GOP-Led States Move To Change Voting Rules Ahead of 2012

GOP-Led States Move To Change Voting Rules Ahead Of 2012

By Ann Sanner | Associated Press | 9/19/11 09:01 AM ET

Excerpts:

AP) COLUMBUS, Ohio – “After years of expanding when and how people can vote, state legislatures now under new Republican control are moving to trim early voting days, beef up identification requirements and put new restrictions on how voters are notified about absentee ballots.

Democrats claim their GOP counterparts are using midterm election wins to enforce changes favorable to Republicans ahead of the 2012 presidential election. They criticize such legislation, saying it could lead to longer lines in Democratic-leaning urban areas and discourage people from voting.

The process of changing voting rules may be nonpartisan on the surface but it is seething with politics just below the surface.

"We've had nothing short of a rhetorical firefight for years between the folks who are worried about fraud and folks who are worried about disenfranchisement - a firefight which is pretty much neatly broken down between the two major parties," said Doug Chapin, an election expert at the University of Minnesota.

While states typically adjust voting rules ahead of presidential elections, this year provides an opportunity for new Republican governors and GOP majorities to legislate on election issues.

Put simply, Chapin said: "What's happening in 2011 is just as much about what happened in 2010."

New voting rules recently cleared state legislatures in what have traditionally been presidential battlegrounds, creating partisan rancor.

Plans to reduce the number of days to cast an early ballot cleared the Republican-controlled swing states of Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Legislatures in Georgia, Tennessee and West Virginia also lopped off advanced-voting time. North Carolina has a pending proposal. And Maine has done away with a policy that allows people to register at the polls on Election Day before casting ballots.

Each party, when in control, seeks to rewrite the rules to its electoral advantage.

Although the reality may not be so cut and dried, both parties believe a looser voting regimen benefits Democrats because it increases opportunities for Hispanic, black, immigrant and poor people - harder to reach for an Election Day turnout - to vote.

Voters in 32 states and the District of Columbia can cast a ballot in person before Election Day without having to give a reason.

Georgia and Ohio had some of the longest early voting time periods. Georgia had 45 days, while Ohio had 35. The new laws bring the two states closer to the typical timeframe, which is about two weeks before the election.

The move to shrink the early voting window in some states comes as others have pushed to require voters to show a photo ID at the polls.

Five states - Kansas, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas – recently passed strict photo ID laws. At the beginning of the year, just two states – Georgia and Indiana – required that voters must show a photo ID in order to have their vote counted.

Other legislatures are rewriting their state's election laws in other ways.

Florida rolled back its early voting time to one week from two in an overhaul that also makes it more difficult for groups such as the League of Women Voters and the Boy Scouts of America to conduct voter registration drives.

Ohio's top elections chief, a Republican, acknowledged that changes to voting rules have invited an overreaction from each party.

"Both sides of the political spectrum have found it advantageous from a fundraising point of view, from a motivating their base point of view, to call into question the confidence in the election system," Secretary of State Jon Husted said in an interview.

While Ohio's overhaul bans local boards of elections from mailing unsolicited absentee ballot requests to voters, Husted has agreed to have the state send the requests to voters in all counties in 2012.

Ohio's law is not yet in effect, and opponents are working to get a proposed repeal question on the fall 2012 ballot. The legislation ignited debate early this summer on the floors of the state's GOP-controlled General Assembly.”

Read full aritcle:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/19/voting-rules-2012_n_969466.html
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Unions have traditionally helped the average worker with the voting procedure, and made voting easy and not time consuming. Voting has been the prime right of the individual to have a small voice in his/her government, and in the last decade that precious, deciding, right to vote has been getting smaller and smaller…when will it be completely extinguished?

Now there are so many republican based new restrictive rules, that it makes the average American go thru impossible hoops just to exercise his right to vote. This should be instinctively unconstitutional, repulsive to every patriotic American and therefore unheard of to make a person show a photo ID at the polls, to shrink the number of days to be able to vote, and how voters are notified about absentee ballots.

These new rules and regulations will cast longer waiting lines and discourage going to the polls and voting at all. This will benefit one party but not the others, and are being sponsored by one party only, to the detriment of the others. This is automatically unconstitutional, and on that basis alone should be cast out in every state in which the republicans have voted it into practice. If any politician is for the voter, he will automatically put into practice that which will make it easier to vote, not harder.

