Blog 16: Revised

Please don't mark as late! - Internet was down

There is currently an issue surrounding ACORN - or Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - a company currently dedicated to getting voters registered. The problem is that they recently found about half of their registration forms to be fraudulent. They are now being accused of voter fraud - primarily by the Republicans. However, the Democrats are saying that by trying to stop what ACORN is doing, they are allowing voter supporession. This has also been called "The Republican War On Voting." This raises an issue which has been raised for years - the suppression of votes. This is what many Democrats claim the reason is behind Bush winning the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

While it is true that it is the fault of the people sending in the registration forms - the Republican argument is that this is a major threat to democracy - and could severely impact the way the vote turns out. They say this is fraud, and it is a felony. The Democratic argument is that the Republicans have far larger issues to be worrying about - and since the issue with the fraudulent votes is being taken care of, the Republicans shouldn't care if the valid forms go through, since it means more people would then be allowed to vote. This ties back into the original claim of voter suppression.

One thing to remember about this issue is that each political party has it's own agenda, and they are likely to have other (self-serving) reasons why they would or would not want ACORN to stay in tact. Since much of the unregistered voter population is Democratic, it is in the Democratic party's best interest to have ACORN continue to do it's job. Since the Republicans do not hold the majority of this unregistered voter's population, they are much less understanding of ACORN's situation, since it is not in their best interest. If the situation was reversed, however, and ACORN was primarily benefiting the Republican party, it is quite likely the Republicans would be the ones with no complaints, and the Democrats would be outraged.

However, the story is actually very clear on which of these issues is the larger one, if proper research is done. Voter suppression is by far the more serious concern. Only a handful of people are actually involved with fraudulent voting - not enough to swing an election. However, "(t)ens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law."

It has been shown that the majority of the people who don't vote are Democratic, so it is therefore insinuated by members of the Democratic party that the Republican party intentionally suppresses these votes. There are many separate incidents in which people (who were primarily Democratic) had difficulty voting. One example of this is when college students were not allowed to vote or were told they were not allowed to vote, due to technicalities. There have also been a number of phone calls placed from an untraceable number, in which an automated message told people to wait a few days for a voter registration packet to arrive in the mail, so they could fill it out and vote. The problem with this is that by then, the elections would be over - the phone calls are intentionally misleading.

The issue with solving voter suppression is that it is a Nation-wide problem, and cannot be traced back to any one individual person. Also, for all those who are put in positions of power, there is plausible deniability (such as if they flag a vote as being suspicious and throw it away, when in truth there was nothing wrong with it, there are laws in place which allow that person to claim that they thought the vote was invalid). Of course, it is not the intent of the entire Republican party to suppress votes. However, it is far more likely that many of the people behind voter suppression are Republican, because as I said before, it works toward the goals of Republicans, and not those of the Democrats.