Blocking Votes

If President Obama loses his bid for re-election next year, it may not be because of the economy, and it won't really be because of the November 6 curse I wrote about earlier. It will possibly be because of voter suppression nationwide.

Once the Republicans realized that more young people, old people, poor people, and racial and ethnic minorities voted in 2008 and helped elect Obama President, swinging several key states in the Electoral College, it was inevitable that they would exploit the drop-off in interest among many of these traditional Democratic groups (except seniors, who can easily be coaxed into voting Republican on social issues) in the 2010 midterms and win enough state legislatures and governorships to pass voter restriction laws over Democratic opposition (what there is of it) at the state level. Now, in many states, residents must have a photo ID - usually a driver's license - to register to vote, early voting opportunities have been severely limited, and stricter residency requirements have been set into place. This has a disproportionate impact on traditionally Democratic voting blocs - poor people who can't afford a car and thus don't drive, urban residents who don't need a car and thus don't drive, working poor people who can't vote on the first Tuesday after November 1 because they have a job they have to show up for, and those who don't live in any one place for long, including college students. Folks who gave Obama his victory in 2008 likely won't be able to vote in large numbers in 2012.

I was going to suggest, when I planned to write on this subject, that progressive activist groups who register voters work with these laws, even if it means buying more buses to get more people to the polls in a shorter time frame and paying for driving lessons to get people who don't own a car a driver's license, but it turns out that Republicans have also enacted laws designed to curb mass registration by such groups. The nonpartisan League of Women Voters finds the new rules in Florida - which, among other things, reduce the number of early voting days from fourteen to eight - so restrictive that they've ceased voter registrations efforts in the Sunshine State indefinitely.

At the federal level, congressional Republicans are pushing to abolish the Election Assistance Commission, the four-person group created in the wake of the 2000 Bush-Gore and debacle in Florida to keep elections fair and honest through testing voting machines and offers assistance for proofing ballots. Republicans, who are so concerned about voter fraud that they restrict ballot access at the state level, say the commission has served its purpose in cleaning up voting (even though the new state restrictions cry for the commission's input), and that re-absorbing its duties into the Federal Election Commission will save the government $33 million in five years. $33 million in five years . . . in a budget of over a trillion dollars!

If these anti-initiatives are allowed to stand, the Republicans will undeservedly yet effectively ensure themselves as a permanent right-wing governing elite in America, with only a neutered political opposition - which, after 2012, will not be the Democratic party, which I predict will go the way of the Whigs and die a richly deserved death after caving on their principles one time too many.