Scott Brown Decries Legally Mandated Voter Registration Effort, Says It’s A Conspiracy To Elect His Opponent

It's no secret that in a full and fair election, one in which everyone who is eligible to vote and wants to vote gets to cast a vote and have that vote properly counted, the Republicans have no chance of winning. For this reason, the Right Wing has been working overtime on legislation designed to disenfranchise as many legal voters as possible under the guise of preventing nonexistent polling place voter fraud. It's not surprising to hear Right Wing mouthpieces pushing this drive to deprive millions of Americans of their constitutional rights, of course, but when a United States Senator joins the voter suppression bandwagon that is nothing short of disgraceful. Scott Brown has virtually put into words what the rest of us already know "I'm a Republican and if everyone is allowed to vote I can't win the election."

Article excerpt follows:

Scott Brown Decries Legally Mandated Voter Registration Effort, Says It’s A Conspiracy To Elect His Opponent
By Josh Israel
Aug 8, 2012

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA)’s today lashed out at his opponent’s daughter and his home state of Massachusetts for ensuring that a federal law is properly followed. The freshman Republican charged that by helping to signing up welfare recipients to vote, the state was “clearly” aiding Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren’s campaign.

The 1993 National Voter Registration Act — better known as the Motor Voter bill –requires that citizens be offered the opportunity to register to vote when they get a driver’s license or apply for social services. Voting rights groups — including Demos — filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was not in compliance, after a 35-year-old woman was not offered the chance to register to vote when she filed paperwork with the state’s welfare office last June. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, recognizing its obligation under federal law, settled the case out of court. As part of that settlement, the state government agreed to contact, by mail, the 477,944 welfare recipients who might also have been denied their right to be offered a chance to register to vote and give them that chance now.

Voting rights groups have brought similar suits in other states. But seizing on the fact that Warren’s daughter is chair of the board of one of the groups suing, Brown made the argument that this amounts to a conspiracy to elect his Democratic challenger. His statement today said:

I want every legal vote to count, but it’s outrageous to use taxpayer dollars to register welfare recipients as part of a special effort to boost one political party over another. This effort to sign up welfare recipients is being aided by Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and it’s clearly designed to benefit her mother’s political campaign. It means that I’m going to have to work that much harder to get out my pro-jobs, pro-free enterprise message.

It is surprising that a U.S. Senator would object to a state complying with federal law and attempting to remedy its mistake when it may not have done so. It is also surprising that Brown would, in effect, say that having more eligible welfare recipients registered to vote would automatically mean more votes for Warren.

Brown says on his campaign website that “Partisan bickering and political gamesmanship won’t help us save that America, and I refuse to participate.”