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There are a number of ways to win an election. Have a better candidate. Run a good campaign. Get your voters to the polls on Election Day. Or, make it difficult for opposing voters to cast a ballot. That's called suppressing the opposition's vote.
Since their blow-out victory in 2010, Republicans have been systematically conducting a national effort to suppress Democratic votes in the upcoming 2012 election. Republicans now control 26 state legislatures; the Democrats only 17. Control is split between the parties in the remaining seven. The GOP has been using these majorities to pass legislation which makes it more difficult for Democrats to vote.
Nebraska and Maine have been the only two states not to abide by the "winner take all" rule in presidential elections. According to winner take all, the presidential candidate with the greatest number of votes in a state gets all of its electoral votes. However, in Nebraska, the electoral votes are apportioned according to the winner of congressional districts. Nebraska is a heavily Republican state, but in 2008, Barack Obama won the congressional district around Omaha, so he received a single electoral vote. All the rest went to John McCain.
Apparently, that one electoral vote for Obama in 2008 so bothered Nebraska Republicans, that the current Republican-controlled legislature is trying to convert the state to a winner take all system, virtually guaranteeing that not even a single electoral vote will go to a Democrat in 2012.
"So what," you say. "That change will simply bring Nebraska into line with 48 other states. What's the big deal?" Here's the big deal. While Nebraska is moving toward the winner takes all rule, Pennsylvania is doing exactly the opposite. The Republican-controlled legislature is attempting to dump the winner takes all rule, and apportion electoral votes according to the winner in each congressional district, the same thing Nebraska used to do.
Why would Pennsylvania do that? In the 2008 election, even though John McCain won 10 congressional districts, Barack Obama got more votes statewide, and according to winner takes all, Obama received all 21 electoral votes. That did not sit well with the GOP. The Party figures that even if Obama gets more votes in Pennsylvania again in 2012, by dividing electoral votes according to congressional district, the Republican candidate can get as many as 12 of them, denying Obama an electoral vote sweep.
Don't look for any guiding ethical principles here. There aren't any. The Republican Party is changing the rules in its own self interest to get more electoral votes.
In 32 states and the District of Columbia, voters can cast an early ballot; that is, vote before Election Day. Generally, early voting is a good idea. It shortens lines on Election Day, and makes voting more accessible for people who have a hard time getting off work or away from school. As a result, more people can vote. Yet, Republicans in Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Tennessee passed bills reducing the duration of early voting. What's going on? Why did Republicans do that? Oh, I see, the GOP found that more Democrats use early voting so they want to get rid of it.
In nearby Maine, the Republican-dominated legislature passed a law eliminating Election Day voter registration. In 2008, 60,000 Maine citizens registered and voted on Election Day. Why did the GOP want to get rid of it? You guessed it. More same day voters selected Barack Obama over John McCain; it helped Democrats. There's a pattern here, isn't there?
And, of course, here in New Hampshire, we recently saw an effort to impose photo ID requirements on prospective voters. We were not alone. At least 34 states introduced legislation that would require voters to show photo identification in order to vote. Despite Republican supermajorities in both the New Hampshire House and Senate, the effort failed here. But Republican majorities in Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, Kansas, Wisconsin, and South Carolina, succeeded in passing photo ID laws.
Why are Republicans so interested in passing photo ID bills? There is precious little evidence, particularly here in New Hampshire, of voter fraud. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 11 percent of American citizens do not possess a government-issued photo ID; that is over 21 million citizens. These Americans are disproportionately minorities, the poor, the disabled, and young people - the sort of individuals who (guess what?) tend to vote Democratic. So, Republicans want to make it hard for them to vote.
Democracy is government by all the people carried out through the election of representatives. Got that? It's government by all the people, not some of them. When Republicans selectively discourage certain people from voting, they are undermining democracy. The United States is the oldest democracy presently on the face of our Earth. The preservation of our democracy is infinitely more important than the preservation of any political party. Try to remember that, Republicans.
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