Democracy Has Prevailed.

November 4, 2011

ALEC Gets Some British Press

We haven't looked at ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, for a while.

Googling this morning, I discovered that ALEC's triggered some interest across the Atlantic.  From Diane Roberts of The Guardian:
Presidential candidate and angry white man Newt Gingrich seems nostalgic for the good old Jim Crow poll tax days: he has called for people to have to pass an American historical literacy test before they can vote. His colleagues on the anti-democratic right have not gone quite so far, but 38 states, most of them controlled by Republicans, are concocting all kinds of ingenious ways to suppress the vote. A new report from New York University's Brennan Center for Justice says that more than five million people – enough to swing the 2012 presidential election – could find themselves disenfranchised, especially if they're poor or old or students or black or Latino.
Don't think for a minute that's not the plan.  

Roberts continues:
Hyper-conservative governors and legislators, working with templates produced by a shady cabal called the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), have pushed through laws to cut the number of voting days, impede groups registering new voters, demand proof of citizenship and otherwise make it more difficult to cast a ballot.
To make it more difficult for traditionally democratic voters to vote.  Don't think for a minute that's not the plan.

Too bad there's no "voter fraud" at all.  From the Brennan Law center website:
The Brennan Center for Justice has monitored and investigated claims of voter fraud for years. We have consistently found that accusations of voter fraud are amplified out of all proportion to reality, and that they frequently reach a crescendo when their appearance would assist one side in a bitter political fight over elections.
But what of our lovely home state of Pennsylvania? The Brennan Center cites one bill in legislation, HB 934 as a "Photo ID Required to Vote" bill.

Remember HB 934?  We wrote about it in June.  Can you remember who's the sponsor of the bill?  That's right, the sponsor of the bill is our old friend Daryl Metcalfe.

Metcalfe's a also member of ALEC.

No voter fraud but the legislation's intended to block democratic voters because the GOP claims that there is.

How they love Democracy!!

5 comments:

Winding down said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ol' Froth said...

So, I lose my citizenship because I happen to be a public employee? I pay taxes too you know, income tax, property tax, sales tax, etc. I'm also subject to residency requirements that those in the private sector aren't subject to. Nice to know you see me as a second-class citizen.

Winding down said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
EdHeath said...

YOu know, WD, I understand that you are mindless repeating Republican talking points, although that really is no excuse for being rude. I suppose you are performing a public service in showing us the extreme stance that some people take. You do realize that there are Republican elected officials, and in fact conservatives would prefer all elected officials by Republicans. I doubt conservatives would ask these elected officials go without pay (otherwise maybe only Democrats would run for office). But that's OK, an entirely hypocritical stand is par for the course.

Winding down said...
This comment has been removed by the author.