The Political Whore

From the Palm Beach Post:

Census figures released Monday show that of the 579,000 new voters who participated in Florida last year, nearly all were either Hispanic or black. Turnout among young voters increased from 39 percent in 2004 to 49 percent last year.

Young Hispanics and blacks helped boost the state’s voter rolls by 10 percent and lowered the average age among voters by one full year, to 50, according to a Palm Beach Post analysis.

Meanwhile, turnout among white voters remained stagnant last year while some of the state’s oldest voters stayed home: Turnout among voters 75 and older dropped from 72 percent in 2004 to 69 percent in 2008.

The Republicans have gone back to their old ways when it comes to trying to regain power: rig the election process rather than appeal to the majority of voters.

This time it is a Senate bill (SB 956) that is the target of just about every voting rights and civil rights group in the state. The bill would make it harder for older voters to cast ballots (by outlawing two alternate forms of ID they often use to register and vote), make it harder to gather petition signatures for candidates and referenda, force people who move within 29 days of Election Day to cast provisional ballots and install other vote-blocking reforms in the name of voting security.

From the Times:

Gov. Charlie Crist on Monday strongly hinted that he would veto a proposed rewrite of Florida’s election laws as a broad array of grass-roots groups launched an all-out assault on the legislation.

“What is it we’re trying to cure?” Crist asked in a Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau interview. “The more opportunity you give people to vote, the better it is for democracy. So that aspect of it concerns me.”

“It always seems to me that when there may be legislation that attempts to sort of make it harder for people to do something — the people we work for — generally that’s not good,” Crist said. “I don’t look on that in a favorable light and that is true of this particular part of this legislation.” Asked if he would veto it, Crist said: “I don’t like to use the V word … but I’m not fond of that provision. It concerns me.”