts of dead or nonexistent voters popping up during elections.
Of course, the Republicans would have us believe the ghosts of voting evils are running rampant and must be stopped right away (or at least before the 2012 elections)! My own theory is that the GOP knows very well it has no actual game plan to fix anything other than the elections. They have lost their minds and the minds of would-be swing voters, too. So instead of creating policies they can proudly stand behind, they play the blame game alongside the invisible bogeyman game to garner fear and votes of the unknown dangers lurking somewhere ahead.
What they’re not talking about, however, are the multi-billion dollar electronic voting machines that are very real and very quickly eating away at the core of American democracy. Place these machines alongside deep pocketed lobbyists, bottomless corporation donations, ALEC and strict voter I.D. laws, and we can very clearly see that Americans could very well be screwed.
In a little under two short years, the majority of states have adopted or are in the process of adopting restrictive voting laws. See the evolution of these laws taking place here on the lawyerscommittee.org website.
Interesting fact: 38.46% percent of eligible American voters turned out for the 2010 midterm elections compared to 57.45% of eligible voters in 2008 for the presidential elections and 62.08% turnout for the 2004 presidential elections.
The following is a very brief overview on what led us to the age of the touch screen electronic voting, examples of machine malfunctions, voter disenfranchisement, and the many headaches (and possible fraud) touch screen machines have created:
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