Different Day, Same Shit.

Penn. Republican House Majority Leader Mike Turzai finally confirmed what many people suspect about why Republicans are clamoring for voter identification laws:

“We are focused on making sure that we meet our obligations that we’ve talked about for years,” said Turzai in a speech to committee members Saturday. He mentioned the law among a laundry list of accomplishments made by the GOP-run legislature.

“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

It's not about maintaining the sanctity of the voting booth. It's about getting a Republican into the Oval Office.

The 2000 Presidential Election was a watershed event. Not just because it pitted one Albert Gore, Sr., Democrat nominee and Vice President to outgoing President Bill Clinton, against one George Walker Bush, Jr., Republican nominee, son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush and then-governor of Texas, but because of the effect it would have on voting, politics and future elections. It also demonstrated the sheer desperation of one party to attain and preserve power at all costs.

As a "swing state" packing 25 (now 29) electoral votes, Florida remains one of the most contested battle grounds in the presidential election. It's literally one of those states that could "go either way," puns unintended. On that election night, Bush was trailing Gore by nine electoral votes, with 37 still up in the air. 25 of those belonged to Florida, 5 to New Mexico and 7 to Oregon. Whoever tallied the most votes in Florida was guaranteed to walk away with the entire presidential election sewn up. If that outcome was neck-and-neck between the two candidates, any sort of irregularity or outright fraud could tip the scales in the other candidate's favor, allowing him to take all 25 electoral votes.

The clusterfuck that ensued on election night was years in the making. In 1998, the state of Florida passed a law to combat voter fraud. The state also signed a $4 million contract with a private firm to create a master list of names to be purged from the voter registries, with the aim of removing duplicate registrations, deceased voters and felons who were legally prohibited from voting. Of course, the process itself turned out to be a complete clusterfuck -- many voters were incorrectly identified as felons. In a state that, at that point, had 31 percent of the black male population unable to vote due to criminal convictions, that was a big deal.

These purges most likely played a significant role in the then-Republican nominee's comfortable margin of approximately 100,000 votes, at least until the counts from Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties started pouring in. By the time Gore conceded to Bush, the Republican's vote margin dwindled to bare triple digits, prompting a recount by officials, Gore's retraction of his concession and a renewed effort by Florida Secretary of State and Bush campaign co-chair Katherine Harris to make sure those manually counted votes came out in Bush's favor. Between the reported electronic ballot fraud, butterfly ballots, hanging chads and stories of outright voter disenfranchisement, it took a Supreme Court decision to declare a winner. In a 5-4 decision, the court decided to grant Bush's request to halt the recount while the tally was still in favor of the Texas governor.

The state of Florida, like many of its fellow southern states, has a long and rich history of voter disenfranchisement, and it looks like it's going to happen again.

According to the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, eligible voters will be removed from the voting rolls as a result of the massive voter purge ordered by Governor Rick Scott. “It will happen,” Mary Cooney, a spokeswoman for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, told ThinkProgress.

Late last year, Governor Scott ordered his Secretary of State, Kurt Browning to “to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls.” Browning could not get access to reliable citizenship data. So Scott urged election officials to identify non-U.S. citizens by comparing data from the state motor vehicle administration with the voting file.

That process produced a massive list of 182,000 names, which Browning considered unreliable. The Fair Elections Legal Network, which is challenging the purge, noted that database matching is “notoriously unreliable” and “data entry errors, similar-sounding names, and changing information can all produce false matches.” Further, some voters may have naturalized since their driver’s license information was collected.

Deja vu all over again. The GOP has found that the best way to secure important elections is to stymie the voting and registration efforts of those most likely to vote Democrat: college students, blacks, Latinos and even elderly individuals with long-standing Dem allegiances. 91-year old Bill Internicola and Maureen Russo can both attest to the efforts being made by a largely conservative political structure. Imagine a natural American citizen who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and earned a Bronze Star for his troubles being told by his state that he's not American and therefore, can't vote.

Scott's shenanigans are well-known to the state of Florida. This is the same guy who decided to order mandatory annual drug testing for welfare recipients and state workers, at $35 a pop. He also hatched a plan to move low-income and elderly state residents into managed-care plans. Private healthcare provider Solantic stood to gain plenty from all three efforts. When the good governor's ownership of this company was revealed and his ethics questioned, he transferred ownership to his wife, Ann, described as a "a homemaker involved in various charitable organizations." In other words, not only is Ricky a creepy looking bastard, he's also an ethically bankrupt creep.

The U.S. Justice Department is stepping in by ordering a halt to all voter registration purge efforts. So far, all 67 of the state's election supervisors are complying as ordered. Too bad Ricky's being a bit hardheaded, not unlike a particular someone who was being equally hardheaded:

"The Florida Secretary of State is being recalcitrant," said Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of The Advancement Project, a Washington-based voting rights advocacy group that last month asked the Justice Department to investigate. "He wants to move forward despite federal notice of illegality and supervisors of elections' refusal to purge voters. He should just quit it."

