Obama: Right to vote under threat in the US
Both Obama and Clinton spoke and talked about how changing the voting system to require identification, and how it's putting us 50 years back and the actual right to vote is threatened. BULLSHIT. Not one single person who is now qualified to vote would be disqualified. But to protect the system, ID would be required of ALL voters. No need to put out there the reasons as to why everyone already has some sort of ID already, and how it would be next to impossible to get by in today's age without the ID we are discussing. So then, if everyone has this ID, WHY would they fight SO hard to prevent it from being a requirement? And yet the very same people don't cry about having to provide proof of insurance on many levels, or for the freebies like in the welfare system. Ante up the ID for that in less than a NY minute!
Obama: Right to vote under threat in the US
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-vote-und...tics.html?vp=1NEW YORK (AP) — In an unsparing critique of Republicans, President Barack Obama on Friday accused the GOP of using voting restrictions to keep voters from the polls and of jeopardizing 50 years of expanded ballot box access for millions of black Americans and other minorities.
"The stark, simple truth is this: The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago," Obama said in a fiery speech at civil rights activist and television talk host Al Sharpton's National Action Network conference.
Obama waded into the acrid debate over voting access in an election year where control of the Senate, now in the hands of Democrats, is at stake, as is Obama's already limited ability to push his agenda through Congress.
Republicans say the voting measures guard against voter fraud, but Democrats say they erode the landmark 1965 law that helped pave Obama's path in politics.
"Across the country, Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote," he said, relating anecdotes of voters turned away because they didn't have the right identification or because they needed a passport or birth certificate to register.
"About 60 percent of Americans don't have a passport," he said. "Just because you can't have the money to travel abroad doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to vote here at home."
Obama's speech to a crowd of about 1,600 in a New York hotel ballroom came a day after he marked the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, where he praised President Lyndon Johnson's understanding of presidential power and its use to create new opportunities for millions of Americans.
Clinton: New voter restrictions are a step back
http://news.yahoo.com/clinton-voter-...-election.htmlAUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton used the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act to criticize efforts in several states to restrict voting, notably photo identification requirements, saying they threaten to roll back half a century of progress.
Clinton spoke Wednesday night during the Civil Rights Summit at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library at the University of Texas in Austin. The library is hosting the three-day event to mark the anniversary of the landmark 1964 law that banned widespread discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities and women.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to give the keynote address Thursday and former President George. W. Bush will wrap up the summit later that day.
Clinton, the 42nd president, praised Johnson for pushing through laws that helped remove political and economic barriers for millions. He noted that Johnson was a "son of the South" and a "a Texan bred with the state's outsized ambitions (who) saw limitless possibilities in the lives of other people like him, who just happened to have a different color skin."
He also praised those who gave their lives in the civil rights struggle, such as Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers and other victims of bombings and shootings.
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Originally Posted by aboutime
