Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 27, 2012

I thought it was spelled SASKWATCH.

And here I thought Sasquatch had that nice home in Suquamish, Wa. Maybe he has dual citizenship ?

Why don’t democrats have I.D. cards? I didn’t know they were that hard to come by.

So, why is Bigfoot denied?

Are we really going to be stuck with another Republican?

When is this tiresome storyline going to end?

Is anyone else seeing something called Don Brutus on the top right where Domestic Abuse ought to be, and it goes to what seems to be a Spanish version of the Born Loser?

Ain’t facts a pain in the derriere?

I’d have thought that something primitive and retarded like Sasquatch would almost certainly be a natural Republican.

If id cards are going to be required in order to vote they need to be provided at no cost to the voter. You cannot be forced to pay for the right to cast a vote. Doing so is the equivalent of a poll tax. One state has barred the use of valid college ids in order to prevent ‘fraud’ from such use. The fact that most college age students vote democrat is only coincidental according to supporters of the bill.Respectfully,C

Did Cap’n Eddie confirm one of those Bigfoot sightings?

If there wasn’t voter id requirements before, how do they know how many voter fraud incients there were?

This is what happens when you have a moron Republican governor who won the election with 39% of the vote (independent Elliot Cutler would have won if the Democrat Libby Mitchell dropped out of the race when she was polling at under 20%).

Also, one of the cases of “fraud” was found out to be an absentee ballot cast by a man who died between the time he filed his ballot and election day (thus, a dead man “had his vote tallied on election day”).

<—Mainer embarassed to have an idiot politician running her state.

A couple of days ago, this strip suggested there was only a couple of “documented” cases of voter fraud in Pennsylvania.

Well, Philly is in Pennsylvania . Voter fraud is so rampant there that it is a regular source of local humor. Shortly after I moved into the city was the first of many, many times I heard the expression, “Vote early and vote often.” I wonder what it takes to document voter fraud?

“Man I hope its not a f******g samsquanch, I hate those f*****g bastards”

I love Doonesburry day to day, but when Garry gets off on these political tangents…Sigh.

It seems all types of “entertainers”, can’t see they are offending about half of their audience. (Read: customers.) When they do this. Left OR right.. But I digress…

This story line is getting boring. And was lame to start with.

Jim Crow laws were all passed by Democrats. Look it up. KKK- Democrats. Opposition to the Civil Right Act – Guess who? They must think voters are incredibility stupid. (Well that may be true..)

But Obama is going to take the worst shellacking since Carter, so this excuse is as good as any….

<—- from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Haven’t seen any Sasquatch though.

Everyone is required to identify themselves in order to vote. That has always been true, in every state. The question is over what constitutes sufficient identification, and what will be judged insufficient and thus allow for someone to be turned away at the polls. If a specifically “Voter ID” card is wanted, then it should come automatically when one registers to vote, and should be easily and freely replaced if lost. For a Federal election, it should be a Federal ID that will accord to a uniform standard. Considerable effort should be made to make it easy for working and busy people to be able to obtain these IDs. Most importantly, it should be introduced and used through a couple election cycles before it becomes mandatory, so that the bugs can be worked out and the system perfected. To introduce new ID laws right before a hotly contested election, and chiefly in states where the folks most likely to have trouble with the new rules are largely on one side of the contest, well, any objective observer can tell what that’s all about. Interestingly, in Australia, as in the America (or at least the Virginia) of the Founding Fathers, voting is considered an responsibility as much as a right, and any person who can vote and doesn’t, can be fined. We complain about low voter turnout, imagine how things might change if we penalized people for NOT voting! “Politics: A strife if interests masquerading as a contest of principles.” — Ambrose Bierce, 1906. Never more true than in this case.

Worthy though all of this week’s strip has been, as a Brit who knows what a REAL poll tax was like I can’t get that worked up about needing to pay a few dollars for an ID to vote. Yes, constitution, amendments, etc – you’ll have to forgive me, our constitution over here is a living, breathing, mostly unwritten thing, we’’re used to it changing and being interpreted purposively (think interpreting the second half of your second amendment in the context of the first half…).

