GOP Already at Work to Keep Obama Voters From the Polls

[babylonsister]

GOP Already at Work to Keep Obama Voters From the Polls

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted January 5, 2008.

GOP-backed election laws in many states pose barriers to Obama's supporters.



Barack Obama's winning coalition in Iowa drew on new voters, students, minorities and poor people, according to polls and other snapshots of Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses.

The new voters, particularly college students, defied former President Bill Clinton, his candidate wife Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen, all who decried their efforts to vote because, while legal, they apparently were not Iowan enough. Needless to say, these Obama supporters did not take heed.

But if Obama -- or any Democrat -- is going to repeat his higher-than-expected turnout in other states, their supporters may have to surmount significant new voting rights barriers as the campaign moves through the primaries and into the fall election.

That is because the new voters, young people, minorities and the poor who turned out for Obama in Iowa are the very voters targeted by numerous Republican-led "ballot security" laws that have been adopted across the country since 2004. While some of these laws have been overturned, they include tough new voter ID requirements, restrictions on registering voters and even penalties for helping people with absentee ballots.

"Any mobile population are the ones that are most affected by election laws," said David Rosenfeld, national program director for Student Public Interest Research Groups, which tracks student voting. "The most mobile populations are young people and poor people."

Student voting is a good example. The real barrier to student voting in 2008 is not admonitions from the Clintons. It is a patchwork of state laws, according to Rosenfeld, that discourage student voting. Arizona, for instance, rejects out-of-state driver's licenses as an acceptable voter ID. The same is true in Indiana. New Hampshire requires students to register at local government offices. Virginia allows local election officials to decide if a dormitory qualifies as a "domicile." Some do, Rosenfeld said, and some do not. New Mexico restricts the number of voter registration forms one person may carry at a time. And Texas has new penalties for "improperly" helping people with absentee ballots.

more...

http://alternet.org/story/72748/

[Auggie]

1. If the surge of Democratic voters is large enough

it shouldn't make a difference.

[PATRICK]

2. That is what

Obama is saying, but it shouldn't be the ONLY response, giving away voter's rights and our mandate like throwing bodies against a wall to climb over the top. Breach the wall. Get ladders. Work at it and think.
Dismissing the fight against fraud to rely on numbers is what Kerry did, and those numbers disappeared- enough so that one man one vote was defeated and legitimacy itself along with it with NO challenge except.

Then we turned around and admired the US propped(subsequently collapsed) Ukrainian revolt against fraud.
We should show we are prepared to do the same as other people defrauded, not indifferently concede away our fundamental rights- as if in a reduced victory they don't matter.

[Auggie]

5. Absolutely agree

[flashl]

4. Suppression of student voters made a 'difference' in Florida in 2000. n/t

[gaiilonfong]

3. The Dems better start thinking of this

When the ReTHUGS get desperate they will do ANYTHING remember that.

[rucky]

6. We all know what we need to do.

GOTV. Get people registered. Verify their registration. Work with your local chapter. Sit in front of Wal-Mart for a weekend or two this Spring.

The predictions are the cheaters will use scrubbing to gain advantage. Beating that is just a matter of people having their paperwork ready early.

[KennedyGuy]

7. Yes..regardless of who the nominee is..count on the Repukes to pull out all the stops

[ZombieHorde]

8. Republicans suck. nt