Republicans have focused on "voter fraud," an individual crime which seems to be quite rare. But how about large-scale, systemic prevention of voting? This seems to sometimes be an equal-opportunity vote preventer, and other times to be lopsided against new voters, young ones or old ones, minority ones or especially Democratic-leaning ones. And that’s wrong, no matter your party. This stuff is usually codified law, but bring it up, and see how quickly words like "conspiracy" get thrown around…
This stuff needs to be dealt with, pretty much now-ish.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: There are about 30 scams the Republicans are deliberately using, particularly in the swing states to get Democratic voters off the rolls. These scams originate in the so-called Help America Vote Act, which was passed after the Florida debacle in the year 2000. It was originally suggested by Democrats and Republicans, but it was passed by a Republican Congress with a Republican senate and a Republican president. And instead of reforming what happened in Florida it basically institutionalized all the problems that happened in Florida. And institutionalized a series of impediments that make it very difficult for Democrats to register, for Democrats to vote and then for Democrats to have their votes counted.
One of these requirements under HAVA is called ‘the perfect match,’ and what that does is little known but it is devastating. A quarter of the voters in Colorado have just been removed from the rolls because of this–[and] just this one scam. And what it does is, they use a computer system to compare your registration application to all [your] other government records in the state. So they’ll look at your Social Security records, your Motor Vehicle records, and any time you’ve had any interaction with the government, and if there is any information on your voter registration that is different than the information on another government record that they find, they remove you from the voting rolls.
