E.J. Dionne: Run for your lives, the GOP is rigging the 2012 election!
E. J. Dionne get paid well by the Washington Post to churn out columns (note the lack of “good” in the preceeding). Here’s Sunday’s effort. It reads like an attempt to smear the Republicans (big surprise, coming from Dionne) for passing laws that voters overwhelmingly support.
An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.
Breathless! So what’s the conspiracy? Several states are passing laws requiring that voters prove who they are before they cast a vote. This, to E. J. Dionne, constitutes “rigging” elections. Making sure that every vote cast is cast by the person who claims to be casting it, is “rigging” elections in Dionne’s world. In the real world, voter ID laws protect the franchise by making sure that…every vote cast is cast by the person claiming to cast it.
Having ACORN and similar leftist groups screw up the works with thousands and thousands of fraudulent registrations? Not a problem, to E. J. Dionne. Rampant vote brokering, as has been repeatedly uncovered in South Texas? Not a problem. Having the Black Panthers stand around with weapons to intimidate voters right outside polling places? Not a problem in Dionne’s world.
But requiring the same level of ID it takes to get on an airplane, rent a car, cash a check and dozens of other things Americans routinely do, in order to cast a vote — why, that’s downright un-American. It’s a “poll tax” even though voters can get the necessary ID for free. It’s “rigging” elections — to make sure we know that every vote cast is cast legally by actual voters.
Clearly, E. J. Dionne is laying the groundwork to turn the Democrats’ looming defeat in 2012 into yet another bloody shirt to rile up the left.
E.J. is a loon. The best part of his columns are ALWAYS the reader comments, which can be pretty funny sometimes.
Anyone arguing against voter IDs is arguing for vote fraud.
Nothing more, nothing less.
False charges of racism, false charges of “rigging” the vote to hurt blacks, hispanics, poor, and false charges of eliminating medicare/social security for retired and about to retire seniors are part of the game plan for the left. Stalin and Fidel would be proud of Dionne and the rest of the cadre….
I’d make a comment if I could.
But I can’t.
So I won’t.
of course it is election fraud- not only voter-id but in a manner of other ways
trying to persuade one’s neighbor and demonstrate the contrasts between “conservatism” and “liberalism” is totally against the rules
Locally, we must sign in before we can vote and show photo ID if requested. In the fall 2010 elections, the sign-in line ground to a halt.
A poll worker wanted to see one voter’s ID; it appeared she’d already voted and was attempting to vote again. The voter produced her ID without complaint, the poll worker examined it and spotted the problem. The voter and her husband had very similar first names (something like Patricia and Patrick). The sign-in book showed the husband had voted that morning, and the poll worker simply wasn’t seeing the blank sign-in spot behind “Patricia’s” name.
This happened rapidly and cordially. No one in line complained. No one was disenfranchised. Legitimate voters were not blocked from voting. And I, for one, was pleased to see both poll workers and voters treating the voting process with the care and respect it deserves.
What!? Wose Wepubicans wigging ewecshuns?!
get on an airplane, rent a car, cash a check
You left out picking up the prescription drugs which the subsidized low-income medical care programs prescribe, but whose recipients must show ID to carry away.
E.J. Dionne better have a hell of a conspiracy theory ready when Obama gets 41% or less of the vote next year.
Voter ID, while important, is only a part of the problem. Scrubbing the pols of invalid voters, and punishing voters who vote in more than one jurisidction (quite common for snowbirds and college students) is way overdue.
I haven’t read any thing as crazy as Dionne since the John Birch Society pamphlets and Chick publications.