Pete Bungum's BLOG - Day 26,127 in my journey through life.

Today is Friday, June 1, 2012 - a beautiful sunny day in the 70s. I'm grateful today for another day of "I'm HIV."

This morning I did yoga, lifted weights and walked 45 minutes = 2.5 miles for a June total of 2.5 miles. My weight was down to 160.8 pounds. I just might make that goal of 159 pounds, which would be only 14 pounds over my high school weight of 145 pounds.

MY THOUGHTS TODAY DEAL WITH A QUESTION I'VE HAD FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS.
My question deals with politics and what is happening in this country and what has happened to the Republican Party. SO WHAT IS MY QUESTION/

My QUESTION is: In the last two years why have the Republican governors and the Republican legislatures in 25 states passed voter I.D. laws? The Republican Party was the party that promoted voter rights for all our citizens. After the Civil War it was the Republicans who added
Amendments 13, 14 and 15 to the constitution. And it was the Southern Democrats who passed the Jim Crow laws that prevented the blacks from voting for over a hundred years.

Amendment !5, adopted on March 30, 1870,  says:
Section 1. THE RIGHT OF CITIZENS OF THE U.S. TO VOTE SHALL NOT BE DENIED OR ABRIDGED BY THE U.S. OR BY ANY STATE ON ACCOUNT OF RACE, COLOR, OR PREVIOUS CONDITION OF SERVITUDE. ("abridge" means "to make less or deprive")
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

So what is the GOP doing now? They are "ABRIDGING" the voting rights of millions of Americans. And it just so happens that many of these ID laws were passed in states that had high rates of minority voter turnout in 2008 - the year America elected Barack Obama, our first African-American president.

So how is the GOP "ABRIDGING" the voting rights of the people they originally set out to help get the right to vote?  Here are the 3 main ways:
1. Laws designed to end, limit, or reduce voter registration were introduced in 13 states, including Ohio, Florida, and Illinois. Florida's law is so harsh and technical that even the League of Women Voters has stopped registering new voters there.
2. Eight states passed restrictive voter ID laws in 2011. The problem is that nearly 20 million Americans DO NOT have government-issued IDs. A disproportionate number of those 20 million are African-American, elderly, young, disabled and Senior Citizens.
3. Numerous states - including Ohio, Georgia, Florida and West Virginia - have reduced early or absentee voting periods, making it harder and harder for people just to cast a ballot.

 So what is the goal of the GOP? It is not hard to figure out what it is? From day 1 of Obama's presidency their goal was to make sure that Obama was a one-term president. They not only have refused to cooperate with Obama to solve any of America's problems but now they are going to make sure that many of the citizens who voted for Obama in 2008 are going have a much tougher time voting for him in 2012 (or even getting to cast a ballot, period.)

Some of the great Republicans of the past - like Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower - would be appalled at the GOP of today. They would shake their heads and say, "What has happened to the Grand Old Party?"  I think they would be ashamed that the party that won the Civil War and granted slaves the right to vote in 1870 are now trying to make voting in America as difficult as possible and trying to keep some of our citizens from actually voting.

A couple of final thoughts. First, it is depressing to see these ID laws passed, estabishing more barriers to registering voters, and reducing early/absentee voting. This isn't the America I want nor is it the America that Lincoln, Roosevelt, or Eisenhower would have wanted. My hope is that the 20 million citizens who do not have government-issued IDs will be able to get them by election day in November. My best hope is that the Department of Justice will declare these new laws to be discriminatory and unconstitutional.