Suppress, Suppress, Let’s Suppress This Mess

[phantom power]

Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law is being litigated in court as we speak, but Pennsylvania never investigated whether voter fraud (the central rationale for ID laws) actually exists, so the state simply won’t argue the point. Instead, the argument seems to be that the state can impair a constitutional right because…well, because they can. It doesn’t really matter why, it just makes a kind of instinctual sense, like how vaccines cause autism or how evolution can’t exist because I’ve never seen a thing evolve in front of my eyes despite staring at it and chanting “evolve” for hours on end.

Fuck you, lamp.

This is bothersome, though, because the state still has to say something on the stand when it’s asked why they want to enforce the law, and it’s gotta be better than electing Mitt Romney.

...

But the entire case for voter ID is based not on an actual problem that requires a solution, but instead on a series of insanely personal grievances against a faceless horde that receives “special treatment” that good, upstanding conservative white dudes don’t get.

The case for voter ID is the same case against welfare, against unemployment benefits, against progressive taxation – a particular brand of social and racial resentment that wants to be codified into law to justify its continued existence.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/27/suppress-suppress-lets-suppress-this-mess/