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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Mon Sep 10, 2012, 05:27 AM Sep 2012

3 Ways the GOP Has Already Disenfranchised Thousands of Swing-State Voters

http://www.alternet.org/3-ways-gop-has-already-disenfranchised-thousands-swing-state-voters



The Republican Party’s war on Democratic voting blocks is like a game of three-dimensional chess in which their strategies are intended to remain dormant until Election Day, and in the following days when votes are officially counted.

But their game plan is simple. They want to discourage voters by complicating every step for new and existing voters from specific blue cohorts, such as students, poor people and minorities. They’ve adopted new laws or rules that target pathways surrounding polling place voting, while keeping voting by mail—a longtime GOP strategy—free from similar rules. And they are spreading fears that there will be vastly more policing of the process to scare away voters, when in reality that’s not likely to be the case.

While most of the GOP’s voter suppression strategies are designed to erupt in November, it is now possible to identify at least three major areas where hundreds of thousands of likely Democratic votes have already been thwarted—and where steps to reverse that process, if possible, must be taken soon before fall voter registration deadlines kick in.

As Michelle Obama told the Latino Caucus at the Democratic Convention on Wednesday morning, “In the end this election could come down to those last few thousand votes in some of those key battleground states like Ohio.” She offered more specifics, pointing to Florida’s margins in 2008. “We won Florida by 236,000 votes. And while that might sound like a lot, that’s just 26 votes per precinct… And if you think that’s close, don’t forget that we won North Carolina by just 14,000 votes. That’s just five votes per precinct—five!”
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