A Victory, But the Fight For Voting Rights Is NOT Over

In other news of Florida schadenfreude directed at Rick "MEDICARE FRAUD" Scott, his latest effort to purge the voter rolls yet again has been cancelled:

Once again, Ken Dentzer, Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) handpicked Secretary of State, has unsuccessfully attempted to mount a massive purge of Florida’s voter rolls. And once again, he has been forced to abandon this effort due to his lack of an accurate list of who is and is not eligible to vote.

In a memo, Dentzer told the state’s local election supervisors that the purge would be postponed until 2015. He plans to utilize a new federal database which he believes will be up and running by then and will provide more accurate data on who is and is not a U.S. citizen...

It's terrifying how constant the Republicans have been the last 20 years or so chasing after "voter fraud" by doing their damnedest to go after legitimate voters (who mostly tend to be minority, young, and/or Democrat).  This is me commenting in 2013... this is me in 2012, openly figuring Scott and his ilk were breaking the law doing what they did... And this push against "voter fraud" was something I argued could be solved by making voting more universal (easier to obtain) as far back as 2008.

I didn't blog about it then (didn't start until 2006), but Jeb Bush's tenure as governor was replete with voter purges: the 2000 election suffered it, and by 2002 the effort was documented and debunked.  While then-Republican Charlie Crist reformed the electoral process during his governorship (making it easier to vote) and improved efforts to let ex-felons re-apply for voting rights, he still took a hard stance on voter IDs matching to photo IDs or Social Security numbers that still put a crimp on state residents trying to vote.

It disgusts me that something as sacred as a right to vote could be so eagerly denied by one political party... but I'm not all too surprised considering the Republicans are losing membership strength by sheer demographics, and they've got no other recourse left but to cheat and skew the rules to make it harder for Democratic-likely citizens to vote at all.  Like I said before:

As the demographics turn against them, as their open hostility to women's rights and minorities worsen, as the party is starting to lose more of their base to old age, the Republicans are pretty much stuck with "cheating" as their primary method...
For a Party that's obsessed with the idea that their platform of God, Guns, and Tax Cuts is "beloved by all true Americans", the Republicans do a shitty job of selling that platform to all actual Americans when the time comes and rely more on mudslinging and false advertising to win elections. And now, denying hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans their civic right to vote.

And while this fight may seem to be over for now here in Florida, I guarantee Scott and his ilk are trying to figure out something else that wouldn't involve outraged county elections officials blocking their efforts.  And Florida's not the only state suffering this: Wisconsin's GOP hardliner governor Walker just signed in laws making it harder to vote in that state as well... and those damned laws are spreading everywhere else where the Republicans fear the future.

Just a reminder, the last sentence from that ThinkProgress article I linked to at the beginning of this blog:

Scott is up for re-election this November. Should he lose, his replacement would likely be able to appoint a new Secretary of State before any 2015 purge.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT and VOTE RICK SCOTT OUT!
/rage