04-18-2021, 12:08 PM
(04-16-2021, 01:55 PM)bengaloo Wrote: It might be puzzling to you, but its not to me. If you are a white liberal, this topic is beyond your mindset. That is all I will say.
By "beyond mindset" are you referring to the type of mindset needed to ignore reality?
For example how does your "mindset" deal with Republicans who have admitted that these voter suppression laws are not about "fair elections" but instead about targeting minority and other Democrat voters?
In Florida, both the state’s former Republican Party chairman, Jim Greer, and its former Republican governor, Charlie Crist, told The Palm Beach Post in 2012 that the state’s voter ID law was devised to suppress Democratic votes. Mr. Greer told The Post: “The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates. It’s done for one reason and one reason only,” he said. Consultants told him “we’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,” he said.
He added, “They never came in to see me and tell me we had a fraud issue. It’s all a marketing ploy.”
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Don Yelton, a North Carolina Republican Party county precinct chairman, told an interviewer for Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” in 2013 that the state’s voter ID law would “kick the Democrats in the butt.” Mr. Yelton later resigned
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Scott Tranter, a Republican political consultant for Mr. Romney and others, called voter ID laws — and generating long lines at polling places — part of his party's tool kit.
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Republican leader of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Mike Turzai, predicted during the campaign that the voter ID law would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”
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In Pennsylvania, the state Republican Party chairman, Robert Gleason, told an interviewer that the state’s voter ID law “had helped a bit” in lowering President Obama’s margin of victory over the Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in the state in 2012.
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in Wisconsin, Todd Allbaugh, 46, a staff aide to a Republican state legislator, attributed his decision to quit his job in 2015 and leave the party to what he witnessed at a Republican caucus meeting. He [/url]wrote on Facebook:
Quote:I was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters. Think about that for a minute. Elected officials planning and happy to help deny a fellow American’s constitutional right to vote in order to increase their own chances to hang onto power.
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Representative Glenn Grothman, Republican of Wisconsin, predicted in a television interview that the state’s photo ID law would weaken the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the state in November’s election.
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Arguing before the UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, Republican lawyer Michael Carvin explained that the out-of-precinct ballot ban should be sustained because “it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.”
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Phyllis Schlafly: Republican lawmakers must restrict early voting opportunities because high voter turnout helps Democrats:
Quote:Democrats promote early voting for the same reason they oppose voter ID: because they view early voting as helping their side. In the absurdly long 35-day period of early voting in Ohio in 2012, Democrats racked up perhaps a million-vote advantage over Republicans before Election Day was ever reached. Republicans have been slow to realize how early voting helps the Democrats.
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Georgia state Sen. Fran Millar, like Schlafly, has [url=https://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/09/3565073/georgia-senator-early-voting-suppression/]condemned attempts to increase voter turnout. He was particularly critical of an effort in DeKalb County, the state’s third largest, to open an early voting center in a mall near a predominantly black megachurch and “dominated by African American shoppers.” Millar wrote in 2014:
Quote:Now we are to have Sunday voting at South DeKalb Mall just prior to the election. Per Jim Galloway of the [Atlanta Journal-Constitution], this location is dominated by African American shoppers and it is near several large African American mega churches such as New Birth Missionary Baptist . Galloway also points out the Democratic Party thinks this is a wonderful idea – what a surprise. I’m sure Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter are delighted with this blatantly partisan move in DeKalb.
Is it possible church buses will be used to transport people directly to the mall since the poll will open when the mall opens? If this happens, so much for the accepted principle of separation of church and state.
He later added: “I would prefer more educated voters than a greater increase in the number of voters.”
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Doug Preisse, the chairman of the Republican Party in Franklin County, Ohio, the home of Columbus, plainly admitted in the run-up to the 2012 election why he believed the state should curb early voting hours: “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter turnout machine.”
