Right Wing Newest Political Ploy to Disenfranchise Voters

The right wing's newest political attempt to disenfranchise citizens from voting is taking place in several states across the US. In simple terms, the act of disenfranchising voters means preventing them from voting. Methods for preventing voters from voting might include tactics such as disallowing them to register and scaring them into staying away from polls during elections.

Although outcry in response to the Republican Party's conspiracy is coming to the forefront in recent days, strong movement to bar US citizens from voting actually began almost immediately following President Obama's swearing in back in 2009.

Disenfranchising voters is not something new to the United States, and in fact, recent history leads back to the infamous "Jim Crow Laws" of the 1870s, that blocked voters from registering and prevented registered voters from voting both nationally and within their own communities. Disenfranchisements, in those days, aimed primarily at African Americans. Today's leaders are attempting to duplicate Jim Crow results by using slightly different methods that would disenfranchise people from different walks of life.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the Republican Party's push is their attempt to brainwash Americans into believing college graduates are too incompetent to participate at the polls. As unbelievable as it might seem, Republican leaders insist college graduates, after recently graduating from college, "are not smart or experienced enough" to cast votes. In New Hampshire, Republicans view freshly graduated college students as "thinking liberally" because "they do not know any better". Republicans insist fresh graduates need to wait a while—who knows how long—to get their heads screwed on straight so they will be able to make intelligent voting decisions.

In addition to deeming college students to be incompetent voters, a report at ThinkProgress.org states that Republicans are also using the "specter" of voter fraud to emphasize reasons why new voting legislation should be implemented. All in all, should the Party's disenfranchising efforts prove successful, Republicans would prevent college graduates, members of the Hispanic community, senior citizens, folks living in rural areas, disabled persons, as well as people who are homeless from exercising their rights to vote.

Excluding homeless people from voting coincides with the former Jim Crow Laws that prevented citizens from voting if they did not own land. Suggesting college students are not smart enough fits into the area of Jim Crow that forbade uneducated persons from voting.

Enacting legislation to require showing identification cards prior to voting would allow the Republican Party to prevent millions of voters, especially Hispanic voters, from going to the polls. The truth is, Republicans lawmakers want to exclude Hispanics from voting. They want to exclude them because Hispanics tend to vote Democratic since this party pays more attention to issues that exist in Latin communities. Elderly persons, especially those not possessing birth certificates, would be affected as well.

Despite using voter fraud as a catalyst for enacting voter disenfranchising laws, any type of laws that merely replicate Jim Crow Laws, despite being referred to using different terminology, may, in fact, be unconstitutional. Constitutionality is not likely to steer the Republican Party from its mission, however. This is why they actually began their move to stroke the public back in 2008 with their attempts to poison American citizens into believing President Obama is a Muslim, and thus the people should fear him, not elect him into the White House.

Sowing the seed that Obama was a Muslim, and to be feared, came easy for the right wing party since former President George W. Bush had, commencing in 2001 with the bombing of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, convinced many Americans that all Muslims were evil and out to get them. Believing all Muslims were evil and out to get them made it easy to transfer these irrational thoughts to President Obama while he was still Senator of Illinois. In furtherance, the media's daily replays of Obama's former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who denounced certain US policies, made badmouthing Obama even easier for the right wing.

Not leaving a stone unturned, however, the Republican Party also uses the fact that illegal aliens, now often referred to as undocumented persons, continue to enter the US under the dark of night. The media, particularly right wing television and radio, uses every opportunity it gets to depict Hispanics—particularly Mexicans—in poor light. While at the same time, however, the little discussed fear is that the rise in Hispanic populous has positioned American Latinos to become a majority group in the states. This fact rarely surfaces through the media or through any other means.

At any rate, despite fears of Hispanics becoming a majority group remaining under wraps in the public arena, the Republican Party has determined that by disenfranchising that community, they can use the lack of a right to vote as a tool to keep Latinos "in their places" rather than allowing them to continue gaining power in the US. Preventing a transfer of power from whites to Latinos, just as with whites to African Americans, is a concern not only to the Republican Party but to Tea Partiers as well.

In addition to preventing Hispanics from having their voices heard in their own communities, Republican leaders want to prevent Hispanics from voting for President Obama in the 2012 election. Republican hopefuls are of the mind that if they continue to demonize President Obama by calling him a socialist and insisting he is not a citizen of the United States, their efforts to vote him out of office will become stronger if they prevent the Hispanic community, recently graduated students, elderly persons, crippled, persons, and persons without property to vote.

The fact that President Obama adversaries stated, after he was elected, that people voting for him were ignorant and that many of them were not even fluent in English suggests that no one should be surprised at the Republican Party for their continual efforts to disenfranchise voters. It seems the Republican Party, no matter what the state of the country, and regardless of the level of despair agonizing citizens desperately in need of jobs remains, will continue to do whatever is necessary to retake the presidency so they can reconvene catering their best to the conglomerates of Wall Street.

States participating in the move to disenfranchise voters at time of this writing include Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kansas, Iowa, Tennessee, Missouri, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Virginia, Nebraska, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, Maryland, Oregon, and Alaska.