Scott Brown Decries Legally Mandated Voter Registration...A Conspiracy To Elect His Opponent
Scott Brown Decries Legally Mandated Voter Registration Effort, Says Its A Conspiracy To Elect His Opponent
By Josh Israel
Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA)s today lashed out at his opponents daughter and his home state of Massachusetts for ensuring that a federal law is properly followed. The freshman Republican charged that by helping to signing up welfare recipients to vote, the state was clearly aiding Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warrens campaign.
The 1993 National Voter Registration Act better known as the Motor Voter bill requires that citizens be offered the opportunity to register to vote when they get a drivers license or apply for social services. Voting rights groups including Demos filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was not in compliance, after a 35-year-old woman was not offered the chance to register to vote when she filed paperwork with the states welfare office last June. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, recognizing its obligation under federal law, settled the case out of court. As part of that settlement, the state government agreed to contact, by mail, the 477,944 welfare recipients who might also have been denied their right to be offered a chance to register to vote and give them that chance now.
Voting rights groups have brought similar suits in other states. But seizing on the fact that Warrens daughter is chair of the board of one of the groups suing, Brown made the argument that this amounts to a conspiracy to elect his Democratic challenger. His statement today said:
I want every legal vote to count, but its outrageous to use taxpayer dollars to register welfare recipients as part of a special effort to boost one political party over another. This effort to sign up welfare recipients is being aided by Elizabeth Warrens daughter and its clearly designed to benefit her mothers political campaign. It means that Im going to have to work that much harder to get out my pro-jobs, pro-free enterprise message.
It is surprising that a U.S. Senator would object to a state complying with federal law and attempting to remedy its mistake when it may not have done so. It is also surprising that Brown would, in effect, say that having more eligible welfare recipients registered to vote would automatically mean more votes for Warren.
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http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/08/659481/scott-brown-legally-mandated-voter-registration/
"Welfare recipients" shouldn't be registered to vote because they'll vote for Democrats?