Voter Disenfranchisement That Right-Wing Media Said Wouldn't Happen Is Definitely Happening

[Hissyspit]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/11/04/voter-disenfranchisement-that-right-wing-media/201451

Voter Disenfranchisement That Right-Wing Media Said Wouldn't Happen Is Definitely Happening

Blog ››› 1 hour and 19 minutes ago ››› MEAGAN HATCHER-MAYS

This Election Day, a number of states are implementing strict new voter ID laws and registration policies in a high-turnout election for the first time. These measures have been found to have the potential to disenfranchise thousands of voters -- typically people of color, young voters, and women -- who are unable to obtain select forms of ID or are caught in flawed voter purges, but right-wing media figures frequently argue that these laws do not suppress the vote.

The right-wing media have repeatedly claimed that these laws are not racially discriminatory, do not affect minority voter turnout, and maintain the integrity of the election system. Fox News has referred to recent court decisions striking down voter ID laws as illegal or unconstitutional "setbacks" and questioned the timing of the courts' intervention on behalf of the right to vote. Right-wing media have also railed against attempts to stop voter purges, despite the fact that reports have discovered "Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted" in these methodologically unsound attempts to find ineligible voters.

Repeatedly discredited National Review Online contributor Hans von Spakovsky has been particularly vocal in his support of these unnecessary and redundant election measures, dismissing concerns of "chaos at the polls" even though hundreds of thousands of voters are at risk. On the November 2 edition of Fox News' America's News HQ, von Spakovsky again promoted strict voter ID laws and registration checks and claimed that "this idea" that voter ID laws can "suppress minority voters, we know is not true":

But qualified voters are already being turned away from the polls or purged from the rolls in states that have enacted these new Republican-pushed measures, despite right-wing media's promises that such laws would have no negative effect.

1. Voter ID Blocks Eligible Voters
2. Voter "Crosschecks" Purge Eligible Voters
3. Provisional Ballots Are Not Preventing Disenfranchisement

Voters Turned Away After Failing To Obtain The Select Kind of Identification Needed To Vote

Brennan Center for Justice: Texas' Voter ID Law Has Already Disenfranchised Voters. The Brennan Center for Justice is already compiling examples of voters in Texas who have been turned away from the polls. Jesus Garcia will likely not vote in the 2014 election because he "is not sure he will be able to afford [the] documents" needed to get ID, a price for voting that has already been found to be an unconstitutional "poll tax":

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[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I hope to see a wave of ACLU lawsuits in every place

this crap occurred. I want to see dozens of them hitting the Supreme Court to slap them in the face with what happens when you gut the Voting Rights Act. Admittedly, they KNEW this is exactly what would happen when they did so, but I don't want them to be able to feign innocence going forward. I want them to know the rest of us weren't fooled by their 'stack the deck for Republicans' decisions.