California’s Assembly GOP Leader believes if we make voting harder, people will want it more – because Republicans don’t really want people to vote.
State Rep. Kristin Olsen (R) was a guest on the Broeske & Musson radio program last week and argued that low voter turnout in California is a result of the state making it so easy.
“It’s just like anything in life, if there’s something you can’t have, you want it even more. Maybe we do need to make it harder and that in and of itself would increase participation,” Olsen said.
Olsen also criticized the new CA bills protecting voter’s rights: Election Day registration and the push to automatically register voters when they sign up for a driver’s license – which would include an option to opt out. She noted that “It is not hard to vote,” in California – as if that were a negative thing.
When the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Republican lawmakers in red states acted quickly and implemented restrictions making it more difficult for a variety of constituents to vote.
Republicans use the bogus argument of rampant voter fraud, but as the Brennan Center for Justice reported:
“The Brennan Center’s ongoing examination of voter fraud claims reveal that voter fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is nearly non-existent, and much of the problems associated with alleged fraud in elections relates to unintentional mistakes by voters or election administrators.”
John Franks is a veteran who lives in Texas. He tried to vote with his VA government ID card and was told time and again by a judge that he was not permitted to vote because he didn’t have proper identification.
The laws are so harsh, one Texas Judge was almost blocked from voting in her own courthouse because the identification card she’d been using for the last 52 years wasn’t sufficient.
Hillary Clinton shamed Republicans for their voting suppression effort. In a recent speech, the 2016 candidate asked, “What part of Democracy are they afraid of?”
Clinton named names:
“Former Governor Rick Perry signed a law that a federal court said was actually written with the purpose of discriminating against minority voters. He applauded when the Voting Rights Act was gutted.”
She slammed Texas for having laws where student IDs are not accepted as valid identification at the polls but a concealed weapons permit is.
“In Wisconsin, Scott Walker cut back early voting and signed legislation that would make it harder for college students to vote,” she said, and called out New Jersy Governor Chris Christie for vetoing legislation to extend early voting.
“In Florida, when Jeb Bush was governor, state authorities conducted a deeply flawed purge of voters before the 2000 presidential election. Today Republicans are systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting.”
The GOP knows that if they want to win in 2016, they have to cheat. They are doing their best to discourage and halt progress, and we’re seeing it more and more with ID restrictions and gerrymandering.
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