birch paper

don’t let the criminals define the crime

The homunculi who spent $50,000 trolling the obituaries of recently deceased New Hampshire veterans would like you to think that what they did was some noble expose highlighting the need for a voter ID bill. House Majority Leader DJ Bettencourt is only too happy to piggyback these cretins and echo their rhetoric.

That’s dishonest.

The Republicans who were behind the push for a voter ID bill were quite clear about their intention from the beginning.

House Speaker Bill O’Brien:

Turning to the issue of voter fraud prevention, O’Brien said his party will “tighten up the definition of a New Hampshire resident.”

He said that Plymouth, a college town, experiences 900 same-day voter registrations.

“They are kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience,” he said.

House Rep and voter ID bill sponsor Gregory Sorg, on college voters:

“transient inmates … with a dearth of experience and a plethora of the easy self-confidence that only ignorance and inexperience can produce.”

At the time I wrote:

…at least this way we don’t have to pretend that this effort has anything to do with “voter fraud” or some of the other flimsy rationales thrown out in support of suppressing the youth vote.

It’s obvious this has partisan politics at its root - young people allegedly vote more liberally.  Therefore, reduce the number of liberal voters.  Election advantage: Republicans.

But take a look again at those two statements from O’Brien and Sorg. The upshot is that the votes young people cast are of lesser value than their own because young people of voting age, in their eyes, are ignorant, inexperienced, and guided only by feelings.

That is what prejudice looks like.

No one would tolerate such an open admission from public servants had it been made about women, for example.  Or people of color.

With luck, James O’Keefe and his lackeys will go to jail for what they did to the good people of New Hampshire.  

But that will still be a gross miscarriage of justice if we in New Hampshire allow him to falsely direct the conversation on our voting laws.

13 January 2012 ·