Next, In Olde Virginie - Joe? About those questions that remain unanswered...

We have the Wisconsin effort to reinstate Voter ID in spite of not one but two judges overturning it.  Earlier this year the state Supreme Court refused to hear it.  Now the state is wasting more money by trying a desperate last minute appeal to an appellate court.

There are NO instances whatsoever of voter fraud in Wisconsin, much less any kind of voter fraud that would be resolved by Voter ID.  Further, Wisconsin has cut the services that provide voter ID in predominantly Democratic districts, closing some offices, requiring traveling long distances, and cutting hours in other drastically, while at the same time expanding offices in areas with heavier concentrations of Republican voters.  They aren't really even bothering anymore to hide their agenda of voter suppression of LEGAL voters, to manipulate the election.  By manipulate, I mean steal, win fraudulently, by acting against the premise of one man one vote on which the nation is founded; the GOP is in that regard profoundly anti-American and un-American.  Their actions demonstrate they hate representative government and fear risking allowing voters to make determinations of the outcome of elections.

In Ohio, the Secretary of State has tried to disallow voting hours in Democratic districts that he allowed in Republican areas.  He was challenged, and frankly embarrassed into reversing that.  Then he tried to disallow the early voting under which nearly 100,000 voters participated in the last election - many of them voting Democratic.  That change would have also adversely affected voters in the armed forces, which just shows how little the GOP REALLY values those who are making sacrifices for our way of life.  The state of Ohio just lost that legal battle; early voting for legal voters is back.

While in Washington state, the Libertarians tried to prevent the Republicans from putting Romney on their ballot.  By a strict application of one aspect of their law, they were right; the GOP was too disorganized with Tea Party infighting to jump through some legal hoops they would normally have complied with easily.   But by other measures, the GOP clearly qualified as a major party, and therefore automatically could place a candidate on the ballot, where it belongs.  Conservatives attacking conservatives has been playing out in other states as well.

It intrigued me that one of our conservative commenters, Joe Doakes, claimed that this was just an example in Washington of the GOP following the example of Barak Obama kicking candidates off the ballot in Chicago style politics.

I challenged Joe to show me an example where Obama was involved in anything like that, or where the Democrats for that matter had done any of the things being done by conservatives regarding elections - suppressing legal voting, playing fast and lose with voter rolls, or unfair voting days or hours by party affiliation.  I'll throw in a new one; show me where the Democrats have thrown moderate members of their party out, the way the MN GOP did with former governors and other prominent Republicans for supporting a different conservative, Republican candidate Tom Horner.

So far he hasn't answered.  In that interim, we have another instance of conservatives trying to deny voters choices on the ballot of another conservative.  This one is in Trans-vaginal Virginia, where they believe in mandating the humiliation and embarrassment of women with invasive, expensive medically unnecessary medical procedures that are intended for one reason and one reason only - to make life more difficult for women.  So if they treat one segment of their population that badly, it shouldn't be too surprising that the Cooch, their AG, who is actively campaigning for Romney, has decided he needs to participate in a decision properly made by the Virginia State Board of Elections.

Anyone else reading this expect that this is going to be all about trying to rig an election outcome, and squat all about anything remotely honest, fair, or objective?  The GOP doesn't even try to pretend to any of those VALUES they used to try to claim.  They have obviously wandered so far into corruption that they're just too dirty to see the lipstick on the pig anymore.

Here's the  first part of the story from the AP by way of the WaPo:
State Board of Elections rejects GOP challenge, OKs Goode’s place on Va. presidential ballot

By Associated Press, Published: September 4AP

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia’s Republican-dominated electoral board rejected an effort Tuesday by the state’s Republican Party to keep conservative former Rep. Virgil Goode off the presidential ballot to avoid draining votes from the GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, in a deadlocked swing-state contest.

Goode, nominee of the obscure Constitution Party, and Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson of New Mexico were both added to the Virginia ballot after Republican Party of Virginia attorneys asked the board for an independent review of alleged irregularities in both candidates’ qualifying petitions.

And here is the rest of the story:  

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Something tells me we will be waiting a long long long time to have someone on the right identify anything quite like this from the Democrats. Next time you hear Republicans whingeing on and on about tolerance, big tent inclusiveness -- remember the purged MN GOP members, and remember the LEGAL GOP voters who were disenfranchised, and remember the conservative women who for legitimate health reasons required a medical procedure that did not involve an invasive and expensive ultrasound but had one inflicted on them anyway, and then remember those efforts to prevent LEGAL Democrats from voting that also prevented Republicans and military personnel from voting, and then remember the efforts BY CONSERVATIVES to play legal games with the OTHER conservative candidates on the ballot.

These are not people, these conservatives, who trust people to make choices. These are the people who want to force their authoritarian agenda on others to deny participation in government of the people, by the people, for the people. This is the party that will invade the polling booth to deny your vote, and who will invade the examination room to over-rule you and your doctor. Because Republicans do NOT TRUST people to think for themselves. They want to run your lives for you, and what you want be damned.