Left Side of the Aisle #73 - Part 1

Good news on voter rights

I'll start the week, as I like to do when the occasion arises, with some good news.

For over a year now I've been going on about the attempts by the right wing to limit access to the voting booth for anyone suspected of any sort of liberal leanings. A lot of that has been about these bogus "voter ID laws."

But last week, I mentioned how there are other tactics as well, such as the Florida law that put such restrictions on voter registration drives so severe that even the League of Women Voters gave up on them. Since such drives are the primary way new Democratic voters get registered in the state, the result was that new GOPper registrations were largely unaffected while new Democratic registrations crashed to a small fraction of what they had been.

What I missed in telling you that is that not long before, Federal District court Judge Robert Hinkle had issued a permanent injunction against the law after Florida agreed to drop its appeal of the temporary injunction he issued in August. The law is gone.

There is a downside: This comes rather late in game to have much effect this year - but any pushback against the reactionaries' campaign to prevent us from voting is good news.

Sources:
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=15606
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/federal-judge-will-permanently-remove-florida-voter-registration