POLITICO
By Emily Shultheis
September 5, 2012
http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/09/clinton-calls-gop-voter-id-law-attempts-desperate-134515.html
The Nation gets more from Bill Clinton's appearance with Arkansas Democrats last night, including this harsh criticism of the GOP for their advocacy on voter ID laws:
"Do you really want to live in a country where one party is so desperate to win the White House that they go around trying to make it harder for people to vote if they'’re people of color, poor people or first generation immigrants?"
In Pennsylvania, where they passed all these voter ID requirements, the House Republican leader who passed it said it was one of the most important achievements because it will enable Governor Romney to defeat the president in Pennsylvania.
In Ohio, they passed the whole nine yards. The problem was in Ohio you can actually put this stuff on the ballot pretty easily to overturn it. So they went back in --— you gotta give it to Republicans, they'’re good. They vetoed it, then they snuck in an end to advance voting. Then they allowed the counties --— and every county in Ohio has an election commission of three Democrats and three Republicans -- —to decide if they were going to go around advance voting. The Democrats, we were for it. So in every county that was Republican, Democrats said ‘OK, we'’ll have advance voting.’ And in every single county that is overwhelming Democratic, the Republicans voted against allowing advance voting.
Clinton's criticisms aren't new --— voting rights' groups have been saying things like this since the flurry of voter ID legislation began, and Attorney General Eric Holder made headlines earlier this summer when he called Texas's strict photo ID law a "poll tax." But the fact that Clinton is raising the issue lends another influential voice to the notion that voter ID legislation is an issue that's being pushed for partisan reasons, and by just one party.
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