{"id":1296,"date":"2009-02-05T13:05:13","date_gmt":"2009-02-05T18:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/?p=1296"},"modified":"2009-02-05T13:05:13","modified_gmt":"2009-02-05T18:05:13","slug":"state-gop-works-to-make-voting-in-sc-harder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/2009\/02\/05\/state-gop-works-to-make-voting-in-sc-harder\/","title":{"rendered":"State GOP works to make voting in SC harder"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the SC Progressive Network<\/a> fights to bring more democracy to this oft-backward state, our Republican-controlled legislature is working to make voting more difficult. Yesterday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Election Laws passed out a bill to require all voters to have a state-issued photo ID in order to vote. The argument for the bill is that it will prevent voters from fraudulently pretending to be someone else to cast multiple votes.<\/p>\n

Ignoring testimony from the State Election Commission<\/a> and Network Director Brett Bursey that there are no cases of this happening, and that the current system of requiring either a voter registration card or a state ID is working, the subcommittee passed the bill out to the full committee. Bursey presented the subcommittee with a report by the Brennan Center for Justice<\/a> that concluded there was a higher chance of being struck by lightning while waiting to vote than someone stealing your identity to vote.<\/p>\n

Since House Speaker Bobby Harrell<\/a> is the prime sponsor of the bill, it is expected to pass the House.<\/p>\n

The 2008 legislative elections again saw South Carolina as number one in the nation for the fewest contested races. Only 34 percent of the 170 legislative seats were contested in the general election. The national average is 56 percent.<\/p>\n

Out of the 46 SC Senate seats, only 20 were contested. Nine were taken by new members (6 R, 3 D).<\/p>\n

Of 124 House seats only 38 were contested. 20 new members (16 R, 4 D).<\/p>\n

That’s 83 percent of the 170 seats held onto by incumbents.<\/p>\n

The biggest impediment to having a choice in our general elections is the redistricting that was done following the 2000 Census. The Republicans and the Legislative Black Caucus worked out a plan that gave them “safe” districts, that means the winner of the party primary is assured election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the SC Progressive Network fights to bring more democracy to this oft-backward state, our Republican-controlled legislature is working to make voting more difficult. Yesterday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Election Laws passed out a bill to require all voters … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-network-newsevents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1296"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1298,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions\/1298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}