Friday, October 22, 2004
Why does the Republican Party hate democracy?
The NYT describes the latest Republican effort to suppress voting. Listen to the contempt GOP officials have for voting:
If the GOP were serious about making elections fair and free of fraud, they would put money into the process---make sure the registration, polling, and counting process went smoothly and easily. Why should this process be so hard? E.g., our countries banks run thousands of ATMs, dispensing and receiving cash to virtually every American; how often do you hear about fraud in that sector? Are the logistics of voting any harder, or even very different from running cash machines? The reason it is hard is because the Republicans want it to be. Because it will help them win, they want to make it hard for blacks and poor people to register, to vote, and have their votes counted. They only care about securing power, the process of democracy be damned. More on this soon, but I cannot say how appalled I am that this party is willing to set fire to 228 years of democracy to get their trained monkey "re-elected". And that is what they are trying to do, in Ohio, Florida, and across the nation. We don't need Republican intimidators at the polls; we need UN observers the way this is going.
If they steal this one, we can't let them get away with it.
Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.
Party officials say their effort is necessary to guard against fraud arising from aggressive moves by the Democrats to register tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio, seen as one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in the Nov. 2 elections.
Election officials in other swing states, from Arizona to Wisconsin and Florida, say they are bracing for similar efforts by Republicans to challenge new voters at polling places, reflecting months of disputes over voting procedures and the anticipation of an election as close as the one in 2000.
Ohio election officials said they had never seen so large a drive to prepare for Election Day challenges. They said they were scrambling yesterday to be ready for disruptions in the voting process as well as alarm and complaints among voters. Some officials said they worried that the challenges could discourage or even frighten others waiting to vote.
Ohio Democrats were struggling to match the Republicans' move, which had been rumored for weeks. Both parties had until 4 p.m. to register people they had recruited to monitor the election. Republicans said they had enlisted 3,600 by the deadline, many in heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities. Each recruit was to be paid $100.
The Democrats, who tend to benefit more than Republicans from large turnouts, said they had registered more than 2,000 recruits to try to protect legitimate voters rather than weed out ineligible ones.
Republican officials said they had no intention of disrupting voting but were concerned about the possibility of fraud involving thousands of newly registered Democrats.
"The organized left's efforts to, quote unquote, register voters - I call them ringers - have created these problems," said James P. Trakas, a Republican co-chairman in Cuyahoga County.
...
"Our concern is Republicans will be challenging in large numbers for the purpose of slowing down voting, because challenging takes a long time,'' said David Sullivan, the voter protection coordinator for the national Democratic Party in Ohio. "And creating long lines causes our people to leave without voting.''
If the GOP were serious about making elections fair and free of fraud, they would put money into the process---make sure the registration, polling, and counting process went smoothly and easily. Why should this process be so hard? E.g., our countries banks run thousands of ATMs, dispensing and receiving cash to virtually every American; how often do you hear about fraud in that sector? Are the logistics of voting any harder, or even very different from running cash machines? The reason it is hard is because the Republicans want it to be. Because it will help them win, they want to make it hard for blacks and poor people to register, to vote, and have their votes counted. They only care about securing power, the process of democracy be damned. More on this soon, but I cannot say how appalled I am that this party is willing to set fire to 228 years of democracy to get their trained monkey "re-elected". And that is what they are trying to do, in Ohio, Florida, and across the nation. We don't need Republican intimidators at the polls; we need UN observers the way this is going.
If they steal this one, we can't let them get away with it.
