How much fucking time and money have Republicans in Congress and in state legislatures wasted on problems that just don't exist?
For instance, Republicans scream constantly about voter fraud, as if every election is fraught with endless fuckery with absentee ballots and identity theft and dead people rising up to vote for their zombie overlords. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said, in response to a slam from President Obama, "The fact is voter fraud is rampant--and in Texas, unlike some other states and unlike some other leaders, we are committed to cracking down on voter fraud." Except, of course, the actual fact is that voter fraud is about as rare as a lightning strike directly to the balls. Since 2002, there have been 85 prosecutions of voter fraud cases (not all were convicted). From 2000-2014, there were 72 million votes in statewide elections. By the Rude Pundit's awesome ability to use a calculator, no fucking voter fraud worth giving a fuck about occurred in Texas.
Over in Kansas (motto: "No wants to think they're in Kansas anymore"), Secretary of State and man-most-deserving-of-lightning-hitting-his-nutsack Kris Kobach is pursuing and prosecuting voter fraudsters after the mad, mad state legislature and bugfuck insane governor gave him the authority to do so. He's up to a total of six prosecutions, with one dismissed, one plea deal, and, really, fuck-all to show for it. But he'll proclaim that a mighty blow for democracy was struck when 60something year-old Steven Gaedtke was fined $500 for filling out his wife's absentee ballot. Sucking all the cocks around, Kobach actually said, "That doesn’t look like a mistake...One of the principal reasons of exercising this prosecutorial authority is letting people know they won’t get away with it." That sound you heard is a self-loathing paralegal hanging himself in the conference room of the Kansas Secretary of State's office, surrounded by absentee ballots he was comparing.
Meanwhile, over in Arizona, in Maricopa County, where embarrassment to the human race Sheriff Joe Arpaio jacks off to dead Mexican porn, actual voter fraud took place. Oh, it's not the glamorous case of a man filling out an absentee ballot. Instead, it's that the county, which has a large Latino and Native American population, opened only 60 polling sites instead of the usual 200 during the state's primary last month. That's despite the fact that the state of Arizona would reimburse the county for the cost of the election, no matter how many polling places there were. It meant hours-long waits to vote, fucked up registration records, and more, which disenfranchised primarily non-white voters.
Maybe the majority Republican legislature can do something about that - an issue that affected thousands of the state's residents. Or maybe instead the leaders there can sue for things like forcing people to prove their citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, a move that the Secretary of State said is "important because voter fraud is a significant problem in Arizona." Yeah, the 21 cases of voter fraud since 2005 are certainly more worthy of action than the scores of people who waited in the desert sun for a chance to feel the Bern.
Gee, the only reason to not act on that would be if you didn't want people to vote.