Florida is among a small number states, mostly in the South, covered by Section V of the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 law that reinforces voting rights guaranteed in the Constitution. In five Florida counties and other states, election officials have a history of such of egregious and creative efforts to suppress black and Latino votes that any changes in voting–related policy or procedure must first be approved by the Justice Department or a panel of federal judges, Browne Dianis said.

Florida failed to get clearance for its purge or its methods to identify the people the state suspects are non-citizens.

My mother always told me a hard head leads to a soft behind. If Ricky decides to continue with voter purges in defiance of a federal order, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder should be ready to break out the switch/paddle/belt/Hot Wheels race track/that wooden spoon your mamma keeps hung up on the kitchen wall/etc. If the state of Florida is allowed to continue without any consequence, you can expect other states to follow suit. There's no way Holder can appear to look even the least bit weak on this, lest it set bad precedent and make the Justice Department look toothless when it comes to defending voters' civil rights.

One idea I had that would really drop a steaming load of shit into the state's corn flakes is taking away the majority of the state's electoral votes. I'm not familiar with how that would happen, but yanking 20 of Florida's 29 votes would not only make the state's efforts in rigging the election for a GOP win moot, it would also send one hell of a message -- that you can't get away with this shit without suffering dire consequences. This is one area where I want to see President Obama walk on stage with his big-boy pants on.

With a milquetoast nominee on board and scores of crazy "true believers" at the helm, voter disenfranchisement is practically the only card left in the GOP's reelection deck. Well, that and scores of emoprogs who are really, really fed up with the president not being the Magic Negro™ they expected him to be. Rigging the vote is practically the only way that a guy like Mitt Romney can sail through the elections and into the presidency. Oddly enough, this isn't being talked about much on the mainstream media. Something about zombies taking over and eating faces instead of brains.

Left to their own devices, the GOP would very much like to rig democratic elections in their favor and if possible relegate the Democrats to a rump party that's about as effective at getting the vote out as those Socialists and Americans Elect guys. The natural inclination of the GOP is towards one-party rule.

He who controls the ballot box controls the election. Don't forget that. And don't count on the Supreme Court to straighten this mess out at the last minute. We've already seen how that worked out before.

“This is not a billy club... This is not a fire hose…. This is not Jim Crow…. My parents and my grandparents can tell you what a colored-only water fountain tasted like. They could tell you what a colored-only bathroom smelled like..." "...this tiny little thing that doesn’t wound, that has no sharp edges. To call photo ID a degradation of human rights is not only something that is so fundamentally wrong, but is something my parents would not even recognize…. That [claim that ID requirements violate human rights] is the old tactic of telling us the very opposite of what it true.”

The above quote belongs to former U.S. Representative Artur Davis. Just recently, the ex-legislator from Alabama turned in his Democrat card, pledged his allegiance to the GOP and loaded up the U-Haul for a one-way trip to Virginia. Not to be too hard on the man, but I suppose seeing his governorship chances go up in smoke after seeing every black Democrat worth their salt stand by Ron Sparks was a bit too much for the man to bear. In fact, he practically swore off politics after being hung out to dry by "his own people." Since he wasn't too keen on listening to their wishes in the first place, it wasn't much a loss for the Dem team.

Black Americans across Alabama smelled a rat. It cheesed Davis off to no end that he couldn't lead his fellow black constituents around like the pied piper, no matter how hard he tried. He's politically shrewd, but as David Schraub points out, he also seems infatuated with how the bottoms of his own feet taste. His shrewdness is often balanced out by decisions that leave you going, "what the hell was this guy thinking?"

One of those decisions is his support of voter ID. On the face of it, voter ID seems like a relatively harmless and well-intentioned idea that anyone would be crazy enough to oppose. Who doesn't want to make sure there aren't any corpses or absentee ballots lying around to tilt an election? After all, pretty much everyone has some form of photo ID on them, don't they?

As it turns out, not everyone has a voter ID. Many states don't require one and if you've been to your local DMV, you may have first-hand knowledge of how painfully byzantine the entire process of getting any sort of ID is. And it gets worse if you happen to be down and out on the street. If you're a homeless guy who has an urge to do his patriotic duty and vote*, you might be hard-pressed to have a copy of your birth certificate on your person and having a new copy made usually entails finding a reliable mailing address and paying a fee, two things that don't come easy to anyone living on the street. Of course, those on the right would probably dismiss those concerns as "whining."

Personally, I believe ol' Artur to be wrong about voter ID being harmless. It all comes down to who the many voter ID laws currently benefit and how they're affecting current voters today.

As a conservative, one of the ways to discredit the Democrat party is to suggest that the only reason the Dems must be winning elections is because they're coasting on faked ballots. Just accuse them of discarding ballots or registering dead people and illegal immigrants and the Low Information Voters start wondering about the integrity of the Democrat Party.

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.

If you want to keep up with the pending status of Voter ID laws and other legislation pertaining to voting rights and voter suppression, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law now has an interactive "Map of Shame" available on their website for your viewing pleasure. Just hover over your state to get information on pending bills and current voter identification requirements.