Voting Restrictions Backfire

The Republican strategy of preventing voters from voting is flawed on many levels.  First, it seems contrary to the principles of a democracy, where all citizens should have a voice in government.  If we were to listen to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks, the guys who invented this form of government, they would say each citizen has an obligation to vote and participate in government, and that without that participation, the government is weakened.

Then there is the fact that it seems they are running scared--they can't attract a majority of people to their way of thinking, so instead of trying to broaden their appeal, they try to stop people that don't agree with them from voting.  That ability became more viable after the Supreme Court's narrowing of the Voting Rights Act in June, 2013.

But will it work?  In August, former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned fellow Republicans that their most recent efforts to restrict voting rights will “backfire” on the party.  After blasting North Carolina's new voting law at a CEO forum, Powell appeared on Face the Nation to explain how the voting restrictions being pushed by several states– including Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, Virginia and Mississippi – will hurt, not help, the GOP.  “The country is becoming more diverse,” Powell explained. “Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, African-Americans are going to constitute a majority in a generation. You say you want to reach out, you say you want to have a new message, you say you want to see if you can bring some of these voters to the Republican side. This is not the way to do it.”

The first test of who could vote and who could not with these restrictions occurred in Texas last week and the surprise losers were women, and Republican women were disproportionally affected.  The problem is that the name you registered to vote under must exactly match the identification you bring, and women are likely to have changed their names, due to marriage and divorce.  Prominent women in Texas had to fill out provisional ballots and they were definitely not happy about that.   I can only hope that Powell is right, and that a strategy that is inherently undemocratic fails miserably.