The Republican Plot to Kill Democracy: Why It Wants To Neutralize the Vote

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/republican-plot-kill-democracy



The Presidential Commission on Election Administration has released its report and recommendations, and reasonable people everywhere rejoice. The bipartisan commission was formed by Barack Obama following the 2012 election, which was a bit of an embarrassment for a nation that considers itself something of a model democracy. Across the country (but mainly in urban areas and black and Latino neighborhoods), Election Day featured hours-long lines, broken voting machines, inaccurate voter rolls and confusing ballots.

“The Editors” of Bloomberg View declare the report “so resolutely practical that it’s hard to imagine its recommendations stirring much debate, much less controversy.” (They acknowledge that “not all politicians want to make it easier for Americans to vote,” but they fail to specify that that’s more or less part of the Republican Party platform.) Jeffrey Toobin calls it “an unexpectedly bold document.”

The commission’s key recommendations are eminently reasonable: Expand online voter registration, expand early voting, improve and modernize voting machines, and improve efficiency and alleviate wait times at polling places with better training and techniques that have been proven to work elsewhere. Everyone should be able to support all of this, and, best of all, the commission’s recommendations don’t require any federal action at all. They just need to be voluntarily implemented by state and local officials. And how hard could it be to convince state and local officials to make voting easier?

Here’s the first problem with the commission’s report: We already know what’s wrong with American elections and we already know how we should fix those problems. The last bipartisan commission on American elections released its report and recommendations less than a decade ago. That report followed up a major piece of federal election reform, the Help America Vote Act, which was the bipartisan response to the travesty that was the 2000 election. The Help America Vote Act created another bipartisan commission dedicated to making voting easier, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. That commission is supposed to have two commissioners from each party. Republicans in Congress have effectively killed that commission by refusing to appoint or approve any commissioners at all.

[rock]

1. If you agree with me that the republic party is a failed party

then you see why: it's much close to a fascist party than it is to a democratic one (i.e. a party fit for a Democracy). Perhaps the most telling factor is their inability to accept democratically arrived at laws which they continue to contest, defund, deride, mock, etc.

[lonestarnot]

2. Failed party or not, they sure have put a monkey wrench into a democratic process. How can a failed

pile of shit exercise such control?

[rock]

3. Cheating, Lying, Hypocrisy, Vote Tampering, Expoiting, Conning,

You know, things that are dishonest and anti-Democratic. Plus they have the rich on their side and own the media.

[lonestarnot]

4. Yeah that about covers it.