New GOP Tactic In Pennsylvania: Redefine The Word ‘Disenfranchise’
on October 1, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Assuming conservatives don’t start WW3, sell us all in to corporate slavery or allow Climate change to destroy human civilization, future history books will look back at this era and gaze wonderingly upon the Republican Guide To Governing by George Orwell, also know by it’s popular title, 1984.
In an effort to maintain the “constitutionality” of its voter suppression laws, Pennsylvania has taken a novel step:
What no one predicted was that the state would also attempt to modify the definition of “disenfranchisement.” The state’s attorney Alfred Putnam said at the close of Tuesday’s session, “The Supreme Court did not say that you get disenfranchised just because you are not able to demonstrate who you are to vote. That’s not disenfranchisement.”
That message popped up again yesterday, most emphasized by the state’s other attorney Alicia Hickok, who said in closing arguments that the civil rights attorneys didn’t show evidence of people who couldn’t vote, but instead showed evidence of “people who were resentful of the process they went through to get IDs” to vote.
So if you were unable to spend several hours on different days to get your ID and eventually “gave up,” you’re not really disenfranchised: you’re just a whiny quitter!
This will absolutely be the new narrative going forward because it plays well into the right’s view of the minorities that are having their right to vote taken away as lazy. Lost in the shuffle will be the reality that many people simply cannot afford to keep taking off from work to get an ID. That costs time and money.
Republicans build their own reality around themselves and they’ve taken the idea of controlling language to new heights. Orwell must be spinning in his grave.