I have voted the straight ticket many times. And a few times I haven't. But it was a choice. And Duran and her mascots have just lessened my choices when I step into the voters booth. And they are doing it to get more republicans elected. Don't think they would have done this if it were neutral or favored democrats. And they did it unilaterally. No legislation. No public meetings. No public input whatsoever.
There is something called a drop off on the ballot. If you are not given the opportunity to vote a straight ticket then it is likely that many of the lower races will not be voted on. And because there are more democrats than republicans you can see the result.
Make no mistake about it. Governor Martinez, Secretary of State Duran and their extreme right wing supporters like the oil and gas industry have planned this as nothing more than voter suppression. Someone needs to step up with lawsuits, both civil and criminal, and make them pay.
2 comments:
I don't know if the casual reader is aware of how much cheating the Republicans do to suppress the Democratic vote. It's really escalated in the past four years. Last count it was 30 Republican controlled states that have enacted some type of voter id law, eliminated early voting, restricted voting hours, etc., and then there's voter purges where voters have been thrown off the rolls wholesale. It's a coordinated, nationwide effort to cheat. The excuse they give is always that it's to prevent voter fraud, which doesn't exist. Several cases nationwide. There is voter fraud alright but it's being committed by Republicans, the party of cheaters.
The Obama Justice Department has filed suit in Florida and one other state, but it hasn't made much news. I haven't heard the candidate mention it.
This American legislative Exchange Council, ALEC, was writing a lot of the legislation and was exposed awhile back along with the corporations that funded it -- the usual gang of thugs and thieves like Wal Mart and Coca Cola but also the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- but the extent to which this is going on is not widely known, I don't think.
Do a web search: voter suppression. It's been well covered but the sad thing is that the coverages is by news outlets and web sites that nobody reads except a few left wingers, which, incidentally, is that part of the electorate the Democratic Party counts on for votes but immediately marginalizes after every election.
The best place I know to read up on this kind of thing is The Brad Blog. He's also done a lot of work on these Diebold electronic voting machines, sold by a big Republican funder, that have been known to miscount votes in favor of Republicans.
http://www.bradblog.com/
PS: Thanks for making some sense of that. I heard that on the local NPR station this morning but they seemed to have no idea what it meant -- either that or their fundraising department is writing the news for them now. Or possibly because when they contacted the Democratic Party Chairman for comment he was ambivalent about what their plans were. Not to disparage the guy -- I didn't catch his name -- but I think he had just heard about it himself.
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