Black People Shouldn't Vote

...Or at least that seems to be the stance of the GOP, according to disgraced former Florida Republican party leader Jim Greer.  He stated in a recently released deposition that, “I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting,” and that “minority outreach programs were not fit for the Republican Party.”  This is the same Florida renowned for it's voter roll purges, so unreliable that they once listed the governor himself as dead.

The GOP seems geared up to play some nasty tricks to keep “undesirables” from voting, with the undesirables being those that tend to vote for Democratic candidates, like the poor, the young, and the minority. In 2010, Maryland Republicans unleashed “The Schurick Doctrine” for the gubernatorial elections.  This doctrine, named after the Republican candidate’s campaign manager, was a campaign strategy to suppress black voters in the state, which culminated in election night robo-calls to majority black areas telling people to relax and not worry about voting, because the Democrats had already won.  While Republicans helpfully point out that suggestions to suppress the black vote were initially rejected, the Republicans rejected the suggestions not because of ethical implications, but instead because of costs considerations.

 Another state which seems geared up to keep the Democratic-leaning from voting is Pennsylvania.  Despite admitting that there hasn’t been a single documented case of voter fraud in the state, nor do they anticipate it being a problem in upcoming elections, Republicans are very eager to proceed with voter ID laws.  So eager that one state leader has even boasted that the voter ID law will help Romney win the state.  It is estimated that if Pennsylvania’s voter ID laws go into effect more than 1.6 million, or 20% of state voters could potentially lose the ability to vote in elections.  This law would disproportionately impact minority and poor voters, who tend not to have government-issued of identification.

"I don't want everybody to vote," conservative party activist Paul Weyrich told a group of evangelicals in 1980. "As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." These incidents of deliberately trying to rig the system to artificially depress the number of voters in a given election are far too common to be coincidences, but instead clearly are the GOP strategy. They also have a long and ugly history. Rather than getting out the vote, Republicans seem to concentrate on making sure only select people get to vote. If you can't win a battle of ideas, then I suppose your options are limited...