Tuesday, September 27, 2011

In the Zombie Lies Dept: "Voter Fraud"

In the latest quest of Republicans to deny poor people and students the right to vote, Massachusetts Republicans have been pushing a number of "ID to vote" bills. Freshman Representative Donald Wong (R) is one of those leading the effort on the local front.

Either Representative Wong needs to be shamed and scorned for being ignorant, or for making shit things up. People like Wong suggest that there's scores of voter fraud, people who are showing up to vote and using identities of other people. They've even tried to paint this as an "illegal immigrant" problem, with undocumented residents voting improperly. It's simply not true.

There's been dozens of studies across the nation on the matter, and one after the other has simply said that this is not a problem. The latest example is Maine, which after two months of exhaustive study, found no students that improperly voted and only one undocumented resident -- a resident who had been caught and booted out of the country for it.

I suppose Donald Wong is a useful tool for the GOP on this issue. So much of what the GOP says on the matter has to do with bigotry. Historically, denying people the right to vote meant denying black people the right to vote. Now it's being used as just another stick for immigrant bashing, and who better to soften the blow than the state GOP's Representative Wong?

Wong should immediately walk this a step back. Voter fraud of the nature he's talking about simply isn't a problem in this country and we have ways of dealing with it already. Voter ID bills -- requiring people to show their IDs to vote -- are merely an attempt to prevent Democratic constituencies from getting out to the polls. Period. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, and think maybe he was just ignorant on this issue and not intentionally trying to keep people from being able to vote, because I hear he is a very nice person.

But enough is enough. There's more than enough studies out there for the GOP to look at to see that this is not a problem; if they continue down this path as a party, we're going to have to call a spade a spade. This is bigotry; this is voter suppression -- and this is a dark chapter of our country's past that we cannot revisit.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Take a crack at the illegal immigration bill being pushed by Sen Moore when you get a chance.

Middleboro Review said...

A local leader in the Middleboro Republican Town Committee has circulated an email soliciting volunteers to collect signatures on a petition to require 'voter ID.'

When I looked it up to read the wording, it seems that the Attorney General said No.

MassVote indicated that the AG said NO to any cost.

Ballotpedia is indicating that it is not a valid petition.

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Massachusetts_Voter_Identification_Initiative_(2012)


Do you have any additional information?

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