Voter suppression phone calls in Indiana

Five year investigation at the Justice department.  Also, those AUSA's who got fired, guess what kind of charges they refused to file (because they thought they were baseless)?  Do you think that a five-year justice department investigation is free?  They found 24 people voted improperly (felons who didn't realize that they were disenfranchised), but nobody that voted more than once, and no instances of impersonation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html?pagewanted=print

See also, more broadly

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_republican_war_on_voting

I'd be interested to see any articles you have about the Wisconsin D of J having found pervasive voter fraud.

And I spent a week before the 2004 election in East Cleveland, and people waited 3+ hours to vote there.  There were insufficient machines, no heat (in the freezing rain), and polling places chosen to deliberately confuse -- If you live in project building A, which had a polling place in the lobby, you almost certainly voted in project building B, instead of the one you live in.  Pretty disconcerting to find out you just waited in the wrong three-hour line.  Funny, Republican ex-urban presincts didn't have these problems.

These are facts.  Don't let that keep you out of denial -- I hear it's a nice place for republicans this time of year.

As far as reform goes, I fully expect that election day will be moved to a Saturday relatively early in the Obama administration, and if it's constitutional to require states to allow early voting by mail, they will do so.  I mean, think about it.  Who doesn't vote?  Some people are apathetic, sure.  But some people are too busy and don't have the time.  Maybe some of these people are high-powered executives, but a lot more people in this country get paid by the hour, and can't take the time off.  Do you think those people are voting republican?  Do you think that they're happy that the top marginal tax rate has gone down 5% while their real income declines, and we choose to afford two wars but not health insurance, as long as those damn gays don't marry?  If you expand the electorate to more fully reflect the american people, I won't tell you that all these people are just inherently going to vote democratic because they're lower-middle-class.  But the republican party just doesn't have anything to say to those people, other than: Obama is a terrorist-loving liberal who will raise your taxes.  A rational observer would say that these claims are obviously untrue (as applied to said lower-middle-class people) unless you want to say that he's lying about his tax plan and has a secret one, which would open the door to inquiry into McCain's secret policies that he's lying about...

The republican party is way out of touch, and you'll see that tomrorow.  I like this site so far because it seems to encourage a level of discourse worthy of the subject, and a lot of sites on the right just sexy up other people's talking points.  The premise seems to be that the republican party is broken, but can be fixed somehow, and I'd agree with at least the first.  I think it's entirely possible to change the ideology, or, as the Ponnuru's of the world would say, retrench or hearken back to a more true and pure version of the current ideology, which sounds like basically the same thing.  But what does it mean in particulars?  Refusing wasteful spending in your own district, like Dennis Kucinich?  Balanced budgets, like bill clinton ran?  I don't know the answer to this question, but until there is one, I don't know how a "new right" can emerge.