Republicans Across The U.S. Are Trying To Disenfranchise Voters – What Are You Going To Do About It?
In case you haven’t been paying attention, Republicans in some state legislatures have been trying valiantly to make it harder for people to vote by chipping away at long-standing policies that have traditionally made it easier to vote and sneaking in policies that the Federal government thought they abolished long ago. The introduction of ID requirements, shortening early voting windows, taking away the ability for citizens to register and vote on the same day, and more. The purpose of this isn’t to make it harder on everyone or, as Republicans claim, to cut down on voter fraud, but to disenfranchise voters more likely to vote Democrat.
The good news is that, in some states, the citizens are fighting back. Folks in Maine voted to keep same day registration and Ohio’s new election law is up for repeal. The Justice Department is even getting involved, recently telling South Carolina that it’s new voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act, so they can’t have it. The free and fair elections crowd hasn’t won every battle, but the war is not lost.
As heinous as all this is, I’m not real surprised by it. After all, most of the Republicans in these state legislatures rode in on then same wave of apathy and downright stupidity that allowed the Republicans to get control of the U. S. House. All those whiny people who weren’t happy that Obama didn’t do everything all at once and decided to stay home and teach him a lesson also stayed home from elections that decided who their local and state elected officials would be. And now they’re paying for it.
Here’s my thing: I’m not 100% happy with Obama, either. I’m not and never have been 100% happy with Democrats in general. But guess what I’ve not seen Democrats try to do recently? Make it harder for people to vote because they know they’ll lose the next election1.
So what’s the solution here? Well, from the examples in Ohio and Maine and Wisconsin and elsewhere we clearly need more people engaged and voting. Here in America we tend to have a problem in that area. In 2008, which probably saw a slightly higher turnout, only around 57% of eligible voters actually voted.
Why do so few of us vote? Last summer I attended the Personal Democracy Forum 2011 and saw a presentation by a group of students working on a project called TurboVote. They offered up some compelling reasons why more people don’t vote:
- Voting doesn’t fit the way we live.
- Voting is inconvenient.
- Voting hasn’t caught up to our current level of technology.
All of these things are true. The TurboVote project was designed to help fix some of those problems. You should watch the video and click over to their website for all the details, but I’ll give you the basic gist.
TurboVote aims to make it as easy to vote as it is to use Netflix. You go to their website, tell them where you live, and fill in the appropriate information for registering to vote or registering for an absentee ballot. TV will then send you the appropriate forms for your location all filled out and waiting for you to sign them. You’ll have to actually mail them to your local board of elections.
Once election time comes you election board will send you an absentee ballot. You vote and mail it back, thus making voting far less inconvenient all around. TurboVote will send you reminders via email or text that the election is coming up and what your deadlines are for sending your ballot.
I really like this idea because it eliminates all the logistical reasons people have for not voting. No long lines at polling stations, no having to get time off of work, no staying in due to inclement weather.
I also like it because TurboVote won’t just remind you in presidential election years but for every election, local, state, or national. The result, they hope, is that people will get more involved with politics on a local level, as voter turnout for non-presidential elections is less. But if you got a reminder for every election and could mail the ballot in, why wouldn’t you vote?
Lately I’m realizing more and more that real change happens locally2 (something I also learned at PdF2011). After all, it’s not congressional Republicans who are leading the attack on voting rights, though I’m sure the idea came from the national party.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if, by June of this year, we could get a million people signed up on TurboVote? What if we could get more? How would easy voting change the landscape in 2012, 2014, 2016 and beyond? Something to think about.
- I also haven’t seen anyone put forward a viable third party candidate for president ever, which is the core of the problem. The entire two-party system is borked, so I’m going with the party less likely to cater to the slice oft he country that wants things I absolutely despise. [↩]
- Note how third-party politicians can get elected on the local level, perhaps there’s a lesson in that… [↩]
That’s despicable. One of the things I’m doing is working to get more women elected. No, they’re not all perfect, including in my state (WA) and some are total nutcases. But statistically, when more women run for office… more women are elected. Until our leadership truly reflects our nation -which, surprise, contains women and POC- nothing will change. Even if a woman I don’t agree with gets elected sometimes, still, women are more likely to care about the issues important to me – such as NOT DISENFRANCHISING ANYONE. Check out The 2012 Project. Seems very inclusive, IMO.
The links to turbovote.org are giving me 403 errors…
Odd, it was definitely working yesterday. Might be a temporary hiccup.
What swiss people do (and we vote each 3 months. Yes, we vote on everything) is receiving our ballot through postal delivery. Ballot contains a voting card with a random number (changed each time), a booklet with explanations and papers to vote.
You fill the papers with your choice, put it back in a yellow enveloppe and can then post it back, deliver by hand to the municipality or about in any school on the day of votation.
In some places, they are trying to implement digital voting to improve the participation rate (only half of people are voting) but the main problem is that it’s a centralized program owned by a private company.
Risk of fraud is much much higher !
With postal votation, each town counts its votes, than give the result to the canton that give it to the country, thus a large scale fraud would require control over many people counting a several different places or postmen.
Anyway, it might help people to go voting since several websites give us information, for example about the candidates which we usually don’t know well.
Have a nice day !
I like the Turbo Vote idea, and hope we can find a way to implement it soon. Anything that makes voting more convenient and less disruptive to the working and middle class gets my vote. [By the way – I live in Cleveland, OH, where I was part of the team that circulated petitions and got folks out to “Vote NO on issue 2”] But having said that, a few things really bother me about the compelling reasons why people don’t vote. Really? Voting is too inconvenient, doesn’t fit your lifestyle, and hasn’t caught up with our level of technology? When I consider the stories told to me of what my parents and grandparents went through to vote back in the 50’s and 60’s, the reasons for not getting out to vote in the year 2012 seem trivial to me. Considering Congressional attempts at setting us back 40+ years and the fact that the working and middle-classes are still expected to shoulder the burden of this debt, a firing squad shouldn’t be able keep us from the polls! All I’m saying here is, while I agree that we should continuously work to ensure the voting process is convenient and trouble-free, in the meantime we should be as ferocious as my pitbull about getting to the polls, by any means necessary.