The Republicans have better, less transparent ways of rigging the vote. Redistricting and political prosecutions, for starters. Getting the Supreme Court to sign off on your candidate is another.
As it turns out, those instances of voting fraud are next to nonexistent, in the grand scheme of things, which makes the latest voter ID legislation a bit silly if it wasn't so damned dangerous.
This post was just an excuse to post the lamentations of former Alabama gubernatorial contender Artur Davis over his lack of support of voter ID laws. The man then levied some serious allegations of voter fraud, but when asked by Dave Wiegel to start naming names:
"I choose not to make allegations regarding specific individuals in the media," Davis told me, via e-mail. "As you might guess, the purpose of my editorial was to voice an opinion and to state the foundation for it, not to engage in name calling. Anyone who is even a casual observer of Alabama politics, however, knows quite well the frequency of absentee ballot charges and convictions within counties in the congressional district I represented, specifcially Hale, Greene, Lowndes, Perry, and the Bessemer areas within Jefferson County."
And then TPM asked him to start naming names:
“I know that those are the talking points that some groups opposed to my article have disseminated and I choose not to play that game with you or them,” Davis told TPM in an email. “It strikes me as the ‘shoot the messenger’ politics both the left and the right deploy and I hope you will do me the courtesy of printing my reply."
Well, would you look at that. No answers.
One has to wonder if Artur Davis thought by his virtue of being black, that he'd cinch the black vote in Alabama. Such thoughts were put to rest when Ron Sparks ran away with most of the black vote. Apparently that leads some to believe that black Democrats are somehow "brainwashed slaves on the Democrat plantation," all because they won't "think for themselves" and pull the lever for the GOP.
Have you ever known a salesman who thought insulting those who wouldn't buy his product was a great way of...well...getting them to buy his product? I don't. Neither does anyone else, for that matter.
