Opinion: Treason In Pennsylvania
Treason: the crime of betraying one's country.
That is exactly what Pennsylvania Republicans have done. They have betrayed their country and devised a scheme to potentially disqualify nearly one tenth of the states' electorate.
There has been a movement across this country of New Suppressionists – modern day practitioners of the Jim Crow laws enacted by the segregationists and white supremacists of the past they emulate.
The goal of the New Suppressionists: to disenfranchise Democratic voters in an effort to win more elections.
When generations look back at this period, it will go down as a shameful chapter.
The fact is, in-person voter fraud is non-existent. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania cannot produce an example of voter fraud that necessitates this law. Not one!
Specifically, Pennsylvania's legal team said that the state will not offer any evidence that in-person voter fraud has occurred or will occur in the absence of the new law.
Talk about waste, fraud and abuse – this act of betrayal by the Republican Governor and state legislators is disgusting.
How much taxpayer money is being wasted on this partisan targeting of students, minorities, seniors, women and the disabled? How many jobs have these terrible people created by blocking qualified Americans from voting?
The state's GOP has conceded the intent of the law: Republican Pennsylvania State Representative Mike Turzai told a group of Republicans that Pennsylvania’s voter ID law was “going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”
That is the goal – to swing the election for a Republican in hopes that it changes the Electoral College outcome in favor of W. Mitt Romney.
That, my friends, is treason.
There are any number of perfectly legitimate, non fraud-related reasons that someone might not have a state issued ID card – enough that nearly one in ten Pennsylvanians do not have one according to the state's Transportation Department database.
Disabled people that have never driven do not have the required voter ID.
People that never needed to drive or cannot afford to drive do not have the required ID.
College students would have to return home on Election Day, a school day, to vote at the address on their ID rather than where they currently live – on or near a campus.
Homeless veterans don't have the proper ID to vote.
Many poor people do not have the required ID.
Seniors – especially over the age of 80 – are less likely to have the ID needed to vote.
Under Pennsylvania law, it will be virtually impossible for seniors in assisted care facilities to vote in November.
People that worked all their lives to make ends meet and pay their bills, but don't have the ability or resources to get an ID will not be able to vote in November.
That is sickening.
But that is the goal of the New Suppressionists. They march on, creating barriers to the ballot box that currently affect 5 million Americans.
There is something truly evil about a person that would systematically deny the right to vote.
A utility bill or other form of identification has been a great enough threshold to make in person voter fraud non-existent.
In the actual world where we all vote, in-person voter fraud does not exist.
The only place this voter fraud exists is in Republican talking points and the minds of the paranoid and the bigoted.
About Bill Buck
Bill Buck is a Democratic strategist, President of the Buck Communications Group, a media relations and new media strategies consulting business based in Washington, DC, and Managing Director of the online ad firm Influence DSP. He has over twenty years of international and national communications experience. The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CBS Local.
