Corporations, 1 per-centers and Republicans are working to ensure you don’t vote because they honestly believe you don’t count . . . Country club conservatives are converting voting from a universal right of citizenship to a privilege exclusive to select society members. - Leo Gerard, AlterNet
Since 2010, there has been a spate of new laws and changes
to existing laws perpetrated in the guise of eliminating “voter fraud.” The fraud, however, is that these laws are
actually another element of a concerted plan to disenfranchise and discourage
voters.
New voter ID laws were passed in Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi,
Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Oklahoma
voters approved a voter ID proposal placed on the ballot by the Legislature. Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas
tightened existing voter ID laws to require photo IDs. In addition, new laws in Texas and South
Carolina are on hold pending Department of Justice preclearance.
A
survey by the Brennan Center at New York University showed that many
Americans, primarily women, do not have proof of citizenship under their
current name and certain groups, primarily the poor, elderly and minorities are
less likely to possess the documents the new voter ID laws require. “We found the ability to get documents isn’t
that simple. The documents are costly for many, many voters and there are
serious transportation barriers for many voters. We just found really
significant problems,” stated Keesha Gaskins, co-author of the report.
Recently, Rep. Steve Cohen (Tenn.) introduced the Voter ID
Accessibility Act, which would require any state with a photo ID mandate to
notify voters and offer them a free ID. “We haven’t seen much indication of
voting fraud, but we have seen a lot of fraud in the mortgage business and the
financial business,” Cohen said. “You wonder why they’re doing this.”
If elected to represent the 26th House District,
I would make every effort to introduce legislation similar to Congressman Cohen’s
as a stop-gap measure to lessen the terrible impact of Tennessee’s Voter ID
Law. Ultimately, we should be expanding
the number of people who participate in democracy through voting, not cutting
people out from this process.
The National Conference of State legislatures has an
excellent resource on Voter Identification Requirements
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