Charles P. Pierce on the Brennan Report on new laws restricting voting. An excerpt:
How hard is it really? Our election laws should be such that as many people as absolutely possible are allowed to vote, and as conveniently as possible, and every damn vote should be counted fairly. Period. Full stop. How is there not a national consensus behind that?
People fought and bled and died for this right, and not just overseas, either. Lyndon Johnson gave the greatest speech I ever heard from an American president and did so in support of the Voting Rights Act….
How did we get so far from that, with phony accusations of “voter fraud” being enough for people to erect paper barriers and bureaucratic dirty tricks that would have embarrassed the East Germans.
In comparison, there is an inspiring new video up on ted.com of a talk by Jarreth Merz, about democratic elections in Ghana. We’ll probably never see that passionate level of civic engagement in this country in our lifetimes. It seems that the new standard bearers for the democratic cause today are in Africa.
It’s amusing to me, the same people who can write with cold-eyed objectivity about the intricacies of sports, when they talk politics, it sounds like delirious people. I understand some of these commenters do this for a living – one of the assistants of WI gov. Walker(R-Koch Brothers) was recently found out doing what pauldia and some of these others are, but a surprising number of these people sound like little kids regurgitating what they overheard their parents say, or as angry as a crowd at the rasslin’ match..