If you plan on doing this ...
... you might have to get past something like this
I've lived long enough to see Republicans go from meh to sleazy to corrupt to crazy. Now they've gone extra special crazy; laughably crazy if they weren't in control of so many states and so much of Congress.
They know they're nuts, working exclusively for Big Money interests with extremist views, and unelectable. They've had long range plans that we only see when they're unveiled and only then do we see the decades long small moves that were carefully made. These days, when the GOP has absolute control over more governments in swing states than ever before have we seen the great big moves marching in the direction of keeping power forever in their own hands.
After the US Supreme Court saw to it that the floodgates opened, money poured into states in 2010 in amounts nobody had ever seen before. We saw television ads for state legislative offices and even local boards. The GOP won and won and won and won some more; taking exclusive power in many swing states. And those big wins were simply the stepping stone to ensure Republicans will remain in control - forever, they hope.
Winning in 2010 put Republicans in control for gerrymandering redistricting in the swing states they now controlled. They used 2 strategies - packing Democratic voters in 1 or 2 districts which made many more districts dominated by Republican voters AND/OR spreading out Democratic voters among many districts to dilute their voting power.
We saw the results in 2012 when states with much higher Democratic votes statewide sent vastly more Republicans to Congress and to their state houses. However, we also saw that these tactics don't help them statewide with Presidential, US Senate races, or Gubernatorial elections.
But that was only Phase 1 of their We'll Be In Power Forever Plan.
Phase 2 is intended to help them with statewide votes for US Senate and Governors. Those offices can't be gerrymandered into submission to Republicans. For that, they need to barricade the ballot box so Republican voters can cast their ballots without problems, but traditionally Democratic voters are going to have problems - serious problems gaining access to their Constitutional right to vote.
Under the guise of preventing "voter fraud", a very rare occurrence, Republicans rammed through legislation in state after state to make it difficult to vote. Reductions in the availability of early voting, demands for a very few types of photo ID, and making polling places difficult to access were among the measures put into place in state after state with Republican governance (the ones marked in red):
States with shiny new voter suppression laws.
We'll see a return to long lines and voters waiting hour after hour to cast a ballot (if they're even allowed to have one). We'll see chaos at the polls as new requirements are put into place for the election less than a month away.
In Wisconsin, we have multiple changes:
1. Early voting down from 3 weeks (with hours determined by local clerks who would often schedule some evening hours) and 2 weekends to 2 weeks (business hours only) and NO weekend.
2. (UPDATE: This one just ain't gonna happen! Whoopie! The US Supreme Court disallowed this one late last week in a very surprising decision Vote by mail now requires a copy of "approved" picture ID included with application for a ballot and another copy of "approved" picture ID included with the ballot. (I hope they have a way to get to Kinkos and some coin for the Xerox machine).
3. Voters must sign the poll book (has been in place since 2011 - I suspect to create longer lines at polling places and encumber voters to try to sign a page in a large binder while it's held in the air).
4. (UPDATE: This one just ain't gonna happen either! Whoopie! Thanks US Supreme Court, however the Republican Wisconsin Attorney General is going to try it anyway.) One of a small number of "approved" photo IDs must be presented (that awful excuse of a law was recently upheld by the 7th Circuit Court who gave their OK to implement it less than 7 weeks to the mid term elections).
Worse yet, Republicans have already cut the hours of DMV offices in the state with some only open twice a month and only Milwaukee DMVs open some evening hours. Even worser (yeah, I know that's not a word, but it fits), those DMV issued Voter IDs must be re-issued every 2 years.
Student photo IDs from the state university system, issued by the state itself, are NOT approved because they're not re-issued every 2 years. Additionally, students must also provide proof of current enrollment to get a ballot (No, they really, really don't want students to vote).
5. Probably the most petty of the new "laws" is the restriction in the amount of space voters will have around them. It used to be 5 or 6 feet. Well, now it's 3 feet and I expect that's going to be violated a lot. This means that election "observers" will be able to stand close enough to hear a voter give their name and address to a poll worker and to read their ID. I expect to see a lot of voter intimidation and not just from a militia group that says they're going to check on every voter who signed the recall petitions, but those who always gather inside of heavily Democratic polling places to huff and puff and bellow their objections.
Here's a link to a segment Rachel Maddow did to show how creepy close that is (sorry, won't embed).
And if those measures aren't enough, a Wisconsin Militia Group has already announced their plans to "patrol" polling places for people who signed the recall petitions (yes, those documents are publicly available) and "check them out". Great! Just what we need. Nuts with guns, most likely, since we're now a concealed carry state (again, thanks to Republicans).
Even the GAO has noticed that Voter ID laws diminish turnout. It's not a bug. It's a feature.
Congress’s research arm blamed the two states’ laws requiring that voters show identification on a dip in turnout in 2012 — about 2 percentage points in Kansas and between 2.2 and 3.2 percentage points in Tennessee. Those declines were greater among younger and African-American voters, when compared to turnout in other states.
And that difference, my friends, is most elections margin of victory.
... into THIS
Republicans are turning this .....
And they're not kidding either. While they whine about voter fraud mythology, they're hiding systematic election fraud.
Remember:
Important takeaway from this diary
Not only are Republicans choosing their voters, they're rapidly determining just WHO they'll "allow" to vote.
So, folks, what barricades are they putting out in front of YOUR polling places this year?