If you like Voter ID laws, You'll Love the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program

And what exactly is this innocuous-sounding sleep-inducing Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, you ask?  Think of it as Voter ID on steroids.  With those commie federal judges overturning one Voter Suppression law after another, this is the GOP's latest end-run in their relentless drive to crack down on “Voter Fraud” (i.e. Voting While Black).

GOP-controlled states  — including some of the battleground/swing states — are using this program to prevent people from voting more than once.  The program supposedly crosschecks registered voters by their full name (including all middle names or initials, Jr. or Sr. or a Roman numeral after the last name, etc.) and the last four digits of the person's Social Security number — in order to prevent people from voting multiple times in different states.  But for some odd reason, middle names and Jr./Sr./III keep getting omitted accidentally, and the 4-digit Social Security numbers are surprisingly inaccurate.  How conveeenient!

If your name is John Mortimer Smith III, and your middle name gets omitted — good luck trying to vote if you live in a red state.  And it gets worse.  These crosscheck lists are being targeted at certain ethnic groups (guess which ones).  Here's how they do it.

From the article:

“If your name is Washington, there's an 89 percent chance you're African-American. If your last name is Hernandez, there's a 94 percent chance you're Hispanic. If your name is Kim, there's a 95 percent chance you're Asian...God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states.”

Anyway, check out the article; it's a lot more detailed and more sinister than my brief summary.

Kris Kobach is the mastermind behind the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program.   Personally I think Kris Kobach should have every possible conspiracy charge and RICO violation thrown at him, but that's just me.

If voting twice is a felony, isn't it also illegal to deliberately cheat millions of legitimate voters out of their right to vote?  [Just a rhetorical question]

Confirmed: Voter ID Laws Reduce Turnout Among Black Voters; Supreme Court Approves

The Government Accountability Office has confirmed what we already suspected.  Dozens of ALEC/GOP-instigated Voter ID laws have delivered their intended results:  reduced turnout among black, young and elderly voters.  Mission Accomplished.

And these voter suppression laws are being approved and encouraged by the Corporate Arm of the Republican Party (formerly known as the U.S. Supreme Court).  North Carolina's new Keep the Nigras Out of the Voting Booth law had been delayed until after the November election by a federal appeals court.

The Supreme Court justices, recognizing the urgency involved, took time out from their busy schedule to quickly overturn the Appeals Court's decision.  So now it's full speed ahead for North Carolina in their mission to eliminate early voting and voter registration drives (the Voter ID part of North Carolina's Jim Crow law doesn't take effect until 2016).

South Carolina: “The South’s Inbreds Will Rise Again!”

Mitt Romney’s vulture capitalism has already spread beyond the blogosphere and into the mainstream media.  It’s part of the national conversation.  And now the same thing is about to happen to the red states’ voter suppression laws — also known as Jim Crow 2.0.

Dozens of red states have marched in lockstep to pass these so-called “Voter ID” laws.  These laws are supposedly necessary to fight the non-existent problem of “voter fraud.”  Millions of qualified voters will be prevented from voting by these new Jim Crow laws — mostly the elderly, people of low income, minorities and the young.  Be sheer coincidence, the people in those groups tend to vote Democratic.  How conveeenient.

This interstate march-in-unison voter suppression drive has been financed by Koch Industries (among others) and choreographed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  Until recently, this issue was confined to liberal blogs and a few non-mainstream news sites.

But now, with the South Carolina primary in full swing, South Carolina’s voter suppression law has burst into the mainstream media and the public consciousness.  The Justice Department has already started cracking down on South Carolina’s Jim Crow 2.0 law.  Republican candidates are dredging up the same tired “states’ rights” rhetoric they’ve been spouting since the Civil War.  This guarantees that Obama won’t carry South Carolina next November; then again he didn’t have a chance in South Carolina anyway.

But what about the rest of the country?  South Carolina voters will be perfectly happy to keep on keepin' the nigras down, as they’ve been doing since the 1800s.  But most of the country isn’t South Carolina.  When voter suppression laws are discussed over backyard fences and in coffee shops all across the country, how will the issue play out?  Or as the old saying goes, “will it play in Peoria?”

Meanwhile, back in South Carolina, the local rednecks are having a ‘bacca-spittin’ hissy-fit over the National Guard forcing public schools to allow colored children inside.  Er, I mean, the Justice Department cracking down on voter suppression laws.  Rick Perry — yesterday he was a raging leftwing populist; today he’s back to his old redneck self — said:

“Each of our states are under assault right now by this administration.  We may be under assault — South Carolina, they're actually at war with you.”

Yee Haw!  Let’s get them inbreds all fired up.

And last week Rick Santorum said the 2012 election will be the most important election since 1860.  He’s since revised that date to 1980.  Too late, Frothy — you can't un-ring a bell; you can't push the toothpaste back into the tube.

Justice Department Might Investigate States’ Voter ID laws

One can hope, anyway. Senator Michael Bennett (D—Colorado) and fifteen other senators have written to Attorney General Eric Holder, requesting that the Justice Department examine whether the red states’ “Suppress The Vote” laws are in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

Their letter says in part:

“…These measures have the potential to block millions of eligible American voters…Studies have shown that as high as 11% of eligible voters nationwide do not have a government-issued ID. This percentage is higher for seniors, racial minorities, low-income voters and students…the burden of proof in this preclearance process is on those covered jurisdictions, which must be able to show that legal changes will not have a discriminatory impact on minority voters...The Department should also exercise vigilance in overseeing whether these laws are implemented in a way that discriminates against protected classes in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.”

Will the Obama Administration act on this request? Even if they do, there’s another possible unintended consequence:

The Corporate Arm of the Republican Party (formerly known as the Supreme Court) might solve the problem by overturning the Voting Rights Act.