US Supreme Court Finally Cracks Down on Boss Tweed

by folkbum

And it's about damn time, I say! Boss Tweed's reign of terror has ruined New York City politics for far too long:

States can require voters to produce photo identification, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, upholding a Republican-inspired law that Democrats say will keep some poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. [. . .]

Several critics pointed to a footnote in [Justice] Stevens' opinion to show how far back he went — 140 years — to describe the corrosive effects of widespread fraud at polling places, a reference to Boss Tweed's influence in New York's municipal elections in 1868.

Unfortunately, at the same time as the high court clamped down on Tamany Hall, it found a solution to a problem that just does not exist. As I have documented time and time again here (just read down), there is a concerted, genuine, partisan effort by Republicans going on across the country to erect barriers to voting among groups that traditionally vote for Democrats. In state after state, Republicans have stood in legislative chambers, in front of homes, behind podia, anywhere they could find room to stand, really, and repeated the same lies: In-person voter fraud is real, rampant, and destroying the integrity of our elections.

It's the same. Damn. Speech. Everywhere across the country. The Republicans hold retreats and pass around talking points for how to get it done. And it has nothing--nothing--to do with protecting the vote. (If it did, the most common form of voter fraud, which is fraud by absentee ballot, would be at the top of the priority list. It is not--most absentee voters tend to vote Republican.)

The number of contemporary cases of in-person voter fraud the law's supporters were able to present to the court? One. Out of hundreds of millions of votes cast in the last couple of decades. One.

Yet SCOTUS validates the lies. Welcome to John Roberts's America.