Missouri Voters Under Seige

Missouri has declared war on voters under the guise of fighting election fraud…except the arguments they posit are not valid, in fact, the position the state Republican Party has taken is in itself fraudulent.

Anyone who has ever wandered by this site knows that I have no love for the governor – Matt Blunt (son of that pillar of congressional virtue Roy Blunt.) I think he is a smarmy little weasel, and I’m pretty sure I could take his punk-ass in a bar-fight, even though I’m a five-foot-four female, and not a bruiser by anyone’s definition of the word.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but the states new voter ID law sure seems regressive in a Jim Crow sort of way, aimed at disenfranchising poor and inner-city (read black) voters who tend to vote Democratic when they go to the polls. Now it doesn’t matter if you vote in the same church you have attended since childhood, know everyone working the polls, and have your signed registration card to compare signatures. If you don’t have a picture ID, issued by a government agency – with an expiration date – you may be able to cast a “provisional” ballot, after signing an affidavit, but maybe not. And if you got mugged or had your purse stolen the day before the election? Not good enough. No ID, no vote.

I predict that if this law stands and is not tossed by the courts, long(er) lines, confusion, frustration, and angry voters will be the order of the day come November 2nd. Vote totals will be delayed, election results will be delayed, and the results will possibly be changed if as few as five people per county are denied their constitutional right to cast a ballot.

It only passed after Republicans used a rare parliamentary procedure to stifle debate on the merits and detractions – it was rammed down our throats. True to Missouri Rethuglican posturing, they are crowing that if you oppose this new law, you are in favor of voter fraud. Nothing pisses me off worse than someone attempting to ascribe me motives! You don’t speak for me – I speak for me; here, in everyday life quite frequently, and at the ballot box every chance I get. And this crew has guaranteed that as long as I am in Missouri, I will be a yellow-dog Democrat, as in I would vote for a yellow dog before I vote for a Missouri Republican.

Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (Daughter of the late Governor Mel Carnahan, and former U.S. Senator Jeanne Carnahan) wrote a letter expressing her opposition to the new legislation to the Governor, in which she stated that this law would “jeopardize the integrity of our elections” by denying citizens of Missouri the right to vote. “Proponents of this legislation have argued the legislation was necessary to remedy perceived voter fraud.” She went on “However, there is no evidence that such voter fraud actually exists, or that this drastic measure would solve any existing problems in our elections systems.” She went on to note that a report by the U.S. Justice Department stated the cause of the election problems Missouri experienced in 2000 (It wasn’t just Florida, folks) were due to voters in the St. Louis area being mistakenly removed from the voter registration rolls. “The problem with Missouri’s 2000 election was not wide-spread voter impersonation or fraud, but that many Missourians were denied their right to vote.”

Blunt wrote back that “criticisms of the voter I.D. requirement are exaggerated.” And “I disagree with your assertion that the problem in Missouri’s 2000 general election was not significant voter fraud.”

Of course, true to form and his ferret-nature, our worthless fucking waste – of – skin Governor did not back up his assertion, he just did what the current crop of rethugs do – he created his own reality. He said it and that makes it so – didn’t you know that was all it takes because the Thugs are so virtuous? No validation, facts, proof, evidence or anything else inconvenient or smacking of a ring of truth need be offered.

Well, sorry Guv, but I want to know why you feel that voter fraud is rampant. Usually voter fraud involved intimidation, schemes involving absentee ballots, and vote buying; not voter impersonation. I want you to back up your assertions. A LOT of us want your assertions backed up, or retracted. (Rethugs don’t own the market on one – or – the – other statements. We can be demanding and pedantic too, if the mood strikes us – and Blunty Boy, you sure as hell put us in that mood.) Not that you would ever deign to do such an odious thing as prove the veracity of what you say. Of course if you ever did, a lot of us would need medical attention, so great would the level of shock be.

On a certain level, young Master Blunt, we suspect you of punishing and disenfranchising the people you know to be off your particular reservation. You penalize the poor, the elderly, the disabled – the same people you punished with your draconian cuts to social programs that have you running neck – and – neck with the president in the race toward an approval rating in the teens. The same people who are expected to show up in force and un-employ a bunch of your sycophants in the state lege this fall, if for no other reason than to lame-duck you, and then fire your ass in 2008, (if you survive a primary challenge that will certainly come, because the state party won’t be so foolish as to think you could possibly win another election, no matter who yur Daddy is, and by the way, he is losign favor too.) Your name is bitter poison on a ballot outside Springfield, and it has lost a lot of its appeal there. I would lay short odds that your political career in this state is over, practically before it got started.

Make no mistake I absolutely relish any doom that befalls you, you snot-nosed, insipid little whelp – so deep is my loathing of you.

And my apologies to ferrets and weasels everywhere – it was a grave insult to those creatures to compare the likes of you to them. At least they are warm and fuzzy, which gives them two positive qualities to your zero.