What has been MUCH more fun is Mitt’s visit over here to London. I gather it has hit the headlines over there as well, if not search Twitter for #RomneyShambles. The tag comes from the description given to our last budget, which unraveled over a period of a few weeks, as an ‘omnishambles’. Having Boris Johnson make you a figure of fun is a bit like losing to Dan Quayle in a spelling bee…

The president and vice president cannot come from the same state. Yet Bush and Cheney both lived in Texas for some time before taking office. They got around the law because Cheney maintained a home in Wyoming (I think it was) as his “official” residence. And if a college student studying in Texas wants to vote in the state where he actually resides, and where state policy will effect his institution, his valid photo student ID will not be accepted at the polls. Let’s go to Ambrose Bierce again: “Lawful: Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.” The Founding Fathers (some of them) rather hoped to create a government that would work rather like a machine, according to fixed laws, respecting no person more than another. “A government of laws, not of men.” A rather Olympian ideal. But it is always fallible men who write, administer, and judge the laws. And life is always more complex than simplistic rules can cover. No law or laws can protect us from mutual distrust, and when half of American distrusts the other half, and every time unfair advantage is taken, every time partisanship triumphs over fair play, another hammer blow is taken at our trust of one another. If we actually believe in the principle of self-government, then our only concern should be to get as many citizens voting and participating as possible, and it were better to admit a few bad votes, than exclude many good one. Any effort to suppress voter fraud should bend over backward to avoid voter suppression. Just as our justice system was designed to ensure than the innocent are not punished, even if that means letting some guilty go unpunished. If the Republican party is NOT the party of the comfortable, and IS just as concerned for the welfare of the disadvantaged as the Democrats are, then they would be JUST AS CONCERNED with the danger of suppression, and just as concerned with increasing voter turn out among all classes of people.

I am enjoying this series on voter fraud. It is a pervasive crime I guess. I mean, who do you know that would go to so much trouble as to watch the obit column, find a deceased person, then fake the identity of the deceased, and wait for the next election.It is so implausible and the crime definitely does not pay cash and takes a lot of time.Come to think of it, I guess that is why there is so little of it.

I’ll tell you righties what’s boring about this story arc: another day of your “I’ve got my ID, and I don’t care if anyone else is prohibited from voting” rants.

Also,For those who vote: When you go in and show any kind of ID, your name is checked off a list. It is called the voter rolls. Once the name is checked off-you have voted.Now if someone else comes in later and says they are you after you voted, it will be clearly evident that someone has used that name.How do you get beyond that point.Voter rolls are periodically updated anyway to correct for people moving from jurisdiction or state to another jurisdiction or state.Yes, those election commission folks do communicate with each other, and often.This voter fraud idea is so clearly party motivated that anyone knowing anything about the voting process will catch on to it.It is only the 90% of ignorant Americans-my estimate-who do not know anything about history, voting process, voting districts, GOP corrupt process in voting per Karl Rove[remember Florida-that was Rove], that are likely to think this voter fraud is a big deal.Once you have yelled “voter fraud” in a crowded polling place, everyone will be doubly careful, especially the election officials.Well, back to basics. Register, vote, complain about who won.

We invade other countries and make them dip their fingers in long lasting purple ink when they vote yet I could register my dog to vote in CA and she would get a ballot in the mail. There is voter fraud in America.

Enough with the lies about voter fraud Trudeau!

Any person governed by a set of laws has a right to a voice in the making of those laws, to slightly paraphrase George Mason (1725-1792).

I remember when liberals were suggesting a national ID program as way of dealing with illegal immigrants, and the conservatives I knew raised hell about it. Americans are free people and don’t have to go around “showing their papers”!!! Or so all the small-government conservatives said. Now they, it seems suddenly, change their tune. I also want to protest against all this nonsense about “the Democrats were the ones to create Jim Crow” etc. Absolutely true! The Democrats were at one time or another a party of racism, states rights, interventionism, imperialism; the Republicans were a one time or another the party of isolationism, liberalism, nationalism, environmental conservation, civil rights. Our two parties do not represent two different clearly defined ideologies that have been preserved over time: they are two teams competing for votes. They have shifted their strategies, and adjusted their principles as needed. Lately the people have been pushing the GOP to the right, and dragging the Democrats to the middle. Many of Eisenhower’s and Nixon’s ideas would today be called liberal by most, and socialist by some. In fact, you could say we have entirely different parties than we once did. When I was born there was the Republican party of Eisenhower with a wide assortment of opinions, the northern Democratic party of New Dealers and the working man, and the southern Democratic (or Dixiecrat) party of men like the old George Wallace. None of those parties exist today. Dixiecrats joined the Republicans when the Democrats embraced integration and civil rights in the 1960s and drove out the liberal Republicans from their new party, who moved over to what was left of the Democratic party, which has also continued to evolve, and not entirely in good ways. Neither Lincoln nor Theodore Roosevelt could make it as a Republican today, any more than many old Democrats could make it in the present party. We’d all be better off if we stopped looking back. We’re not going that way.

