Voter Disenfranchisement

Keesha Gaskins and Michael Waldman on Supressing Votes By Law from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

August 13, 2012- George R.R. Martin, author of "A Game of Thrones", has slammed "Republicans and their Teabagger allies" in so-called swing states for what he calls "voter suppression."

In a recent blogpost on Martin's website, he refers to recent voter purges in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa, saying that "The people behind these efforts at disenfranchising large groups of voters (the young, the old, the black, the brown) are not Republicans, since clearly they have scant regard for our republic or its values. They are oligarchs and racists clad in the skins of dead elephants."

-By Natasha Khan and Corbin Carson

August 11, 2012- new nationwide analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000 shows that while fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal, and in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent.

In an exhaustive public records search, reporters from the investigative reporting projecdt News21 sent thousands of requests to elections officers in all 50 states, asking for every case of fraudulent activity including registration fraud, absentee ballot fraud, vote buying, false election counts, campaign fraud, casting an ineligible vote, voting twice, voter impersonation fraud and intimidation.

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Florida's disgraced former GOP chairman says the party had meetings about "keeping blacks from voting"

-by Alex Seitz-Wald

July 27, 2012- In the debate over new laws meant to curb voter fraud in places like Florida, Democrats always charge that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote of liberal voting blocs like blacks and young people, while Republicans just laugh at such ludicrous and offensive accusations. That is, every Republican except for Florida’s former Republican Party chairman Jim Greer, who, scorned by his party and in deep legal trouble, blew the lid off what he claims was a systemic effort to suppress the black vote. In a 630-page deposition recorded over two days in late May, Greer, who is on trial for corruption charges, unloaded a litany of charges against the “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” in his party, including the effort to suppress the black vote.

-By Nick Wing

July 27, 2012- A local election official in Pennsylvania announced plans Thursday to defy the state and resist enforcing its newly enacted voter ID law, signed by Gov. Tom Corbett (R) earlier this year.

Christopher Broach, a Democrat who oversees elections in Delaware County, a Keystone State suburb, told the Philadelphia Inquirer he won't ask voters to present ID because it's a violation of their civil rights, implemented "for the sake of getting Mitt Romney elected."

"To ask me to enforce something that violates civil rights is ludicrous and absolutely something I am not willing to do," Broach told the outlet in an interview.

Broach is the first election official to publicly declare his intention to ignore the new photo ID measure, but he's not the only official with concerns. Jane Golas, a Republican inspector of elections for Radnor Township said she believes the law is politically motivated.