Rachel Maddow Decries "The New Poll Tax" — Long Lines
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- clemwilson
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more from News:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/03/rachel-maddow-decries-lon_n_...
Interesting and insightful commentary on the real price of the long lines at polling places.Is this the new "poll tax" as Maddow suggests? Take a look.
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- News, News and Politics, Politics, Election 2008
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- tags:
- News, News and Politics, Politics, Election 2008, 4 more
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the_Jack
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Here in Connecticut, where I've lived most of my life, I've never had to wait even one hour at a polling location. There's simply no excuse for some states to have so few polling locations, and/or so few machines at each location, that voters have to wait more than two hours in order to exercise their right to vote.
In many of the states where long lines at the polls are common, wait times are the same throughout the state. But there are also troubling disparities in some cases... one voting district in which the majority of voters are registered Republican might have plenty of locations and machines, allowing wait times to be short, while a nearby district, sometimes in the same county or city, where the majority of voters are registered as Democrats, has so few resources that voters there have to wait two to ten times as long to vote. This is just as troubling when majority-Republican districts have significantly longer lines for voting than majority-Democrat districts in the same area, of course, even though that seems to happen less often.
Voting by absentee ballot is one option for those concerned about having to wait in a long line either on Election Day or at an early-voting location. BUT in most states not everyone can vote by absentee ballot. With few exceptions, states require a registered voter to attest that they cannot vote at the polls because they will be out of town the entire day, or are serving in the military, or have a documentable disability or illness that prevents them from going out. Not being able to get time off work and not being able to find child care, however, are not valid reasons to vote absentee in most states. And that's leaving entirely aside the issues of absentee ballots going missing either on their way to or after arriving at the appropriate board of elections office.
No matter who wins the Presidential and Congressional elections this year, America needs REAL election reform that addresses the very real issue of meaningful access to polling locations.
- 1 year ago
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the_Jack
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Future_America
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Video from her show about this subject
- 1 year ago
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Future_America
