Florida Republicans Admit Voter Suppression

An article in the Palm Beach Post reveals that Republican efforts in Florida to change election laws to restrict early voting were intended to suppress the votes of Democrats and minorities:

“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” [former Florida Republican Party chairman Jim] Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.

“They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue,” Greer said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”

Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist concurs:

Crist said party leaders approached him during his 2007-2011 gubernatorial term about changing early voting, in an effort to suppress Democrat turnout. Crist is now at odds with the GOP, since abandoning the party to run for U.S. Senate as an independent in 2010. He is rumored to be planning another run for governor, as a Democrat.

Crist said in a telephone interview this month that he did not recall conversations about early voting specifically targeting black voters “but it looked to me like that was what was being suggested. And I didn’t want them to go there at all.”

On the bright side, it's not necessarily about racism: “The sad thing about that is yes, there is prejudice and racism in the [Republican] party but the real prevailing thought is that they don’t think minorities will ever vote Republican,” Greer said.

But a GOP consultant who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution said black voters were a concern.

“I know that the cutting out of the Sunday before Election Day was one of their targets only because that’s a big day when the black churches organize themselves,” he said.

According to the article, other former Republican campaign consultants confirm the accusations of voter suppression, which the Florida Republican Party denies. Instead they're attacking the men who ratted on them. They've indicted Greer for taking money from the party, which he admits is true but says they knew about it. And Crist became a persona non-grata when he ran as an independent for Senate.

The simple fact is, more people in this country are inclined to vote Democratic than Republican. Two-thirds of Americans self-identify as liberal or moderate, which means they're much more likely to be Democrats given the stridently radical stands of the current Republican Party.

Minority voters tend to be on the lower end of the economic scale, which means they have a harder time getting to the polls on election day. Things that make it easier for them to register and vote make it harder for Republicans to win. So Republicans want to make it harder for them to vote by restricting registration and taking away early voting.

Come on, now. Was that really so hard to admit?