The opening paragraph from a New York Times article this past Tuesday:
If there's one thing that ought to beyond partisanship, it is that we should not have undue burdens on exercising the right to vote. People should not have to choose between voting and going to work, picking up their kids from school, or caring for their loved ones.
It isn't. We now have a political party that is so desperate to win that it is willing to do anything--save making themselves appealing to a majority of voters--to make that happen. If that means making voting so burdensome that hundreds of thousands of people are unable to do so, they say "so be it."
We've been hearing a lot about GOP "re-branding" lately. No party, no group of people, can "re-brand" just by using different words and smiling a lot. Once you reveal who you really are, people know. Changing that negative view requires changing substance, not just appearances.
If Republicans really want to "re-brand," a good start would be to get on the right side of this basic American value. They need to stop trying to make it harder to vote. Then they can start trying to get those people to vote for them.
WASHINGTON — With studies suggesting that long lines at the polls cost Democrats hundreds of thousands of votes in November, party leaders are beginning a push to make voting and voter registration easier, setting up a likely new conflict with Republicans over a deeply polarizing issue.Whether or not there should be long lines for voting--lines so long that hundreds of thousands of people were dissuaded from voting--is now a "deeply polarizing issue."
If there's one thing that ought to beyond partisanship, it is that we should not have undue burdens on exercising the right to vote. People should not have to choose between voting and going to work, picking up their kids from school, or caring for their loved ones.
It isn't. We now have a political party that is so desperate to win that it is willing to do anything--save making themselves appealing to a majority of voters--to make that happen. If that means making voting so burdensome that hundreds of thousands of people are unable to do so, they say "so be it."
We've been hearing a lot about GOP "re-branding" lately. No party, no group of people, can "re-brand" just by using different words and smiling a lot. Once you reveal who you really are, people know. Changing that negative view requires changing substance, not just appearances.
If Republicans really want to "re-brand," a good start would be to get on the right side of this basic American value. They need to stop trying to make it harder to vote. Then they can start trying to get those people to vote for them.
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