The GOP's voter fraud fairy tale

Another one from The Young Turks - and nothing new, really. But I'm going to post it anyway, because this stuff is important.

If I have to beat this drum over and over and over again, I'll do it. Because this is the new Jim Crow. This is the new poll tax. This is the attempt, which we see returning to our country again and again, to keep Americans from voting.

It comes in many different forms. Florida drove out the League of Women Voters, to keep people from even being registered to vote. Pennsylvania not only passed that voter ID law (and 758,000 Pennsylvania citizens don't have a picture ID), they also restricted polling times in Democratic-leaning districts while extending them in Republican-leaning districts.

If you make it easy to vote, more people will vote. If you make it harder to vote, fewer people will vote. You can wish otherwise, but that's reality.

There are subtler forms of this, too, including the beliefs that "both parties are the same anyway" and "it's all rigged, so voting doesn't matter." Who do you think pushes those memes? Yes, it's the people who don't want Americans - liberal Americans, in particular - to vote. Don't be gullible enough to buy into such idiocy.

And according to this, Barack Obama leads more than 2 to 1 among people who aren't going to vote anyway. Great, huh? Well, young people are notoriously lax in voting. (And old people are reliable voters. Guess who gets the most attention from politicians?)

What it comes down to is this: I don't like that Citizens United ruling, and I hate the influence of big money - especially anonymous corporate money - in our political system. But corporations can't actually vote, not yet. And even the rich still have only one vote apiece.

I don't mean to dismiss their influence, not at all. But we don't have to be dumb enough to believe their political ads. We don't have to let their roadblocks stop us from registering or from jumping through whatever hoops they require. We don't have to be too lazy to get off the couch on election day. This still comes down to us, and the 99% is a huge majority.

Never forget that whatever happens will be our responsibility. It's a collective responsibility, but it's very real for all that.