| Greetings,
In a guest opinion editorial appearing April 5, 2023 in the on-line news site City & State, Nathan Benefield, Senior Vice President of a rightwing corporate think tank, accused Democrats in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives of tanking a constitutional amendment empowering adult victims of childhood sexual abuse the right to sue their abusers. As President Biden would say, “that’s a load of malarkey”. A phony baloney sandwich… Mr. Benefield’s OpEd is nothing more than a lame attempt to sanitize the effort by Pennsylvania Senate Republicans to package two of their rightwing wish-list constitutional amendments with the universally popular constitutional amendment to help adult victims of childhood sexual abuse. Now that Democrats control the House of Representatives in Harrisburg, Mr. Benefield and Republicans know the only way they can expand their voter suppression efforts and please their anti-regulation corporate allies is to link their duplicitous amendments to the amendment that will hold child sex abusers accountable. As hard as Mr. Benefield may try, words will never remove the stench from rotten eggs. …And a side of scrambled malarkey I recently wrote you about the inherent dangers of the proposed amendment giving the legislature the ability to veto executive branch regulations. In this message, let’s take a deeper look at the voter suppression risks of expanding Voter ID. On its face, suggesting voters show a photo ID before they vote seems reasonable. On closer scrutiny, the merits of such requirements don’t measure up. According to NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, more than twenty-one million American’s do not have a government issued photo ID. Furthermore, those least likely to have a government-issued photo ID fall into one of four categories: the elderly, minorities, the poor and young adults ages 18 to 24. And what is the urgent need for requiring photo IDs for voting? Mr. Benefield tells us, “Voter ID helps protect electoral integrity and boosts people’s confidence in the democratic process.” Addressing the concept of protecting electoral integrity, an Associated Press reporting project after the 2020 election found fewer than 475 potential instances of voter fraud out of more the 25 million votes cast. How could such an infinitesimal fraction of a percent of voter fraud justify the risk of disenfranchising more that 21 million Americans who do not have a photo ID? I would further suggest to you that the only people whose confidence in the electoral process needs boosting are the 30% of Maga Americans who fell prey to the big lie perpetuated by election denying political opportunists and fund raising grifters. The Republican voter suppression buffet Republicans feature many items on their menu of voter suppression tactics including aggressively purging voter rolls; implementing overly stringent voter ID requirements; moving polling places out of minority and student neighborhoods; banning mail-in voting; requiring burdensome signature matches and identification for voting by mail; eliminating drop boxes; disallowing “ballot curing” for minor, inadvertent mistakes; denying felons the right to vote; intimidating voters; spreading misinformation; unde Word salads of Republican talking points pushing voter ID do little more than leave a rancid taste in our mouths. Thanks for reading, Kristine |