One-person, One-vote. Not so Fast

Whenever the U.S. is not involved in nation-building, like it wasn't in Iraq, the hardest thing to get across to the Abbadabba Peoples' Party and the Glorious Revolutionary Front is the concept of permanent, unifying principles transcending tribal interests.



Unfortunately, here at home, where voting should be one of those sacrosanct principles beyond the reach of tribal shenanigans, some Republicans aren't getting it either.



One-person, one-vote. Right? Not in Florida. Because of gerrymandering some votes count more than others. Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 600,000 registrants but voting districts have been so distorted over the years by partisan skullduggery the makeup of Florida's congressional and statehouse delegations favors Republicans by a lopsided 69 percent to 31 percent, essentially handing every Republican more than two votes to every Democrat's one.



I'm sure there are egregious examples in other states favoring Democrats but gerrymandering is puffball compared to the assault Republicans have launched on voting rights over the past decade. Under the guise of thwarting voting fraud, dozens of Republican controlled states have passed legislation requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration and government-issued photo IDs to vote regardless of the fact that voting fraud is nearly nonexistent.



Kansas Republican governor Sam Brownback has signed a law that will exclude 620,000 citizens who lack official IDs although his state has prosecuted only one person for voter fraud in the last six years, a similar pattern found across the country.



This is madness. Consider. For fraud to effect an election, it would require a massive effort to -- secretly -- register hundreds, maybe thousands of undocumented workers, foreign students and H1B visa holders from three to one month ahead of the election and then turn them all out again on election day. Or to convince similar numbers of validly registered voters to travel to an adjoining county, twice, first to register and then vote a second time.



Yeah, like that's going to happen! When elections get "stolen" it's never a result of fraudulent voting, it's a result of fraudulent counting...or Supreme Court decisions.



We know what this is really about. These voter ID requirements along with measures like curtailing early voting, denying polling day address changes and rejecting college photo ID cards are clearly directed at minority, low-income, renter, transient and young citizens who tend to vote Democratic and who are more likely to be among the 21 million eligible voters who don't have photo IDs.



This would be like Democrats legislating polling places only operate on the top floor of three-story walk-ups and insisting they're advancing cardiovascular health not discriminating against seniors who tend to vote Republican.



There's simply no evidence of systemic voter fraud. This is nothing but 1950s-style voter suppression tactics to stifle Democratic turnout. It is Republican tribalism at its worst.