(The third Blog in my series on Elections Matter)
Here’s a question whose answer has significant ethical ramifications.
What do the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, New Hampshire, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin all have in common?
Answer: All of them have passed laws to make it more difficult for people to vote, especially minorities, senior citizens, and youth.
What is more, each of these states have been or still are under Republican control.
Supporters insist these new restrictions on voting will ensure that all elections are fair and honest. I have come up with a simple test in logic that can prove whether or not they actually believe what they say.
If the new voting laws are needed in order to ensure elections are fair and honest, then it necessarily follows that all elections up to this point have not been fair and honest.
Ergo, all politicians who support the new laws have no choice but to resign because by their own admission their election was NOT fair and honest.
If, on the other hand, they claim they were elected by a fair and honest vote, then that fact necessarily proves that there is NO need for any new laws.
Now, as of this writing, I have not heard of a single politician supporting these laws having resigned.
In other words, elections up to this point in the above named states have been fair and honest, leaving the inevitable conclusion that the new voting laws have a different motivation than protecting our voting system.
That “different motivation,” I submit, is that these new laws are a Republican effort to suppress any votes that are likely to go against them.
In other words, these laws are intended to rig elections.
That is just wrong. It is also un-American. The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy. Trying to rig elections undermines that right, and, thus, our democracy.
Here is what the facts show. If we have a voting problem in this country, it has nothing to do with fraud. It has everything to do with apathy. We don’t need fewer people voting, we need more people voting.
Try telling that to Republicans.
This is not a partisan issue. This is an American issue. No one regardless of party or position should be permitted to create unnecessary barriers to voting.
We already have fair and honest elections in our country.
The question is whether or not we will continue to have them.
linnposts.com 
“If the new voting laws are needed in order to ensure elections are fair and honest, then it necessarily follows that all elections up to this point have not been fair and honest.
Ergo, all politicians who support the new laws have no choice but to resign because by their own admission their election was NOT fair and honest.”
Your statements are “lopsided logic” or not valid as an argument. Quite likely in the past certain voting precincts have had fraudulent results, percentage wise. And when dead people can vote or when people voting in more than one precinct continues to happen . . . then it is way over-due to put a stop to that behavior. Non-citizens should not be voting. In the interests of justice, correcting bad behavior is a Good Thing to Do. Also, the remark on “apathy”: there are many, MANY people who have NO CLUE about issues of the day or who the Vice President is or cannot identify the face of the Senate Majority Leader or who think that “Ben Gazhi” is a movie producer or CEO of Ben and Jerry’s!! These Low Information Voters NEED TO STAY OUT OF THE VOTING BOOTHS!
Talk about being uninformed. There is no one shred of evidence that the kind of “fraud” you speak of has proven to be true. “Dead” people on the voting rolls is a clerical problem, not fraud, and is corrected whenever it has been found. More to the point, though, not one single new law – not one – does anything about any kind of fraud other than potential identity fraud that has never been shown to be a problem. That’s why your concern for “non-citizens” voting is a red herring argument. But since you raised the issue of being uninformed, Fix News viewers have been shown again and again to be grossly misinformed on major issues, so if we are going to exclude anyone, I suggest we start with them.
. . “grossly misinformed”?????? According to whom??? You’m ???
Quote from Forbes Magazine online (not known for being liberal): “A poll by Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey showed that of all the news channels out there, Fox News viewers are the least informed.
“People were asked questions about news habits and current events in a statewide poll of 600 New Jersey residents recently. Results showed that viewers of Sunday morning news shows were the most informed about current events, while Fox News viewers were the least informed. In fact, FDU poll results showed they were even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all.”
i always enjoy the late-night television comics who send out roving reporters to quiz “the populace” about issues of the day! VERY enlightening! These people think they can vote? You think they should?? BTW, I sincerely question your quote — ” . . . those who say they don’t watch any news at all” part.
I think that the biggest “voter fraud” we have in our country today is the ability of people like the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelsen, McCutcheon, et al to buy elections anywhere in the country, thanks to the Supreme Court’s decisions. They are currently in the process of buying the governorship here in AZ.
Does a law that closes bathrooms at polling places (I think it was in FL, maybe Dade County) fix any conceivable kind of “voter fraud”? I don’t think so.