This week in the War on Voting: No, both sides aren't equal in the voting war

Well, this was temporarily exciting'a headline in the traditional media reading Republicans' Voter Supression Project Grinds On by Jonathon Alter. Excellent, you might think, the establishment media catches on. Until you get to the obligatory paragraph, near the top:

Yes, both sides try to change voting laws to favor their team. The 1993 'motor voter' law that made voting more convenient by extending registration to the Department of Motor Vehicles helped mostly Democrats. That was at least in the long American tradition of expanding the franchise.

Yeah, because changing voting laws to make sure more people can vote is the moral equivalent of, you, know, stopping them from voting. When, since Reconstruction, have Republicans ever worked to expand the vote? Oh yeah, in Florida. In 2000. When they bullied Florida's state canvassing boards to waive state election law in order to count late overseas absentee ballots.

In an analysis of the 2,490 ballots from Americans living abroad that were counted as legal votes after Election Day, The Times found 680 questionable votes. Although it is not known for whom the flawed ballots were cast, four out of five were accepted in counties carried by Mr. Bush, The Times found. Mr. Bush's final margin in the official total was 537 votes.

The flawed votes included ballots without postmarks, ballots postmarked after the election, ballots without witness signatures, ballots mailed from towns and cities within the United States and even ballots from voters who voted twice. All would have been disqualified had the state's election laws been strictly enforced.

It's telling that all the scenarios Republicans cook up for voter fraud are tactics they actually use.

But back to Mr. Alter. After his obligatory "both sides do it" detour, he provides a pretty comprehensive overview of the lengths Republicans have gone to'most tellingly in electoral vote-rich swing states'to make sure that they keep "just enough young people and minorities from the polls that Republicans will soon be in charge of all three branches of the federal government."

The Republican effort to restrict voting isn't just anti- Democrat, it's anti-democratic. No fair-minded person believes the tall tales of voters pretending they were someone else, which have been debunked by the Brennan Center for Justice and others. What fool would risk prison or deportation to cast a single vote?

This isn't about stopping vote-stealing and other corruption, for which there are already plenty of laws on the books. It's about rigging the system to keep power.

Yep. That's pretty much the story, Mr. Alter. Thanks for helping to spread the word.

For more of the week's news, make the jump below the fold.