 

This is so egregious, the forked-tongue criminal slimes won't even be able to attempt to make it sound reasonable.

What excuse could you possibly make for cutting early voting time except for trying to steal elections?

 

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Of course it is to steal elections...they must be afraid they don't have a good candidate that can win, so they are working the room to prohibit as many voting privileges as they can before Novenmber 4, 2012.

That is typical of the slimey tactics they need to even exist...if they do after the elections. I think there is going to be a huge backlash against the republican/T-bagger Congressmen for their stupidity before the nation and the world in the recent debt ceiling raise fiasco.

President Obama will win it in a landslide and more encumbent republicans will be forcibly retired thru the nation's voting machines.

 

I'll listen to your garbage when voter ID laws are in place in all 50 states.

 

http://campaigntrailreport.com/2011/09/19/early-voting-in-battleground-states

 

So proving who you are to vote makes it difficult to vote? What planet are you from, everyone has an ID, and those who can not be bothered to get an ID, should they be voting? If a person is so lazy that they can not be compelled to get an ID to vote, do you think they really care about voting. Having a longer time to vote helps the incumbent candidate, are you saying the incumbent should have a leg up on those trying to oppose them. Is it the will of the people the consent of the governed to allow those who already hold an office an advantage over those who are seeking office for the first time?

If you are going to be out of town, if you have made your plans, and have down all the research to have a nice vacation, or set yourself up to go out of town for your job, I think you are more then capable of calling your local city or county and finding out how to get an absentee ballot. What do you want, everyone to be sent an absentee ballot? Should those who are unmotivated to participate be brought kicking and screaming into the process? If you will not make the investment in time needed to vote, why do liberals want to give these people any help in voting? It is up to you to be part of the process, it is not the governments obligation to force anyone to vote.

 

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Oh please, little guy; who cares about listening to YOUR garbage?

It is unconstitutional to demand an ID because the voting officials already have all the information they need in their voting record books. It is only voters that move frequently that have problems. Each voting precinct has proper records of each voter in place before we show up to cast our vote.

It is just a republican/T-bagger political ploy- their way of discouraging people from voting, and we all know that. After the republican/T-bagger display of stupidity on the debt ceiling raise, which was automatic when there was a republican president btw, suddenly became an 11th hour crisis upon a crisis for y'all. What could be more obvious concerning toxic partisanship than that?

 

Please that littl spat will be long forgotten by the American People by November 2012.. all they'll see is that liberal policies have scared businesses into not hiring. Gay rights? Irrelavant. Class warfare? Irrelevant.

The only question that matters will be "Am I better off than 4 years ago?" and we all know what the answer will be for most Americans.

Stagnation as Status Quo is failure.

 

Seems like a good Idea to me

Keep the stupid people and illegal mexicans from voting, that's how we got stuck with Jimmy carter 2.0

 

How does showing an ID discourage voter turnout? Who out there wants to vote but is too lazy to get an ID? Please America is waiting for the answer.

 

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1) We will both find out on November 5th if the voters have forgotten "that little spat", (the hostage taking of the debt ceiling raise) won't we.

2) The corporations have moved their businesses overseas for cheap labor and have starved American workers since 2008. It has nothing to do with liberals, they want cheap labor and more profits, and they do not want a black president who is a Democrat.

3) After the bankrupting of America, GW Bush was finally out of the White House, we are extricating ourselves from the 2 Bush Wars, and are dealing with the Bush Depression and dealing with toxic, hateful, do-nothing republicans/T-baggers in Congress who are keeeping America from meaningful legislation...of course we are better off...all we have to do is get rid of the republican/T-bagger treasonous deadwood.

4) Wrong! Status Quo as a result of republican/T-bagger Stagnation is Failure...for the republicans/T-baggers. President Obama has put it to the American people what he wants to do to get jobs for American workers; he has put the do-nothing republicans/T-baggers on notice that if they do not do their jobs and make it possible for Americans to work, the responsibility will be on them, and not him.

It is now written in stone! What the republicans/T-baggers choose to do about it is entirely up to them, and will decide their future as a viable political party.

 

So having I.D. is something that the Liberals are against? Why is that?

We are tired of counties having more people vote in a district that registered voters.

