This little gem:
These states are trying to stop young people from voting
No, it's no surprise but still, it's disheartening. From the Washington Post:
Earlier this year, North Carolina lawmakers passed a bill aimed at stifling the newfound political muscle of their youngest eligible voters. The package of laws, known as HB 589, stripped away crucial policies that made it easier for young people to cast their ballot and participate in the political process. This week, lawyers have descended on Winston Salem to argue that eliminating these policies may have violated the 26th Amendment, which prohibits age-based voting discrimination.
The programs under attack have been proven to boost youth participation. In 2012, young people in the state were 2.6 times more likely to take advantage of same day registration. And over a three-year period, 160,000 eligible young people were automatically registered to vote from pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds. Now these options are unavailable to the young residents of North Carolina.
Laws like HB 589 are part of a troubling pattern taking hold across the country, triggered by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, thus allowing Southern states to make changes to their voting laws without securing federal approval. A raft of voter ID laws—designed primarily to suppress turnout of minority voters—are also turning away young people, and often, both at the same time. Millennials are the largest, but also the country’s most diverse generation, with 43 percent identifying as people of color. In all, 22 states have new, restrictive voting laws that will go into effect before the 2014 midterms.
An undisguised attempt to block new immigrants and minority voters, new laws in Kansas and Arizona require voters to present proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in the first place. That means when you’re stopped on the street by a nice kid with a clipboard, you have to have your birth certificate, passport or naturalization documents just lying around in your purse or back pocket. Rock The Vote recently joined other community-registration arms including Voto Latino to sign an amicus brief, arguing that the laws unduly impair efforts to register new voters. It also launched an online petition to spread the word.
It seems the opposite of what we thought America was and Americans are about, doesn't it?
I'm telling you, folks, we have to fight to get our country back. We have to fight to end campaign contributions. We have to get the big, ugly, corrupting influence of money from the wealthy and corporations out of our elections and government. Until we do that, nothing will change.
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2 comments:
Maybe it's familiarity with Chicagoland machine politics, but I see no problem with reasonable attempts to make sure that the people voting are actually eligible...and aren't using a dead person's identity for example. Requiring someone to show ID, requiring that they register some reasonable time before their first election in a new location isn't an excessive hurdle in itself. If your agenda requires the votes of people who wont register unless someone comes to them, I have little sympathy.
Election integrity is too important to take chances with, and ID is a very small price to pay.
But as anyone familiar with true voter fraud in America knows, first, it doesn't happen, at least in nowhere near any range to be concerned about and second, we already show ID's.
The Republican's desire for yet more identification should fly in the face of anything "small government", Right Wing, Republican, Tea Party and Libertarians should be about. This is wildly unnecessary "big government."
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