Republicans Are Creating More Barriers To The Voting Booth

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 23 states, predominantly controlled by Republicans, have enacted new voting restrictions since 2010: “13 states have more restrictive voter ID laws in place (and six states have strict photo ID requirements), 11 have laws making it harder for citizens to register, six cut back on early voting days and hours, and three made it harder to restore voting rights for people with past criminal convictions.”

Since the 2016 election in particular, Arkansas and North Dakota approved new voter ID laws. Missouri has implemented new voting restrictions that were approved by voters via ballot in 2016. And several other states — Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, and New Hampshire — passed new restrictions on top of those they had before, according to Brennan.

Republican supporters of the restrictions argue that they’re meant to prevent voter fraud. For example, a photo ID requirement is supposed to make it more difficult for someone to impersonate another voter on Election Day.

But voter fraud is extremely rare in the US.

Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt studied voter impersonation. He found 35 total credible accusations between 2000 and 2014, constituting a few hundred ballots at most. During this 15-year period, more than 800 million ballots were cast in national general elections and hundreds of millions more were cast in primary, municipal, special, and other elections.

A 2012 investigation by the News21 journalism project looked at all kinds of voter fraud nationwide, including voter impersonation, people voting twice, vote buying, absentee fraud, and voter intimidation. It confirmed that voter impersonation was extremely rare, with just 10 credible cases.

But the other types of fraud weren’t common either: In total, the project uncovered 2,068 alleged election fraud cases from 2000 through part of 2012, covering a time span when more than 620 million votes were cast in national general elections alone. That represents about 0.000003 alleged cases of fraud for every vote cast, and 344 fraud cases per national general election, in each of which between 80 million and 135 million people voted. The number of fraudulent votes was a drop in the bucket.

What’s more, not all — maybe not even half — of these alleged fraud cases were credible, News21 found: “Of reported election-fraud allegations in the database whose resolution could be determined, 46 percent resulted in acquittals, dropped charges or decisions not to bring charges.”

This has made Democrats very suspicious of Republicans’ push for more voting restrictions.

Studies suggest that the voting requirements Republicans have pursued disproportionately hurt minority voters who are more likely to elect Democrats. A widely cited 2006 study by the Brennan Center found voter ID laws, for instance, disproportionately impacted eligible black voters: 25 percent of black voting-age citizens did not have a government-issued photo ID, compared with 8 percent of white voting-age citizens. And a study for the Black Youth Project, which analyzed 2012 voting data for people ages 18 to 29, found 72.9 percent of young black voters and 60.8 percent of young Hispanic voters were asked for IDs to vote, compared with 50.8 percent of young white voters.

One reason for these kinds of numbers is disparate enforcement. Polling officials, perhaps driven by racial biases, appear more likely to ask minority voters for an ID.

But minority voters are also generally hit harder by voter ID laws and other restrictions on voting. For example, since minority Americans are less likely to have flexible work hours or own cars, they might have a harder time affording a voter ID or getting to the right place (typically a DMV or BMV office) to obtain a voter ID, rely more on early voting opportunities to cast a ballot, or require a nearby voting place instead of one that’s a drive, as opposed to a walk, away from home or work.

In fact, some Republicans have outright acknowledged that hurting Democratic voters is their goal. As William Wan reported for the Washington Post, following the passage of and court challenges against North Carolina’s controversial law:

Longtime Republican consultant Carter Wrenn, a fixture in North Carolina politics, said the GOP’s voter fraud argument is nothing more than an excuse.

“Of course it’s political. Why else would you do it?” he said, explaining that Republicans, like any political party, want to protect their majority. While GOP lawmakers might have passed the law to suppress some voters, Wrenn said, that does not mean it was racist.

“Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was,” Wrenn said. “It wasn’t about discriminating against African Americans. They just ended up in the middle of it because they vote Democrat.”

So despite claims that this is really about the integrity of elections, enough Republican supporters have slipped in moments of candor to validate Democrats’ suspicions — that this is about stifling the fundamental right to vote for constituents that Republicans don’t typically win.

- an excerpt from article "This week’s voter ID rulings could help decide control of the Senate" by German Lopez

My take:
What i find odd is that at some point this doesn't become tantamount to obstruction of the voting process or even treason on some level. I mean, get real get frigg'in real finally, you cannot continue to obstruct the very process at the very bedrock of our democracy. If the majority is not with you, if you don't have the votes you cannot skew the process. You cannot criminally win. In their endeavor here the Republicans are an affront to basic human justice and fairness let alone an affront to the very spirit of our U.S. government. So to win to them is more important than that. Isn't that what criminals rationalize; "To heck with that, I want that so I will steal it"?