No surprise to those who pay attention that it’s democrats denying basic civil rights.
First, democrat Presidential candidate Barak Obama and how his rise to power, via WizBangBlog is this Chicago Tribune story:
The day after New Year’s 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city’s South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama’s four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.
Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.
But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.
A close examination of Obama’s first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.
One of the candidates he eliminated, long-shot contender Gha-is Askia, now says that Obama’s petition challenges belied his image as a champion of the little guy and crusader for voter rights.
“Why say you’re for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates?” Askia said. “He talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?”
In a recent interview, Obama granted that “there’s a legitimate argument to be made that you shouldn’t create barriers to people getting on the ballot.”
Ben Smith points out that suppressing votes (and violating the Civil Rights of the voters) is nothing new to democrats:
“Shrum relates how 1980 Kennedy campaign operatives, posing as officials of the National Weather Service, phoned in to radio stations fake reports of a weather emergency to depress the Carter vote in southern Ohio. (No Excuses at 113-114). Twenty years later, with the full support of the candidate, Gore campaign operatives manufactured traffic jams to obstruct the Bradley vote in southern New Hampshire. (Id. at 324.)”
