Republicans And Their Hard-Knock Life: The Curse Of Seeing All Those Dead People Vote!

ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, together with Republican-led state houses throughout the country, have combined forces in the last couple of years in an attempt to exorcise all of those ghosts that, even after death, continue to vote in US elections. South Carolina's Republican Governor Nikki Haley has a particularly vexing problem with ghosts showing up at the polls, so she signed a new voter ID law that she was convinced would once and for all expel the voting dead.

The state of South Carolina identified and publicized 953 instances of voter fraud that involved people supposedly assuming the names of dead people in order to cast a ballot over the course of the last seven years and included almost 75 elections. They used those statistics to justify the passage of a voter ID law that their own research concluded could have disenfranchised up to 85,000 legitimate voters, but in the state of South Carolina, 953 possible cases of voter fraud far outweighed the rights of those 85,000 voters who did not have the newly mandated voting documents. All those dead people!

The only problem with the 953 South Carolina cases is that further investigation by the state itself has revealed that there was no fraud. In some of the cases, people voted using absentee ballots and died just prior to the elections. In still many other cases, it was discovered that the problem was clerical errors. Some of the 'dead" people were actually still alive, but DMV records said they had died. Gotta love the DMV! The most intriguing cases were errors committed by poll workers who marked people as having voted, but later realized that they hadn't.

Because the state of South Carolina has such an egregious history of voting rights violations, the U.S. Department of Justice reviews any and all changes to voter laws in the state and the Department of Justice has concluded that this latest attempt by the state would disenfranchise black voters. The state itself has concluded that up to 20% of the state's black voters do not have the newly required voter ID. South Carolina has sued and the legislation is being held up in the courts.

South Carolina is not the only Republican-governed state that has passed new voting regulations. They are just one of over thirty states with these new laws on the books. What makes South Carolina different is that the Department of Justice must have their law reviewed. The other states are free to do as they see fit.

Who has helped these states pass these laws? ALEC!

ALEC is that shady, dare I say, crooked organization that mates large corporations with conservative state lawmakers. Their sole intention is to provide conservative state legislators with pre-written laws designed to protect corporate interests. They are responsible for most of the new voter ID laws that have been passed in this country. Honorable intentions? Not on your life! These laws have never been intended to stop a widespread epidemic of voter fraud. The number of legitimate voter fraud cases prosecuted in this country is miniscule, because it doesn't happen! The real intention of voter ID laws is to disenfranchise voters who may be inclined to vote liberal.

The people who will be most affected by voter ID laws will be minorities, the poor, disabled, elderly and students, who tend to vote liberal. So, of course, if ALEC and the GOP can keep these people from voting, they feel that they will have a better chance of winning elections. There simply are not that many dead people that vote...And there is no evidence that people sit and scour the obituaries and then run off to assume the voting identities of the dead...

The Brennan Center for Justice reports that::

• Burdensome photo ID or proof of citizenship requirements for voting could block millions of eligible American voters without addressing any real problem. Although most Americans have government-issued photo ID, studies show that as many as 12% of eligible voters nationwide do not; the percentage is even higher for seniors, people of color, people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students. Many of those citizens find it hard to get such IDs, because the underlying documentation (the ID one needs to get ID) is often difficult to come by. Those difficulties will increase substantially if documentary proof of citizenship is needed to vote or to obtain the identification required to vote.

Every state legislature has an ALEC chairman. Their job is to recruit members for ALEC and to help them get in lock step and keep them in lock step with the corporate agenda. Why, you might ask? Money! Doesn't everything boil down to money?

ALEC has huge meetings, generously giving what they call 'scholarships'; in essence, paying your legislators to attend. The meetings are secret and only members can attend. They push, push, push their agenda. Is it an agenda that is in your interests? No! The agenda, again, is to push legislation that is favorable to the largest and richest of corporations. They help your lazy legislators by providing them with pre-written laws designed to be passed in your states; not for your benefit, for theirs. They teach them how to get the laws passed, the words to use to convince their colleagues that these laws are beneficial, and ALEC backs them with...money...ALEC determines what laws your legislatures will concentrate on passing, year after year. While your lawmakers get paid by you for legislating, they abdicate their responsibilities and farm out your future to ALEC.

According to the Center for Media and Democracy, almost every voter ID law in the country shares common elements that have been provided by the group, ALEC.

Nikki Haley is a member of ALEC. Most GOP state legislators are. I don't know if ALEC suggested that Haley should start seeing dead people vote or if that was her own creative idea. Regardless, the Justice Department isn't buying her fear of voting ghosts...

The Brennan Center has published several reports estimating that as many as 5 million voters will be disenfranchised by the GOP-ALEC alliance that has worked together to pass restrictive voting laws. The laws are aimed at, not dead voters, but living voters who are legally entitled to cast a ballot in this country. Many people may wonder what the fuss is all about. Just buy a picture ID. Just get your birth certificate, or in the state of Texas, buy a gun and a carry permit. When it costs someone money to vote, that is called a poll tax, and poll taxes are illegal!

Finally, if there was a problem with voter fraud, voter ID laws might be necessary, but there simply isn't a problem. This is just another case of subterfuge. The GOP and ALEC have the desire to prevent people from voting in a way which may not be beneficial to their candidates and their issues, so they block their votes.

It is shameful!