Going after military voters deployed overseas

 

Another sad chapter in the attempt to make voting more difficult

This year has seen a multi-state, national effort to keep people from voting. One study contends it will hit five million people who otherwise would have been able to vote. Soldier in Iraq

 In Colorado, the Secretary of State is going after military voters from a heavily Democratic county. “The soldiers won’t technically be disenfranchised,” but they won’t have the ballots sent to them. This, of course, makes it harder for them to vote.

Who is this Secretary of State?

Gessler made a career as a lawyer of defending Republican clients and causes in election and campaign finance cases. He has been a controversial secretary of state since winning office in the “GOP wave election” of 2010. He has said that, in directing majority Democratic Denver and Pueblo county not to mail ballots to inactive voters, he is seeking to guard against fraud and make the state’s election rules uniform. His detractors have said Gessler has displayed a pattern of endorsing radical solutions to problems that don’t really exist, that what he’s really up to is suppressing the vote in advance of the presidential election of 2012.

Suppressing the vote in a swing state that President Obama won by suppressing the voting rights of people in the military?

What a world.

Amy Fried

About Amy Fried

Amy Fried loves Maine's sense of community and the wonderful mix of culture and outdoor recreation. She loves politics in three ways: as an analytical political scientist, a devoted political junkie and a citizen who believes politics matters for people's lives. Fried is Professor of Political Science at the University of Maine. Her views do not reflect those of her employer or any group to which she belongs.