Jabari Asim, A Lying Biggot

Still Battling Voter Suppression

By Jabari Asim
Monday, August 14, 2006; 12:00 AM

"It was not a difficult walk. It was for a good reason."

Those were the words of Besisa Mbaguna, a Congolese man who last month walked barefoot for two and a half hours to reach his polling place and cast his vote in his country's elections. Considering Congo's troubled history and its oppressive ruling class, it's fair to marvel that people such as Mbaguna got to vote at all. One can also wonder whether those votes will actually count, despite the best efforts of United Nations officials who oversaw the elections.

It's easy to imagine, for instance, that in such a country, Mbaguna could have been stopped short of the polls and turned away for some untenable reason -- say, lack of a photo ID. In Congo, sure, but certainly not in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Or so one would like to think. But the efforts of Republican lawmakers in Georgia, Indiana and, most recently, Missouri seemed aimed at making it as difficult to vote beneath our spacious skies as it is in war-torn Third World nations. Missouri, my home state, became the third member of this notorious trio in June, when Gov. Matt Blunt signed into law a requirement that voters show government-issued photo IDs at the polls starting in November.

Blunt and others say the law will prevent fraud. Their opponents rightly point out that the measure disproportionately affects those who have been disfranchised in the past, such as the poor and racial minorities. Besides, they argue, Missouri hasn't exactly suffered from an epidemic of imposters showing up to vote.

Once more, any attempt by the government to improve the accuracy and integrity of our elective system is opposed by those who would use the straw man of discrimination to oppose those efforts. If you wish to ensure that those who vote in an election are who they claim to be and are legally entitled to vote, then you are "trying to suppress the vote." Those who make this claim don't offer any alternative solution to a very real problem, only complaints that the solution offered is "discriminatory against blacks." Democrats want voter fraud to occur, as long as they believe that they are the beneficiaries while at the same time screaming hysterically that the machines we are using to vote are "hacked."

Such claims have been so prevalent in the dark halls of doom in which those conspiracy sotted members of the Left-wing, nutroot, blog sites, that they have attained the status of "known facts." They have no proof, no evidence, not a single instance in which they can prove such a fraud has occurred, but undeterred by truth, they state it as though only those who have been living in a cave in Tibet should doubt their assertions.

On the otherhand, there have been numerous occurences of the sort of voter fraud for which our state legislatures are now attempting to find a solution. Of course this sort of fraud they dismiss by saying that it:

is statistically more likely for a Missourian to be struck by a bolt of lightning than to have his or her vote canceled by someone posing as another voter to cast a ballot."

Of course there are more reasons than that to be concerned over voter fraud, but Mr. Asim chooses to dismiss those as unworthy even of comment.

I guess Mr. Asim assumes that all those voting for Democrats are inherently honest and would not dare to try to commit fraud and only Republicans are interested in cheating on elections. What a novel way of looking at things.

Mr. Asim I suggest you first look to the log in your own biggoted eye before you begin to search for the mote in the Republicans eyes.

Full Story: Jabari Asim, Choosing Blindness Over Reason

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