Know Your Class War: They Don't Want you to Vote

Today's lesson is brought to us by Lousekateer Jimmy O'Keefe ("T-R-I: I don't think that's journalism. C-K-Y: Why? Because he cheats! L-o-u-s-e!), who reminds us that there is a lot at stake in folks actually not being able to vote, by pretend-perpetrating some voter-fraud.

Now, "voter-fraud" is a big-deal to Right-Wingers. It doesn't actually happen to any significant degree, and for what it's worth, it would actually have to happen to a significant degree to actually effect an election. But RW-ers use the spectre of, for example, dead folks voting because live people are walking into polling places using their names, to disenfranchise live people with unfair voter ID laws.  These laws place a burden specifically on people who are old, poor, people of color--in other words, they tend to disenfranchise disadvantaged populations, by making them pay fees to acquire the necessary paperwork to prove they are who they say they are (even if they have voted for many years and are well-known at their polling places) .

Also, votes can be stripped by excluding legitimate voters by invalidating them with false information. This sort of thing happens to far higher numbers of votes than "voter fraud" could account for.

Voter ID laws have a lot of heavyweight proponents, like Hans von Spakovsky, who was appointed to the FEC by President George W Bush. 

It's important to keep in mind the distinction between voter fraud and election fraud. Voter fraud, which hardly exists, might net a handful of votes one way of another. Election/electoral fraud involves the whole process of an election being interfered with: Which one do you think is more dangerous?  Which one do you think is more likely to support the Powers That Be, and helps them keep being?