Spent some time over the weekend therapeutically pulling weeds in our oversized yard. It's far more rewarding than trying to dislodge the ones in the Tea Party-inspired House of Representatives. Or, for that matter, the gaunt, taut-skinned one that has been growing wildly in the Florida governor's office.
Still, the word from the Sunshine State, where voter suppression was well under way, is no better than we could expect. The purge, initiated by Gov. Rick Scott, had hit many snags, drew a demand from the U.S. Justice Department to end it, and has left the voting system in the state in chaos.
If that was what Scott, a Republican, had in mind, he succeeded in making a mess. Some angry Floridians are coming forward to complain that they have been invalidated as American citizens. There is a growing pool of concern by voting officials that the system was flawed from the outset. The election supervisors in the state's two largest counties have already said they don't want any part of it. The state is beyond the 90-day legal deadline for effecting changes before the next election (the primary is in August), and Scott, an absurdity as an elected official, says he wants to continue to counter election fraud that doesn't exist. He has until Wednesday to answer the Justice Department.
In Wisconsin on the eve of the recall voting on Gov. Scott Walker, the Republicans are spreading fear that voter fraud could very well defeat their man even though there is no historical evidence to support that myth. Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, appeared on Fox News to worry that his side will have to do "one to two percent better" to overcome fraud. That's doable inasmuch as Walker has outspent his Democratic opponent by more than 7-1 - raising more than $30 million - to keep his job.
The only serious fraud is the con game to sustain their voter suppression tactics across the land. One of the GOP's Golden Oldie fears is that it simply can't win an election if certain "others" are permitted to vote. The party has long had a partricular fixation on profiled voters - blacks, immigrants, Latinos, unless one is a domestic whose boss will vouch for him or her.
Note to the GOP: Better hurry. Every demographic projection tells us that these are the voters who will form the majority soon enough Got that, Guv, and your allies across America?
If the weather favors it, I'll spend more time in the yard tomorrow. The weeds are terrible this election year.
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I laughed aloud when I heard Priebus' plaint that somehow the state of Wisconsin has to guard against voter fraud. Of all the states, Wisconsin has long had a reputation as the "cleanest" when it comes to elections. Although voter fraud is virtually non-existent in the United States at large nowadays, Republican officials uniformly raise the issue as a mask of their real intent -- to suppress the vote among blocs of citizens who seem more likely to vote against GOP candidates. It's basically a matter of changing the rules of the game during the game itself in order to favor one side. As you noted, if any fraud is occurring, it's being perpetrated by the Grand Old Party. The sad thing about it is that the real fraudsters appear to be winning.
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