GOP: Stop Blacks from Voting Now

Even as the GOP advances its PR campaign claiming a historic reaching out to minorities, its unAmerican project of stopping minorities from voting continues.

One might think this later project would tend to disconfirm the credibility of the former campaign, but not in American, pretend journalism.

African-Americans voted at a higher rate than whites in 2012 for the first time in American history, thanks to the work of civil rights groups knocking down or temporarily halting the GOP's anti-voting bills passed by the GOP (and only by the GOP) in party-line votes in states where the GOP controlled the legislature and executive.

Fearing this development of them voting, for years the GOP has fabricated phantom massive voter fraud, a lie seen as needed to justify restrictive voter IDs (other initiatives include restricting early voting, ending same-day registration; shortening poling hours, and other GOP schemes) to stop alleged voter impersonation at the polls.

No great need for this lie, politically.

The GOP could contend a massive number of space aliens are voting at the polls, argue we need restrictive anti-voter impersonation voter ID laws, and no GOP politicos would dissent, the corporate press would play along, and most people would not notice.

The American corporate media (with notable exceptions) went along with the GOP, denying that the GOP's anti-voting program is a verifiable fact, and presenting voter fraud as a problem needing a solution.

The legal justification used in the courts is the integrity of our elections.

Fortunately, we are served by the work of citizen groups, such as the Advancement Project’s Voter Protection Program, battling the GOP's war against voting. Reads the Advancement Project:

The voting booth is the one place where all are presumed equal, yet the reality is that the playing field is far from level. Citizens are still denied an equal opportunity to cast a ballot and have it counted, disproportionately voters of color. Advancement Project’s Voter Protection Program works to identify and eliminate systemic barriers to voting in the hopes of achieving a more just democracy – one in which all voices have an opportunity to be heard.

Many African-Americans were offended by the GOP's effort to stop them from voting the last several years, and with the first African-American president at the top of the ticket outvoted GOP whites.

In Wisconsin, as with the national GOP and with no exception, the GOP is determined not to see this happen again.

Scott Walker, James Sensenbrenner (a voting rights poser; c'mon, you're almost 70 years old, man, time to grow up and do the right thing), and the whole GOP bunch call stopping voting "common sense," with virtually no challenge from the press.

'GOP still battling blacks and browns in effort against voting,' reads no news headline.

Why is stopping people from voting common sense in a democracy, as the GOP claims?

It's not.