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There are all sorts of ways to win elec
tions. There's the high road: contrasting
one's policy differences and visions for the
future with those of the opponent. The low
road: rumors and innuendo, mudslinging
and whisper campakfhs. Then there's the
, lowest road, known mostly to incipient totali
tarian regimes and rogue states. That lowest road is
to orchestrate victory by manipulating the voting process
itself. To steal elections, in other words.
This is the tack taken by the contemporary Republican
Party, which has in the past few years systematically removed
the right to vote from potentially millions of tradition
ally Democratic voters in over a dozen states. Over a dozen
Republican-dominated state legislatures have in recent years
devised a set of new obstacles to voting. The new laws range
from shortened early voting periods and new voter registration
impediments to much more odious photo ID requirements.
Republicans were stung by widened voting in 2008, when
new voters and easy access to the polls put Barack Obama in
the White House and gave Democrats hefty majorities in each
house of Congress. More Americans voting is better for the
Democratic Party, whose policies tend to favor, in protest par
lance, "the 99 percent." The GCF realizes more than ever that
it's a numbers game. Thirty years of catering to religious fun
damentalism, race-baiting and hardening adherence to neolib
eral dogma has left the GOP with only middle-aged white males
as a reliable voting bloc, and as the country's demographics
shift, the party's success will catastrophically erode. The elec
tion of President Obama presaged the tectonic shift approach
ing, and the GOP went into panic mode, it seems.
Following the trail blazed by Georgia, Republican-led state-
houses around the country have worked to dramatically reduce
the number of Americans—especially Democratic-leaning
groups—in voting booths in November. In 2005, Georgia got
the vote-suppression ball rolling by passing its voter ID law,
the first of its kind. Rather than the 15 or so forms of identi
fication previously accepted (birth certificates, social security
cards or even power bills, for instance), the new law demanded
that voters present an up-to-date, state-issued photo ID. For
citizens without a current driver's license—disproportionately
the rural elderly and urban minorities—this amounts to dis
enfranchisement. The voter ID law effectively reinstates the
Jim Crow-era poll tax. In feet, the new photo ID-based laws
tread so closely to Jim Crow that the Voting Rights Act of 1965
r ipulated that the Department of Justice intervene in South
Carolina's recently passed voter ID law due to its disproportion
ate effect on the state's black citizens.
In presidential and congressional swing states like
Wisconsin, Florida and others, vote-suppression laws could
very well steer the country quite decisively in a direction the
numerical majority oppose. The 2000 election that brought
George W. B(ish to the White House was ultimately decided
by a margin of 537 votes in Florida. The battle for the White
House—and party strategists know this—comes down to a
veritable handful of districts in swing states. Through GOP
machinations, the presidential election might be over before
the campaigns even start.
But is the GOP playing with fire? Like, literally? Imagine a
scenario in which President Obama is unseated in November,
not due to a relative deficiency in his message, but due
directly to the GOFs disenfranchisement efforts. Already, we've
seen Americans come forward with stories of how they've been
denied a chance to vote due to the new laws (Google "Dorothy
Cooper"). What happens when slim GOP margins in crucial
states are accompanied by thousands of Dorothy Coopers who
come forward with shocking stories of their denied rights?
What happens if the GOP is successful?
It's not difficult to imagine an explosion that makes the
Occupy protests look like a tea party. Many will feel, quite
rightly, that the election was a theft, and appropriate action
will be taken. Does the GOP think it's worth it?
8 FLAGPOLE.COM JANUARY 11,2012
