Setting dangerous foundations

Reich warns Romney still can be elected
Robert Reich, the secretary of labor under President Clinton, is a prolific proponent of all things progressive and liberal … and he always has been.
Above, Mr. Reich appeals to his fellow followers not to get complacent about the re-election of President Barack Obama. That is good news. No one should be complacent about the election or re-election of any candidate. And everyone should be encouraged to participate in the elections scheduled for Nov. 6. (Although the old slogan “Vote early and vote often” is not such a good idea.)
What bothers me about that article is, whether he means it or not, he sets the foundation for claiming the election is a fraud. That disturbs me considerably.
It is his final point that bothers me so much:
“… the Republican Party will do whatever it can to win -- even if it means disenfranchising certain voters. To date, 11 states have enacted voter identification laws, all designed by Republican legislatures and governors to dampen Democratic turnout.
“The GOP is also encouraging what can only be termed "voter vigilante" groups to "monitor polling stations to prevent fraud" -- which means intimidating minorities who have every right to vote. We can't know at this point how successful these efforts may be but it's a dangerous wildcard. And what about those Diebold voting machines?”
Ok, folks, enough with the conspiracy theories. In the first paragraph, it seems to me that both parties have ample evidence (actually the Democratic Party has a lot more historical evidence, especially in the Southern states) of disenfranchising certain voters, as well as having ineligible voters (especially dead people) vote in elections in numbers of enough to swing elections. So, if one wants to be cynical enough, you could say that is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Then, there are those cases where supporters of the Democratic Party have been videotaped intimidating voters at the polls in at least one city.
As for the issue of voter identification: I already am  on record as saying I see absolutely no problem with requiring people to show photo IDs when they vote. It seems that just about everywhere else you go you have to do it.
Now, if it is a problem for some people, that is where the party can and should intervene (it will make a supporter of the voter) to make sure that those people they want to vote have such photo IDs. They are not hard to get and as much as the party spends on advertising and registering voters, it seems to me a small price to pay to make sure that those supporters who can’t afford the pittance that is required, in most states (some are free), to get a state-issued photo ID.
Besides, it is not just “minorities” who would be affected by such a requirement, but that is a good job of putting in the race card.
Lastly, Mr. Reich takes a slam at computerized polling stations, particularly those made by the Diebold corporation. Granted, all computer driven vote counting systems are subject to possible tampering and manipulation, but, unless you have specific proof (not anecdotes or conjecture) that a specific manufacturer has illegally tampered with the vote totals with the machines that it makes, then Mr. Reich is on very dangerous ground. Not only is he libeling the corporation (yes, you can libel a corporation) but he also is attempting to call the validity of the election into question without justification.
There is a major problem with that and it stems partly back to the election of 2000 and the images of election board members examining punch-card ballots in a effort to verify the intent of the voter in each case (remember the issue of the “hanging chads” and the “indented chads”?). It is a Democratic Party mantra that the U.S. Supreme Court, by calling a halt to the Democrats charade, “stole” the election for George W. Bush.
However, what people tend to forget in the narrative of that election is two things:
1. It was the Gore Campaign that took the case to court trying to alter the count before it was even finished – contrary to the law. Court challenges are supposed to come after the count has been canvassed and not before. So, it was not the Bush campaign that was using the court system to overturn the Florida election result, but the Gore campaign.
2. There was a consortium of newspapers, news services and broadcast networks that was able to go back in in 2001 and examined all the ballots and interestingly enough in just about every case, by differing margins, President Bush actually won. That would seem to have vindicated the initial results that had him winning by something like 543 votes.
Granted, Gore won the “popular” nationwide vote, but that is not what counts in our REPUBLIC. You also have to win a majority of the “electoral” votes that are divided among the states by their representation in Congress.
So, what we have here, is Mr. Reich laying the groundwork for his party and its supporters to cry “foul” if their candidate loses a close race … which my dear wife (who is Canadian) predicts it will be, a veritable cliffhanger.
So, my advice to Mr. Reich: On your final point, shut up, because it serves no purpose but to invalidate the election, apparently in sour grapes if your guy loses again.

Yet another example
GOP uses voter ID laws to block college students