Is that Cornélius in panel 4?

Facts: GOP kryptonite.

The lies from the right never end. They just go on and on forever!

Charlie Webster was also none-too-pleased about the fact that the state republicans chose Ron Paul as the nominee for president, so he cheerfully decided to cancel county caucuses and not count all the votes.

Rick Scott was shocked. He was dead.Or at least that’s what he was told when he went to cast an early vote ballot in 2006 at Naples City Hall.“You can’t vote because you’re dead,” Scott — who’s now embroiled in a voter-purge controversy as Florida governor — recalls a poll worker saying. “You passed away, according to our voter rolls.” Miami Herald

That is, every Republican except for Florida’s former Republican Party chairman Jim Greer, who, scorned by his party and in deep legal trouble, blew the lid off his what he claims was a systemic effort to suppress the black vote. In a 630-page deposition recorded over two days in late May, Greer, who is on trial for corruption charges, unloaded a litany of charges against the “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” in his party, including the effort to suppress the black vote.Salon.com

Actually, in the last decade or more, Minnesota has been the leader in voter turnout. The GOP is trying to make photo ID part of the state constitution this year, but a lawsuit may remove it from the ballot, because the language of the amendment is too vague.

The only significant voter fraud is that being committed by the Republican Party since the 2000 election.

You are conveniently overlooking the reality that not everyone has a birth certificate to start with. Not everyone drives, and not everyone has a convenient department of motor vehicles on a bus line if they don’t drive (there isn’t necessarily one in every county). Not everyone can afford to take a day or half-day off work to go sit at the DMV to get a photo ID. Not everyone has the $25 or more it can cost to get a notarized birth certificate (assuming that a government-issued BC was issued in the first place) nor the $25 to $50 it can cost to get a DL or photo ID.

Assuming that the state is prepared to do a voter ID for free, the individual still has to come up with the documentation and the time. And who does bear the cost if the state does it “for free”?

I never mentioned Jefferson, you must be thinking of someone else. But if you must: the Dem-Rep party organized by Jefferson split 20 years later, and the Democratic Party was formed from one half of it by Andrew Jackson, and considered themselves the real heirs to Jefferson’s party, and the genuine successors to it. Anti-slavery Democrats abandoned the party in the 1850s and helped create the Republican party. So in a very real sense, both the major parties can trace their organizations back to Jefferson. The Republican party was created to counter states rights in favor of human rights and nationalism supporting a strong central government, and in that sense harkened back to the old Federalists of Adams and Hamilton. All of which is quite interesting to an historian, and completely irrelevant to the present parties and their policies.

I’m sorry to have to say this again: you are arguing reasonably with people who understand you are right, but will not admit it. Nothing matters to them but that their party win; they don’t even care about the empty suit heading their ticket, they just want Obama out of office BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. By the way, when GT uses an empty suit as the avatar for Romney, you heard it here first.

This entire series was a complete waste of time and space.

or stolen in chicago by richard daly, sr. for jfk….

You’ve had all week to come up with proven instances of voter fraud and failed to do so. You have spouted a whole lot of lying nonsense and never refuted anyone who calls you out. Get out of your bubble and start talking and listening to what liberals have to say. Maybe you won’t agree with our assumptions, but maybe you’d learn that other than a few nutjobs, eveyone wants this country to be a a thriving democracy.As it stands, you keep going back to the Tea Party well for disinformation. You are supporting a racist, un-American agenda of exclusion and alienation.

