TEA/GOP DISINFRANCHISING VOTERS

States with majority GOP legislatures or GOP governors are creating new rules to make it harder for people to register to vote. 

http://blogcritics.org/...
 
SPECIAL REPORT:  For Left, Overcoming New Voting Restrictions Are Matter Of Principle, Equality — And Survival

In Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott Walker and a GOP-dominated state legislature enacted a strict law in which voters must show certain forms of ID in order to vote, just 78 percent of young African-Americans aged 18 to 24 have the proper ID to vote. 

There is no doubt that if young African American and other voters are denied access to voting next year, Democrats will lose, Baker says.

“You can look at the numbers, we can cut the numbers, and we can take the young people of color for granted. But if young people of color do not vote in 2012, we will lose the White House,” he says.

In Wisconsin, student IDs technically are allowed, but its law “was drawn so carefully that all of the current IDs issued by the universities in Wisconsin don’t actually meet the requirement,” she says.

“Now there’s some work going on to try to make sure student IDs can conform with the new rules,” she adds.

“The road to the Senate and the White House runs right through the affected states –- Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Nevada, Virginia –- even California,” says Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), the arm of the Democratic Party tasked with electing Democrats to the U.S. Senate.

“The GOP strategy is simple: Suppress the vote, win the election,” he adds. “The loss of these votes would be more than enough to lose the Senate –- and the White House. If Republicans succeed, they will get just what they’re seeking –- complete and total control of Washington.”

2012 Election Protection Project

The DSCC launched what it calls the 2012 Election Protection Project to help Democrats.

"We’re leading the effort to prevent this attempt to change the outcome of the 2012 elections," Cecil says. "In Florida, the DSCC formally requested that the Department of Justice do what it could to stop this. We’re also keeping these developments in mind as we build our campaign strategy. The GOP’s efforts will make our voter outreach more important, and more expensive, in 2012 than ever before."

Cecil casts Democrats as David in this fight against Goliath, saying the wealthy Koch brothers and their corporate allies bankroll the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, the little-seen but powerful conservative organization that has pushed these voter-suppression measures

http://www.rollingstone.com/...

GOP War on Voting: New Laws Could Block Five Million From Polls As Ari Berman detailed last month in Rolling Stone, Republican state legislators and governors in a dozen states have been busy this year passing laws that make it harder for voters – overwhelmingly, Democratic voters – to cast their ballots.

The measures, from voter ID requirements to cutting back on early voting to curtailing voter registration drives, may seem disconnected, but they add up, wrote Berman, to "an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008."

http://www.rollingstone.com/...

In a campaign supported by the Koch brothers, Republicans are working to prevent millions of Democrats from voting next year