The Republican campaign to disenfranchise voters it doesn't like is showing results

Is it already too late to protect the
right of American citizens to vote?

"Mitchell, who was delivered by a midwife in Alabama in 1918, has never had a birth certificate. But when she told that to a drivers’ license clerk, he suggested she might be an illegal immigrant."

-- from the ordeal of 93-year-old Thelma Mitchell,
who won't be voting for the first time in decades

by Ken

So, the system works! I mean, the new right-wing system of preventing people they don't approve of from voting. (This came up in yesterday's installment of the Noah Diaries 2011, with a clip of Paul Weyrich saying straight-out that he doesn't want everyone to vote.) This report from Think Progress via Nation of Change was obviously designed to be inflammatory, and subject to any possible corrective information, it's sure got me inflamed.

Aren't there laws on the books barring interfering with a citizen's right to vote? Isn't it about time the governors and legislators who have passed these laws designed to do exactly that had their fascist criminal carcasses thrown in the slammer and left to rot? Preferably till it's time to cart them off to a crematorium for permanent disposal? For starters, how about that clerk who told Thelma Mitchell, who's never had a birth certificate, that she might be an illegal immigrant.

93-Year-Old Tennessee Woman Who Cleaned State Capitol for 30 Years Denied Voter ID


MARIE DIAMOND
Think Progress / News Report
Published: Tuesday 27 December 2011

A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations.

Thelma Mitchell was even accused of being an undocumented immigrant because she couldn’t produce a birth certificate:

Mitchell, who was delivered by a midwife in Alabama in 1918, has never had a birth certificate. But when she told that to a drivers’ license clerk, he suggested she might be an illegal immigrant.

Thelma Mitchell told WSMV-TV that she went to a state drivers’ license center last week after being told that her old state ID from her cleaning job would not meet new regulations for voter identification.

A spokesman for the House Republican Caucus insisted that Mitchell was given bad information and should’ve been allowed to vote, even with an expired state ID. But even if that’s the case, her ordeal illustrates the inevitable disenfranchisements that result when confusing voting laws enable state officials to apply the law inconsistently.

The incident is the just latest in a series of reports of senior citizens being denied their constitutional right to vote under restrictive new voter ID laws pushed by Republican governors and legislatures. These laws are a transparent attempt to target Democrat constituencies who are less likely to have photo ID’s, and disproportionately affect seniors, college students, the poor and minorities.

As ThinkProgress reported, one 96-year-old Tennessee woman was denied a voter ID because she didn’t have her marriage license. Another senior citizen in Tennessee, 91-year-old Virginia Lasater, couldn’t get the ID she needed to vote because she wasn’t able to stand in a long line at the DMV. A Tennessee agency even told a 86-year-old World War II veteran that he had to pay an unconstitutional poll tax if he wanted to obtain an ID.

Hey, it's not as if the Republicans have been subtle about their campaign of mass disenfranchisement. For them, assaults on democracy continue to be a winning strategy.

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