Beyond the Insults

The revelations about voter fraud linked to the GOP in Florida and other states are serious and shouldn't be brushed off by trading insults. The story in the New York Times has more details.

It looks like there are two different problems, one relatively minor and one more serious.

The first issue is bogus registrations that were apparently turned in by employees who were paid a bounty for registrations. They just filled in any old thing to get paid. This was the same problem ACORN had.

It can happen to anyone regardless of ideology, but it shows a serious flaw in the Republican dogma that financial incentives are the solution to all our problems. When you pay people to register voters by the head, you're tempting them to commit fraud.

We have the same problem with linking teacher pay to student performance on standardized tests. There've been many cases where teachers and administrators have doctored test results. The overarching problem of wasting kids' time by teaching them the pablum that's on standardized tests doesn't produce better outcomes in life, it just produces teacher bonuses. And the same problem occurs with linking executive pay to increases in stock prices: it doesn't improve the long-term profitability of the company, it just produces spikes in the stock price that allow execs to get rich, but then the company goes bust when the smoke clears.

There should be no profit motive in registering people to vote. This should be undertaken by volunteers and government employees who are vetted and trained in proper procedure, not by minimum-wage flunkies and party hacks getting paid a bounty.

But Republicans have been trying to prevent non-profit groups such the League of Women Voters from registering voters in Michigan, Florida and other states. It really seems that Republicans have an ulterior motive with these changes in voting laws.

The second problem is more serious: there have been allegations in Nevada going back to the 2004 election that Strategic Allied, the company involved with the recent fraud in Florida, intended to register only Republican voters and had torn up independent and Democratic registrations. It appears that they're at it again this year in Colorado.

This seems bad, but when you look at the broader picture you begin to see that it's part of the broader Republican campaign to eliminate same-day registration at the polls that's always part of their voter ID laws. What happens to someone who registers to vote in good faith and an organization like Strategic Allied just tears it up? Or, less dramatically, a city employee drops it behind a desk or a blue-haired LWV volunteer forgets a stack of forms in the trunk of her car? People who think they are registered won't be able to vote through no fault of their own because of partisan hack jobs and bureaucratic screwups.

The Republican push to suppress the vote has even hit Minnesota, which is considering a constitutional amendment (an end run around a Democratic governor) that will eliminate same-day registration. In Minnesota you can show your photo ID and evidence of your current address and register to vote on election day. The proposed change will eliminate that, requiring to fill out a "provisional" ballot that won't be counted until you come in to the registration office and fill out some other paperwork. But by then the election will already have been decided. Who will bother to come in and make their vote actually count if they think the election's already decided? People who move every couple years will be most affected by this, and that means low-income Americans, not wealthy suburbanites who live in their homes for decades.

Voter ID and these other subtle changes to the law appear to have been intentionally crafted by ALEC to prevent minorities and low-income Americans from voting. (ALEC is shadowy amalgam of Republican legislators and big businesses like Koch Industries and Corrections Corporation of America, a for-profit prison company who crafted the Arizona immigration law to make money building prisons to house women and children.)

I have no doubt that Republicans who think voter fraud is rampant really believe it's happening, even though the evidence shows actual impersonation of other people is non-existent. They're just like those preachers who thunder angrily from the pulpit about the horrors of gay sex and drugs, and then go out and hire male prostitutes and score meth. Republicans are so worried about voter fraud because they know people like Strategic Allied have been doing it in Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Nevada.