Vote Anyway

The GOPer crusade against the "wrong people" voting (i.e. minorities, anybody who might be a Democrat) in the states is getting more media attention, thanks to specific stories like this one about a 96 year old woman denied the right to vote because she didn't have her marriage license, required for a voter ID somehow.

But it turns out that the U.S. Justice Department is pretty limited in what it can do, at least before the 2012 elections.  What state courts can do depends on state constitutions.  But that doesn't mean the situation is hopeless.  Some of these preposterous laws can be overturned by voter referendum, and that's in the works in some states.  But the real work is going to be for groups and individuals to defeat the intent of these laws by organizing to fight through their onerous provisions and register people anyway, and eventually to do what has to be done to register and to vote anyway.

That might be a good slogan for buttons etc.: VOTE ANYWAY!  If they're going back to Jim Crow kinds of anti-voting laws, then people are going to have to do what people did in those days--insist on their rights, follow the damn law but make sure you vote.  That's the only way they don't win.  If heroic measures are necessary, then be heroic.

Early awareness is important and fortunately it's beginning, not only in the national political media but in the affected states.  The League of Women Voters in Florida should reconsider its decision to give up trying to register voters because of that state's elaborate new requirements.  And if they are stopped, then it's time to take it to court.  REGISTER ANYWAY! 

There's no point in wasting time and energy arguing with these cynical power grabbers (except in court)--they are so transparent.  These are the people who justify these laws because of voter fraud that does not exist, with the same pious face that they use to deny the facts of the Climate Crisis.  There's no reasoning with them.  There's just defeating them, and their attempts to discourage and intimidate.