People for the American Way: Right-wing members of Congress and state legislators have been passing onerous laws that make it harder for citizens to
October 20, 2006

People for the American Way:

Right-wing members of Congress and state legislators have been passing onerous laws that make it harder for citizens to vote. Despite erecting barriers to the ballot box and disenfranchising voters, they've claimed these laws are necessary to stop rampant voter fraud.

Thanks to a press leak, it is now public that the US Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) commissioned a report to find out about voter fraud. According to USA Today, the EAC's report shows that there is no evidence that significant numbers of voters are lying about their identity at the polls, voting twice, or voting in the name of dead people. Let me repeat that: NO EVIDENCE.

While this has long been suspected by those of us who have fought discriminatory attempts to address "voter fraud" (e.g. voter ID bills that would, in effect, create a poll tax for poor, elderly and minority citizens who don't have or need government issued ID in their regular lives), the EAC report makes it official: voter fraud does not present a health risk to our democracy. That is, it would be official if the EAC had released it. ... But it won't release it.

Please petition the EAC to release the report.

Across the country, states have been introducing legislation requiring voters to show identification before voting, preventing eligible voters from casting ballots. Indeed, the US Congress has tried to pass national Voter ID legislation four times in the last four months - all in the name of stopping the one electoral cancer from which we don't appear to be suffering. Worse, the mostly Republican legislators who are pushing such "prescriptions" are more like doctors who are getting kickbacks for prescribing cancer drugs to healthy people, insofar as they are keeping away from the polls voters who tend to cast ballots for the other party.

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