According to statistics from the Department of Transportation, in 2006 more than 20 MILLION adult Americans did NOT have a driver's license. Of course most of them have SOME form of photo ID but many of those IDs would not be sufficient to meet the requirements of many of the existing and proposed Voter ID laws. As a result, MILLIONS of legitimate voters would be disenfranchised (or, at a minimum, discouraged from voting), most of them the elderly, poor and college students. Another blatant attempt by the GOP to rig the next election in their favor. I suppose I should be shocked, but I am not...

This is really good and important. Suppressing the black vote has always been the strategy for right wing control of government. White liberals and conservatives pretty nearly balance each other out. But when you add African Americans to the liberal side, it has a majority that the right wing can never beat. The right wing cannot put up candidates that will appeal to the left or democrats. The "Reagan Democrats" is largely a myth. The real way that Republicans and the right wing wings is by voter suppression among African Americans. This has been documented 1000 times since reconstruction. How do you think white minorities in some southern states seem to control nearly all the elected offices?

I disagree with Dionne's last line -- the whole world won't be watching and exposure will not make a difference. There may be voter registration campaigns but they will be taken out just like the right wing did to ACORN.

It is just amazing that a true minority of right wingers, pro-corporate candidates can hold such elected power in the US. It is miracle of vote rigging and it has gone on since Lincoln.

When, following the Civil War, African Americans were granted the vote, all sorts of positive changes were taking place in this country. If you can believe it, a number of important positions in state government were held by African Americans in the state of South Carolina no less, and this in the late 19th century. All of this though was primarily due to the presence of Federal troops in the south, enforcing the laws. When William Howard Taft saw he was losing the Presidential race to Tyler, he made a deal with white. Southern Democrats to remove those Federal troops, so the white southerners would be free to enact and enforce black disinfranchisem ent. (all this history is accessable folks) Taft got the votes he needed, and southern blacks lost most of their political freedom for the next eighty, or so, years. I am amazed that more than a century later we are allowing the rich and powerful do it all over again. It is still about the haves and haves not. As to "emerging democracies," when we were "emerging." you needed to be a wealthy landowner to vote. If we aren't careful, we'll be there again. When will the people stand up and be counted?

So people have to spend some money to get an ID to vote. Good. How much does that ID cost the State to produce? How many trees have to die for the paperwork? How much plastic is used? How many squid died to give up their ink? How much did it cost to mail that credential? Cost Cost Cost ??? So, the 9.95 that a retiree spends to buy a new license to vote, actually costs the State probably about 15 to 20$. I say, everyone should flock to Wisconsin which is having a budget deficit right now and order up a State ID.

Voter suppression? This is the norm not the exception. Until 1965, this was a "democracy" (even using the term is a distasteful) for whites only. An apartheid state. Not a democracy at all, in other words. All these efforts to prevent an expansion of the electorate, and to allow ordinary people to vote easily (as in every other developed nation), have a long and dark history in the Jim Crow period, when immigrants and poor whites were also systematically excluded from the franchise. Before this country knows what real "democracy" is...it will be gone. Replaced by the consolidation of the consumer-driven, constantly distracting, belligerent, violent, viciously anti-environmental, anti-community, anti-worker, anti-family, anti-immigrant, racist, sexist, homophobic, corporate fascist fantasy, that many Americans have been taught to call "the free enterprise system."

The contested election mentioned above was the one in 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democratic candidate New York Governor Samuel J. Tildon who went to bed President elect
while during the night Republican operatives were busy as the Kebler Eves working their magic in South Carolina , Louisiana & Florida !

I realize that the Republicans are probably the primary culprits behind the election fraud that will probably take place come November of 2012. As what happened in Florida in the 2000 presidential election, and as what happened in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election, and as what happened in the 2008 presidential election (because I believe that the Democrats actually won more seats than they did, that if we had had an honest and accurate election in 2008, the Democrats would have had more than 60 votes in the U.S. Senate and even more votes in the House), the Republicans and their cronies got away with it, including that recent vote in Wisconsin for that position on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.

The Democrats always seem to lie down when this happens and get steamrolled over by the Republicans.

Even though it's primarily the Republicans who are the perpetrators here, after the 2008 presidential election when the Democrats had strong majorities in both Houses of Congress and controlled the White House, I fully blame the Democrats and Obama for not repealing HAVA, the Help America Vote Act, and passing a Bill that requires the use of only paper ballots for all elections, state and federal, and with the counting of the votes being done by hand, human hands, not by any e-voting machine which can be very easily corrupted.