Obama Campaign Confronts Voter ID Laws

[alp227]

Source: New York Times

Field workers for President Obama’s campaign fanned across the country this weekend in an effort to confront a barrage of new voter identification laws that strategists say threaten the campaign’s hopes for registering new voters ahead of the November election.

In Wisconsin, where a new state law requires those registering voters to be deputized in each of the state’s 1,800 municipalities, the campaign sent a team of trainers armed with instructions for complying with the new regulations.

In Florida, the campaign’s voter registration aides traveled across the state to train volunteers on a new requirement that voter registration signatures be handed into state officials within 48 hours after they are collected.

And in Ohio, Mr. Obama’s staff members are beginning outreach to let voters know about new laws that discourage precinct workers from telling voters where to go if they show up at the wrong precinct.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/us/politics/obama-campaign-confronts-voter-id-laws.html

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"Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome — good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." --Paul Weyrich, conservative icon and founder of such organizations as the Heritage Foundation and Free Congress Foundation

That was in 1980. Is history not repeating itself this year?

[goclark]

1. Finally, the clock is ticking

Please get this stopped, NOW!

What have the Democrats been waiting for ~~!

[immoderate]

2. Stop it? They're organizing compliance!

Unless some risk intervenes, Obama should have the justice department looking into these voting laws, on constitutional grounds. Obama may wait until he can appoint another justice before tries it.


--imm

[canuckledragger]

4. I believe the poster meant

stopping the implementation of voter-suppression laws

[immoderate]

5. Hard to tell. There are still some in the pipe, I think.

And there will be registered people who can't vote, because they haven't the right documents, to prove their identity, to people who've known them for decades.

--imm

[canuckledragger]

6. That's a given anyway..

.. and once these folks get 'proper' ID another republican idiot will come along & try to change the rules again.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

7. Holder and the Civil Rights Commission has actually been investigating this

for a couple of years now. The problem is that voting laws are in the purview of the states and they have, vis-a-vis ALEC, have come up with very clever ways of getting around federal civil rights/voting rights laws. It's sad, but that's how it goes...

[msongs]

3. gee maybe Mr. Obama could do this himself in a very public and committed way since

most of the voters being disenfranchised are democrats who would vote for him. Some self-service leadership would be a good thing, and name names, don't just make glib remarks. Then again that would require leadership and vision of the highest order.