Mass GOP Joins National Push to Disenfranchise With Voter ID Laws

[Ian David]

Since Scott Brown knows he is fundamentally the candidate of the rich and elite, and not of most people, he relentlessly pushed for laws to block voters from the polls while he was in the MA Senate.

Massachusetts House and Senate Republicans are part of a nation-wide effort to suppress the vote of people of color, college students, the elderly, and, of course, the poor. Covering the legislative flank for the sometimes illegal, activist push of Show ID to Vote, Massachusetts Republicans have introduced a number of bills to make it more difficult for the 10% or so of the population that doesn’t have acceptable identification. Our Republicans may not have taken the brash, and probably counter-productive, stand of Florida’s Rick Scott, but they have quietly laid the groundwork for disenfranchising a sizeable portion of Massachusetts’s citizens.

Time and again, we’ve gone of the issue of voters showing ID at the poll here at BMG. As many as 11 percent of United States citizens – more than 21 million individuals – do not have government-issued photo identification, according to the Brennan Center. Mother Jones generated a handy graphic from the Brennan Center’s data.



Not only does it explain whom Voter ID discriminates against, it suggests why most of us don’t know people who lack valid ID’s: they are clustered among the poor. (The Blacks, Asians, and Latino’s lacking a valid photo ID are disproportionately poor).

More:
http://bluemassgroup.com/2012/07/mass-gop-joins-national-push-to-disenfranchise-with-voter-id-laws/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bluemassgroup%2Ffront+%28Blue+Mass+Group+-+Front+Page%29