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Less than half of the 8.5 million eligible Pennsylvania voters turned out on election day in 2010. Choosing the next governor and senator was apparently not important enough to rouse our voters from in front of their TV sets. Voters in our state are smart enough to know when you leave your popcorn unattended, the likelihood is it won’t be there when you get back (especially if it’s Moose Munch).
As you may know by now, Republicans won both key elections in 2010. Tom Corbett became governor. You may have not seen Corbett much. He spends a good deal of his time dismantling public education. His motto should be “Waste a mind, save a dollar.” Those who did vote chose Pat Toomey as senator. Toomey’s voting record is considered very progressive — if the year were 1912.
Republicans all across the country noticed a trend, especially here in Pennsylvania. Hold the vote down in the big cities and Republican chances of winning go up. Low voter turnout has become a cornerstone of Republican strategy. If you can’t get enough people to vote against their own interests, at least you might be able to get them to not vote at all. The question is, how can Republicans discourage voting without resorting to fire hoses and a poll tax?
A Republican think tank — The Calvin Coolidge Institute for Progress — came up with the idea that the option not to vote is true democracy in action. The Coolidge Institute devised the following strategy: Educate minorities (otherwise known as likely Democrat voters) not to vote. Spread the word that in some foreign countries with strange sounding names, people are forced to vote. Make them think not voting is not only a precious right, it’s a symbol of freedom. Unfortunately, the reaction in minority communities was swift, unfavorable, and extremely profane. The Coolidge Institute wound up closing down from a lack of funding by the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson. A new approach was needed. That’s when someone came up with the idea of voter-ID laws.
Polls found a significant number of minority voters could be disenfranchised if voter identification were required. Republicans were wary. They had been burned before trying to get the wrong kind of people not to vote. A light bulb lit. Someone on Fox News posed the question — how did a Kenyan-born socialist without an American birth certificate ever get elected president of the United States the last time around? Simple. The election must have been stolen by voter fraud. There is a bit of a problem with using voter fraud as the excuse for why we need voter ID. According to the Brennan Center for Justice website, voter ID fraud is less likely to occur than someone getting struck by lightning going to the polls. But then as one cynic put it, who ever lost an election letting facts get in the way?
Voter-ID laws have now been enacted in many states of the union. Corbett signed a voter ID law into effect in Pennsylvania in March. It is estimated that about 18 percent of the voters in Philadelphia still do not have the proper voter ID to vote this November. How important is keeping down the Philadelphia voter turnout? One prominent state Republican slipped and mentioned the voter-ID law could hand the state to the Republicans and Mitt Romney. He has been banished to the Island of Elba (say hello to Napoleon).
I hate to rain on the Republican prospect of a victory parade in Pennsylvania, at least until I hand out umbrellas.Yeah, you can require non-drivers to get their ID at a PennDOT office a little difficult to get to since they don’t drive. You can also confuse those folks who were born out of state, especially in a non-state like Puerto Rico. But even if you deny all 18 percent of these folks the right to vote, is that really a sure thing? Who’s to say our voter-ID law won’t lead to counterfeiting of ID cards? Think about how many underage girls get into bars all of the time. You go into a bar down the Shore, the average age of the girls clutching a Miller Lite is about 16-and-a-half. I think if you want to be really sure to put Pennsylvania in the Romney column, you have to get tough.
Here are some suggestions for holding down the vote in Philly.
All males must wear a suit, a tie and a dress shirt with French cuffs. Rationale: If you can have a dress code at a fancy restaurant, why not proper decor at the polls? Real reason: How many non-Romney voters wear French cuffs? If this doesn’t knock out almost all of the non-Romney vote, add a requirement that the suit has to have pin stripes.
All voters must be able to quote selected passages from Ayn Rand.
All voters must be able to use the phrase “government takeover” in a simple sentence.
All voters must be able to identify the major problems in Pennsylvania (Hint — environmentalists who oppose fracking, public unions, higher education).
You live in the Cradle of Liberty. Please don’t vote.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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