VOTING: GOP thwarts progress

Why is Sholeh’s voting column so pollyanna on voting access? Nothing varies more state to state than voting access.

REPUBLICANS DELIBERATELY DISCOURAGE VOTING. Always have. Some of it borders on criminal. They even coined the phrase “let sleeping dogs lie” and always pray for bad weather on election day.

My former wife had to wait four hours to vote in 2012 because she had the misfortune of living 400 feet inside Richland County, a democratic stronghold if there is one in South Carolina. The red state election powers combined half a dozen precincts into one middle school under the guise of budget cuts or safety or some baloney.

And while she and my daughter were standing there in line to vote for Romney, they watched an election board official on TV camera saying everything was going smoothly and wait times were less than 20 minutes. She lied.

Like Idaho, South Carolina frowns on absentee voting. One has to fill out a form for every election.

But go just west in Washington state and everyone votes by mail. And has weeks to do so.

In California, you get the same ballot at the poll or permanent absentee mailed every election. Not possible in Carolina or here in Idaho, by the way.

Republicans spurn voters. It’s pragmatically imperative to the minority of tea partiers’ takeover of the party.

And so we get geniuses like Goedde who write laws in direct opposition to federal laws thrown out by the 9th Circuit and Idaho taxpayers get to pay the legal fees of the plaintiff to get Goedde’s anti-working man legislation declared unconstitutional.

Or the nine geniuses who necessitated a special legislative session to undo their damage when they killed Idaho’s ability to collect out-of-state child support.

We make our own misery by discouraging voting that renders too many sleeping dogs apathetic. The dogs need to bark and bite back by voting such buffoons out of Boise. It starts with caring about voting access.

MIKE RENO

Post Falls