I wish they had a 3 question multiple choice at the top of each ballot that had questions like:

1. Who is the current V.P.?
2. What does the 1st Amendment stop the Congress from doing?
3. What are the three branches of government?

If they miss those questions, their ballot goes to the shredder.

 

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Your republican/T-bagger 'spin' is so over.

 

The Democrats are trying to turn Colorado and other states that they feel they will barely lose into partial delegate award contests in an attempt to subvert the current system. I don't want to hear liberals crying and whining about voter I.D.'s when they are the true dirt-bags.

 

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1) It is a birthright of every American citizen to vote. To put hindrances in their way for ulterior motives is wrong, unAmerican, and unDemocratic. The next prerequisite could be only blue-eyed people may vote, or only those under 50 years of age are eligible.

2) And Democrats are tired of DIEBOLD deciding who the winner should be. Or the United States Supreme Court.., or suitcases filled with ballots that are mysteriously found after the election is over...

3) You are making it unconstitutionally harder for anyone that cannot read well, or write well, to vote for the person they think would make the best leader of our country.

4) That would also be unconstitutional, because you are depriving a citizen of their constitutional right to vote. I imagine that in the course of history, alot of unwanted ballots went into the shredder. America is diverse in personal assets, education, and culture. Get used to it.

That some voters possibly don't measure up to your standards, is also squeamishly like the Hitler era of killing Jews because they did not measure up to being part of a super race.

 

1. The moves are designed to stop non-Americans .... you know illegal aliens like Obama's uncle who has a valid drivers license and social security card!

2. Diebold machines have had Democrat errors like those machines registering votes for Harry Reid wrongfully.

3. Stopping the illiterate really does hurt the Democrats... the depend on the ignorant.

4. Not knowing basic civics should disqualify any Americans as they did not put in the time to cast a ballot that was considerate.

 

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Ask yourself this: Does anyone really care what you don't want to hear?

I want every American, poor and rich, young and old, white and black, and the republican/T-bagger dirtbags to go to the polls with confidence that it is their right. It is about the last thing people have left to give to their country, and it won't be taken away without a huge fight.

See ya at the polls, baby. We've been ready for awhile now.

 

Why can't D'Brickashaw read a simple ballot or take a even simpler test?

 

I see you ducked the Democrats attempt to split the delegate vote in Colorado and elsewhere like New Mexico.

Democrats are going to get crushed worse than they got in 2010.

 

WTF are you talking about? It was really a simple question. How many people who are to lazy to get an ID card are really interested in voting? If someone is to lazy to get an ID card, should they be encouraged to vote?

Besides, what about the happenings in California and the liberals trying to send all of the California electoral votes to the person getting the most votes for president? Is this not changing the way elections are held in America, by a minority of voters in California? Should California decide all elections from here on out?

 

I don't think anyone in here cares whether or not you listen to them or not.

 

No, it's to prevent the Democrats from stealing them.

Particularly the picture i.d. requirement.

 

Beef up ID requirements? That'll get the Dems in a tizzy. That'll effect their dead people and illegal immigrant voting blocs.

 

LMAO.

Yeah. By installing protections to ensure that illegals and dead people aren't unfairly voting for democrats.

Are these people serious?

 

I Know..

Lets just have polls to determine who wins!
I mean have the polls open for 1 year...so anyone and everyone can vote often.
Illegals..CONS..underage..Felons..could vote multiple times..
Think Of the vote Ron Paul would get !

Why make it hard to keep and verify the vote count.
Why hassle with picture ID ?
It's Amerika for for O'mama's sake..let the people have what they want..multiple votes year round..

We could let the unions and acorn run the state votes..
Msnbc and CBS run the polling.
A open year round voter fraud system would redistribute the power to the people...Those rich are over represented anyway..they would have to pay their fair share. or we take it from 'em..

The world would be a better place with a Voter Fraud system in place..
it works ready in many countries..and we must compete with the China's..The Saudis and the rest of South America..Africa..the middle and far east.
Imagine America like Brazil..where every slum has a shining house up on a hill.

So..lets make it easier to lie..cheat and vote more often..Democracy should not demand anything from the people...True progressives need to have the tools and the vote often ..vote most.. option would be the best deal around.

I am sure the 10 th..12th and 69 th amendment would allow for it.
or a Presidential decree would be just as fabulous..Just like passing the health Care bill ..Obammamomma will figure out a way to get '.er done