A respected publication, The Nation, wrote the following: "Nationally, voter turnout in 2014 has been estimated at 36.6 percent, the lowest level since 1940. In North Carolina and across the country, the electorate was older, whiter and more conservative than in 2008 and 2010, which is exactly what Republicans wanted. The new voting restrictions contracted an already-minuscule electorate. Nearly twice as many Americans chose not to vote as voted in 2014."
There were 600,000 registered voters who don’t have the required voter ID in Texas but it issued just 407 new voter IDs as of election day. The Texas Observer wrote. "There are more licensed auctioneers (2,454) in Texas than there are people with election identification certificates."
Republicans are rigging the system at every turn because they are in a distinct minority, but that minority is committed to voting. Democrats depend on racial and ethnic minorities (not right-wing white minorities), older voters and college students. All those groups were specifically targeted with the Republican-state and GOP sponsored laws for suppressing votes. These laws are similar to the Jim Crow statutes that Southern States once used to keep black people from voting. Those laws were unconstitutional and the Supreme Court said so. Slowly ... ever so slowly ... the new ID laws are being struck down, but not quickly enough to overturn the recent election, which gives Republicans still more power to affect the voting rights of Americans.
These laws, combined with gerrymandering, which is also illegal, have given the Republicans huge advantages in places like Virginia, where the House of Delegates is 2/3 Republican, even though Democratic votes are more than 50 percent across the state in total House elections.
Writes The Nation: "Since Republican legislatures across the country implemented new voting restrictions after 2010 and the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, it’s become easier to buy an election and harder to vote in one."
We are having our right to vote systematically taken from us by an evil and manipulative power force that we don't seem to be able to control.
(graphic: feminspire.com)
I'm not sure we can only blame Republicans for this. Also, I think the gerrymandering is worse than the I.D. laws.
ReplyDeleteAnywho, I couldn't find the source, but I recently read an article about the historically poor turnout of Democrats in mid-term elections. Of course, the turnout lowers across the board, but Democrats drop off more than Republicans. That doesn't bode well for us as a party. I think Dems need to take some of the blame themselves.