" … day off and get credit at work …"

Hear, hear IMudd, you should be my shop stewart, are you afraid of heights?

“Who is voting that doesn’t have an ID?”

No one. States have required ID, but are now changing what they will accept just before the election. As for how many that don’t have the proper ID to meet the new standard? About one million people in PA. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/20120727_One_million_voters_don_t_have_ID_to_vote__professor_testifies_in_Harrisburg.htmlMany of them will get things corrected, but some will be too busy, some will have traumatic life events this summer or fall, and some won’t learn they have a problem until they get to the polls. A significant number of eligible citizens who would have voted, almost certainly more than 100,000, now won’t. The GOP knows which side will be hurt the most. That’s why they are pushing for more stringent ID requirements, in state after state, instead of focusing on the more realistic sources of election fraud, such as “stuffing the box”, or it’s electronic equivalent, hacking the data. These things could genuinely throw an election to the wrong candidate, while voter impersonation is too rare to be significant.

I spent a lot of years as a Republican but switched to Democrat when the Christofascists seized control of the GOP.

Boy…This is the first time I’ve read the comments in this strip. Looks like many of you are devoted Democrats who only looks at this kind of stuff with predetermined thoughts. No room for the true facts, huh? Too bad…. It’s going to hurt when the axe drops. You’re not gonna be able to run fast enough. FOO!!!

In addition, if they want folks to have picture ID to vote, they could just issue the voter’s registration (which most of us applied for when we got our driver’s license) with the same picture that they use for the driver’s license. I just got sent a new voter’s reg in the mail (for some reason) but no picture on it — duh!

“Atwater/Rove”…Yeah, I think they have an entire chapter in the 2012 playbook on suppressing the opposition vote.

I found something that interested me when looking into Wallace. He ran for governor in 1958 with the backing of the NAACP against an opponent backed by the KKK. Wallace lost. The next time, he shifted more to the segregationist’s side, and won. Wallace is just one man. The truly sad part is that a large part of the voters of Alabama were racist as recently as the 60’s.

Maddox was definitely another one to be ashamed of, if you’re from the South, like me.

So the Libs say WE CAN’T have ID requirements for voters because the right to vote is SO sacred we can suffer fradulent voters so someone who is qualified to vote is not denied.

But the Libs say WE CAN have gun control, because the right to keep and bear arms IS NOT sacred enough to suffer criminals so someone is a responsible legal gun owner is denied.

Which is more Sacred?

The Second Amendment, as part of the Constitution, trumps the right to vote

2nd Amendment “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

“…the Constitution never explicitly ensures the right to vote, as it does the right to speech, for example. It does require that Representatives be chosen and Senators be elected by “the People,” and who comprises “the People” has been expanded by the aforementioned amendments several times. Aside from these requirements, though, the qualifications for voters are left to the states. And as long as the qualifications do not conflict with anything in the Constitution, that right can be withheld."

Democracy… Another ambiguous word; There really isn’t one that fits the definition. It’s OK, I’m a lefty and I bat right.

Hey Rightisright. I notice you make it that people can’t reply to you. If I spouted the same negative and nastry crap you dish up, I’d hide, too.Yes, you’re right, of course, only “taxocrats” get drugs and alcohol; esp. that well-known taxocrat Rush Limbaugh.Seriously, RisR, are YOU on drugs or what?

The “two incidents” were elections whose outcome was clearly ALTERED by fraud, not just influenced. As far as illegally registered voters go, they’ve found quite a few, a substantial number of which were either felons who didn’t know they couldn’t vote (apparently missed that “Have you ever been convicted of a Felony” box on the registration form), illegal aliens who thought EVERYONE could vote (and sometimes they bring their kids so they can vote too), and people who, by dieing, simply forgot to inform voter registration of their resignation from life.

More of the last than the other two, perhaps, but then unless we have particularly on the ball executors we’ll all likely commit that crime at one time or another, but, except in Chicago, we won’t vote!!

And you thought those guys in suits walking up and down the streets shouting “bring out your dead” were role playing Python movies. No, those were DNC registration teams making sure Obama wins his home state :-)

I don’t know what’s worse the GOP excuses for these law or American’s complacency accepting them?