Josh McNeill

Tag: republicans

Do you think Mickey Mouse is going to vote?

October 22, 2008 / / 0 Comments

There has been a lot of talk about ACORN. This is an nationwide organization that aims to register low income people and minorities to vote. Recently it’s been brought to the attention of the national media that in some areas ACORN has turned in a lot of fake registrations. You can hear daily from the Republicans about how this is voter fraud and evidence that Obama is trying to steal the election. It’s not.

First of all, the most important point, Obama has not used ACORN at all during the general election.

Now that that’s out of the way, there are very good reasons why this has become such an issue. ACORN was paying people by how many registrations they turned in. The natural reaction for some would be to write up a bunch of fake registrations and get a lot of money for no work. These people have, for the most part, been fired. The registrations they turned in were flagged by ACORN as being fake. In some states every registration collected must be turned in to the election board so that the board can be in charge of deciding if something is fake or not. ACORN followed this rule and sent the bad registrations with the good and flagged each to be clear. That’s it. That’s the whole situation. Now, somehow, ACORN is destroying democracy and they’re becoming a focal point of the election. Remember those issue things? Yeah, all that stuff about policy and the real problems our country is facing? The GOP would apparently like you to ignore those things and focus on manufactured crap like this ACORN “issue”.

Also, for the record, this isn’t voter fraud. Voter fraud would be someone actually showing up and voting illegally. Brave New Films has put out a video that gives a good explanation for all this. They get into stuff about how Republicans want voter turn out to be low, and I’m sure there are some that do, but that may be the unfair part of this video. Anyway, watch.

Republicans don’t want poor people to vote?

September 19, 2008 / / 0 Comments

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/17/uselections2008.democrats

My headline isn’t as one sided as it sounds. Apparently Republicans are using the foreclosure crisis to stop people from voting. If someone has been foreclosed on they want said person’s address placed on a list at the voting stations so that anyone who wants to vote and is listed as living at that address, can’t. A little fishy, eh? This is supposedly an effort to lower voter fraud, which may be true in some part, but my guess (and only a guess) is that it’s also an effort to stop black people, who according to polls and history are much more likely to vote for Obama, from voting.

The one face saver the Republicans have in this little dispute is the argument of responsibility. I’m not talking about being responsible enough to not be foreclosed on or earning the right to vote by making good financial decisions. I’m talking about being responsible enough to update your address on your voter registration card. You can change that address regardless of whether you own the home you’re now staying at. This is a good argument. My only counter is that some people don’t have a home after going through foreclosure. They also may have been forced to move as far as another state and only temporarily. If you have lived in location A for 30 years and 3 months before the election you’re forced to move to location B, you probably want to eventually move back to location A. Why should your vote be counted in a state that you have nothing to do with and won’t have anything to do with in the future? This is a way to redraw the electoral map although I admit this isn’t the greatest argument against saying people should be responsible enough to update their address.

Either way, I don’t see how this would combat fraud. Why would someone be able to vote in multiple locations just because their house is in foreclosure? Why would a foreclosed home be prone to being used by multiple people as their residence when voting? These things lead me to believe that this is just Republicans being incredibly screwed up.

And yes, foreclosures do affect minorities more than whites.
http://www.foreclosurelistings.com/blog/foreclosure-victims/minorities-worst-affected-by-foreclosures.htm

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