Modern day James Crow

It's well known that the conservatives are out to disenfranchise as many voters as possible. They have pursued their goals by striking voters off the rolls who had same or similar names to convicted felons. They have pursued their goals by striking legal immigrants from the rolls based upon questionable lists from immigration officials. They have pursued their goals by requiring voters to show a government-issued ID card. They're even trying to shut down early voting.

In Texas they've done it by not processing voter registration cards filed by folks renewing their driver's licenses at local DPS offices.

According to this article in the Houston Chronicle:

There are unexplained dips in so-called "motor voter" registrations, and the rates of voters who successfully registered via drivers' license offices in fast-growing Harris and Fort Bend counties consistently lagged behind state averages from 2008-2012, according to a Chronicle analysis of new voter registration data kept by the Texas secretary of state. 

On Thursday, the Secretary of State's Office emailed an alert to all county voter registrars warning of interruptions in its system to electronically transfer registrations it gets daily from the Texas Department of Public Safety. The alert came after individual "motor voters" complained about issues with their attempts to register at DPS offices in Tarrant and Harris counties.

The explanation given is that human error was to blame for the drop in motor voter registration. I don't buy it for a minute. This is the new Jim Crow. You can't charge a poll tax and you can't intimidate folks to stay away from the polls - but you can sure reject their registration forms and not inform them until it's too late to do anything about it.

The math is quite simple. Wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands in this country. There are far more workers than bosses. Our criminal (in)justice system closely resembles the old apartheid system in South Africa.

There are fewer folks who worship at the altar of the free market than don't. There are fewer folks calling for less regulation of corporations than who aren't. There are fewer folks who think only those who can afford health care should have it than don't. There are fewer folks who want the government to have more power to intrude into your private life than don't.

The solution is to get rid of as many voters as you can. And these are the methods being used.

Now this isn't a polemic urging you to re-elect President Obama or to elect a slate of Democratic candidates. The truth is President Obama is barely more palatable than Mitt Romney - the difference between tho two is more semantics than substance. About the only real difference between the two is their pools of potential Supreme Court nominees.

It's a cess pool out there, folks. But it doesn't take a lot to figure out who benefits in the end.