GOP seems mostly afraid of voters

Most of the discussion regarding the recently enacted Arizona illegal immigrant ID law has focused on whether or not it mandates racial profiling. However, lost in the discussion is what seems to be the actual intent of Arizona's Republican governor and legislature: scaring Arizona's Hispanic citizens from voting.

In a recent appearance on the Stephanie Miller radio show, BBC investigative journalist Greg Palast spoke about his meetings with Governor (then-Secretary of State) Jan Brewer and Republican State Sen. Russell Pearce (the sponsor of the illegal immigrant ID bill). In discussing her purging of 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanic, from Arizona's voting rolls, she acknowledged Mr. Palast's statement that if an illegal immigrant registered to vote that is a felony.

But in response to Mr. Palast's request to name any illegal immigrants who in fact registered to vote, she couldn't name a single one. In fact, when Mr. Palast asked if she had provided federal prosecutors with information about any of these illegally registered voters (who shouldn't be hard to find for they had to provide a name and residence address in order to register) for prosecution, Ms. Brewer stated she hadn't provided a single name.

In discussion with Mr. Pearce and members of his staff, they claimed there are 5 million illegal immigrants in the United States, and there is a big push on to register them to vote, and vote Democratic. In response to Mr. Palast's request for names and addresses of these illegal voters, Mr. Pearce acknowledged he didn't have 5 million names, he didn't have five, in fact, he didn't have a single one.

Mr. Pearce got the 5 million number from a Republican Website extrapolating from the number of Hispanics in a border town who refused jury service because they were not citizens.

To paraphrase the Republican strategy, as set forth over 15 years ago by Republican strategist Paul Weyrich (who takes credit for the election of President Reagan), it is the opposite of the good government types who want everyone to vote. Republicans want to suppress the vote for "our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Basically, they want to kick "we the people" right in the teeth. Just think about that over your morning coffee.

Tom Bartlett-Svehla

Mundelein