None of these ALEC inspired [voter suppression] bills passed. Interesting… they all seem to have been sponsored by white Republicans…
Fortunately, none of those bills passed last session. However, we just can't expect ALEC & its teabagger followers to relentlessly on this. They may very well reintroduce their voter suppression "model bills" again next year.
And strangely enough, they may use this latest scandal as "reason to act". However, we should remember why this argument doesn't fly. One is that the county election departments and Secretary of State's office can easily detect and combat this kind of fraud already, just as they are doing now. There's simply no need to scare real, legitimate voters away from the polls.
The other reason should be obvious. If these "tea party" Republicans really care about "fighting fraud", why won't they demand that their own party quit encouraging fraud? Seriously, they need to clean their own stinky house before they grandstand in Carson City and in front of TV cameras on their "important efforts to fight fraud!"
And this brings me to the other Nevada Republican who should really know better. Remember that none other than Dean Heller served 12 years as Nevada Secretary of State. Above all others, he should know and care about matters of election integrity. And especially since Dean Heller has been trying so hard to make "ethics" such a central issue in his US Senate reelection campaign, one would think Heller would hold his own party and his own campaign to the highest of ethical standards.
Yet despite all his lofty rhetoric, Dean Heller did absolutely nothing to halt the blatantly unethical and potentially criminal acts coming from the very Team Nevada that's been doing field for him. Perhaps Brad Blog best describes Republicans' use of insidious tactics (even the "not so illegal" ones) to try to gain an edge in "voter registration".
While it's one thing to target your registration drives to areas which may be more friendly to your party --- college campuses or African-American communities for Democrats, evangelical communities and gun shows for Republicans --- it seems quite another thing entirely to systematically instruct registration workers to misrepresent themselves and lie about what they are doing, in order to filter out potential supporters of a party other than the one they are working for.
Our investigation to date suggests this practice is not just systematic, but may even be at the core of the registration strategy for the Republican Party and the Romney campaign. While it's only slightly less appalling than destroying Democratic registration forms, or changing voter addresses so that they will be disenfranchised come Election Day, it certainly seems as if it ought to be as illegal as it is clearly unethical and even unAmerican.
If it's not illegal already in every state in the union, it damned well seems that it should be.
And yet, "Team Nevada" Republicans have resumed using these tactics. And just before they were shamed into dropping the company that pioneered and mastered these tactics, they were outsourcing "voter registration" to this company. And "Team Nevada" Republicans are working the field for Mitt Romney... And for Dean Heller. Remember this next time Dean Heller tries to lecture anyone on "ethics".
Hypocrisy, thy home is in the Nevada Republican Party.
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