I write about voter suppression a lot. It is one of the most important issues we face, and has been for years, because, as you will see by the following article in the L.A. Times, no matter how popular President Obama might be, without actual voters, he loses the election:

It will be different next year, a result of changes in the voting laws adopted by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Early voting was reduced from two weeks to one week. Voting on the Sunday before election day was eliminated. College students face new hurdles if they want to vote away from home. And those who register new voters face the threat of fines for procedural errors, prompting the nonpartisan League of Women Voters to suspend voter registration drives and accuse the Legislature of “reverting to Jim Crow-like tactics.”

What is happening in Florida is part of a national trend, as election law has become a fierce partisan battleground. In states where Republicans have taken majority control, they have tightened rules for registering new voters, reduced the time for casting ballots and required voters to show photo identification at the polls. The new restrictions were usually adopted on party-line votes and signed by Republican governors. [...]

Ohio, another swing state, reduced its early voting by more than half, eliminated early voting on weekends and ended its same-day registration for voters… Seven states — Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — voted to require registered voters to show photo identification at the polling place.

Republican-run state legislators have gone out of their way to disenfranchise voters. That’s because the poor, students, the elderly, minorities, rural voters, anyone who can’t afford to pay a fee, get a ride, own a car, or otherwise have access to a Department of Motor Vehicles or some other source of legal identification tend to vote Democratic.

States that require a picture I.D. present their own special problems.

And even if absentee ballots are available, registering for them is still a major issue that will jeopardize mostly Democratic votes. And then there’s election (as opposed to voter) fraud in that tampering with absentee ballots is a consideration, too.

In short, Republicans are aiding and abetting voter suppression by legislating it.

This Times article is a must-read. One remedy, or partial remedy, is to organize efforts to register voters, provide rides, and inform voters of the problem. Get them transportation to the correct polling places on election day, too, since a common dirty trick is to tell Democratic voters that their polling place has moved, or even go as far as telling them that the election date has been changed.

The GOP would like nothing more than to achieve single party rule. We need to be pro-active and stay a step ahead of them while keeping our eye on the bigger picture: getting Progressives elected from the bottom up.