Oh good grief
Across the country, voter suppression efforts are in full force. There are the bevy of birther bills which Republicans in various states (Montana, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Indiana, Connecticut, Missouri and Iowa) hope will prevent the Kenyan Usurper’s name from even appearing on the ballot.
There are also bills that make it really fucking hard to register to vote in at least two dozen states. Florida’s voter suppression bill is particularly ludicrous.
Florida Republicans, as we all know, are a tad “squirmish” when it comes to their vaginaed citizens. Surely, you recall that the Florida GOP determined that the word “uterus” was inappropriate for young ears.
Whelp, the Florida GOP has launched another attack on the Florida Uterati; this attack, HB 1355, is on the Uterati’s newly-married members — (the bill also disproportionately affects minorities, students, and bloggers, by the way).
Essentially, if you’re a newly-married woman and you don’t want to change your name, or don’t change your name “in time,” then you might consider getting your marriage and birth certificate tattooed on your newlywed ass:
On Thursday, the House State Affairs Committee will take up legislation, HB 1355, drafted by the office of House Speaker Dean Cannon and introduced into committee by Rep. Dennis Baxley, that’s supposed to strengthen Florida’s election laws. In fact, the 128-page bill would undo some of the sensible reforms imposed after the 2000 election debacle and adds a plethora of requirements that would tie the hands of independently elected elections supervisors, disenfranchise voters, dissuade volunteers from engaging in voter registration and discourage many voters’ participation on Election Day.
Among the bill’s onerous requirements:
• A newly married woman wanting to vote on Election Day would no longer be allowed to show elections officials at the polls documentation with her name change to vote on that day. Instead, she would be forced to use a provisional ballot, which likely will mean that vote won’t be counted. In 2008, half the provisional ballots in Florida were thrown out, making it hard to contest.
• Voter-registration groups would have to register all their volunteers and paid staff with the state’s Division of Supervisors of Elections, which would create a database. What’s the purpose? Harassment of volunteers or particular organizations?
• Volunteers, who now can help resolve legal issues for individual voters at the polls, would be restricted because the bill lumps “legal advice” into the definition of solicitation and prohibits it within 100 feet of a voting line.
• Any voter who has moved and shows up at a polling site with evidence of the new address would also be forced to use a provisional ballot even though county elections supervisors now have access to a statewide voter database, created back in 2003, that can easily confirm a voter’s change of name or address. This would potentially disenfranchise thousands of college students.
[The Reid Report has more on Florida's war on voters.]
So there you have it. The batshit insanity from the GOP-sponsored Teabillies continues.
But sure. Republicans and Democrats are the same.
Anyway, here’s a David Bowie video just because “suffrage” and “suffragette” are only a tte away:
And here’s a fun blog post about David Bowie that I just found on Feministe.
[via The Reid Report]
We’ve always had wingnuts using the voter suppression/intimidation tactic. But it is like everything else these days, the march toward more minority voting power, and less white voting power via cold numbers of demographic, is making them crazier by the day. And having a manifestation of their worst fears of loss of birthright to rule this county in the form of Obama’s black face, is upping the crazy even more.
There is not much we can do but fight it any way we can, but I still have some faith that there is a point of diminishing returns on these overt tactics to end around democracy. I hope their is anyways.
Well, if these middle-aged, middle-class, white men think that women are going to sit idly by and allow them to infringe on our right to vote (or right to privacy, for that matter), they’re sadly mistaken. We have the numbers and 2012 is just around the corner.