Lazy voters for the win

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Democalypse 2012 - Right Said Fraud
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The show continues with Larry Wilmore apologizing for innocent white people getting caught up in a policy meant to suppress the black vote. "In the world of voter suppression, black folks are the delicious tuna - irresistible! World War II veterans and grandmas are just the innocent dolphins who get pulled up in the net."

But I wanted to post that first clip to illustrate this:

This morning, Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson blocked the Pennsylvania's Republican-sponsored voter ID law from going into effect during this election. It's a victory for the Obama campaign, voting rights groups, and according to the sponsor of the strict photo ID law Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a victory for the shiftless horde…

Rather than making a ruling based on the constitution and the law, this judicial activist decision is skewed in favor of the lazy who refuse to exercise the necessary work ethic to meet the commonsense requirements to obtain an acceptable photo ID.

I guess people dealing with "long lines and ill-informed clerks at driver's license centers and identification requirements that made it hard for some registered voters to get a state-issued photo ID" are lazy.

For those of us who already have an appropriate photo ID, this is a non-issue. And anyone who won't get one is just lazy, right?

But note that elderly woman in Jon Stewart's video clip. She's been turned away three times. How difficult do you have to make voting before people will just give up?

Heck, most Americans don't bother to vote even when you make it as easy as possible. That's truly a national embarrassment. But Republicans are trying to make it difficult for people who want to vote, people who are willing to do their civic duty as Americans.

And even Republican leaders - those who aren't smart enough to keep up the pretense of "voter fraud" - admit that this is all about getting a political advantage. (Mitt Romney is currently polling zero among African Americans, and only about 20% among Hispanics.)

I think about my elderly mother, who didn't have enough ID to get her drivers license renewed last time. Yeah, she had her current license, and she'd been living - and driving - in this state since before I was born, but she still had to go home and get more identification.

Hey, if that had been for voting, she would never have gone back. And even at her age, it's easier for her than for many of the elderly.

It's not just the elderly, either. The urban poor, sometimes raising a family while working two jobs, might not have the time for this stuff, especially when Republicans are also busy closing offices in Democratic-leaning precincts. Many of those people don't drive.

For most people, it's not that they can't get an ID, if they're really persistent. But not everyone will try that hard. (And that doesn't necessarily make them "lazy," either.) Whenever you make it difficult, you suppress votes. It's as simple as that.

And that's the whole point. If Republicans had any examples of in-person voter fraud, it would be trumpeted all over Fox 'News.' Heck, the Bush administration spent eight years on a voter fraud witch hunt, without success. They even fired those federal prosecutors who were more concerned with real crime.

This isn't about voter fraud. It's never been about voter fraud. It's about winning elections when you've lost African Americans, Hispanics, women, and young people. It's about maintaining power when the supply of elderly white bigots who are both ill-informed and gullible is shrinking fast.