Most Republicans are not as openly longing for a return of Jim Crow as Jonah Goldberg and Ann Coulter. Goldberg has called for a return of literacy tests to weed out voters he considers undesirable. Coulter went him one better in 2006 when she called for a return of both literacy tests and poll taxes. More and more conservatives have come to believe that democracy is a failed experiment and want to return to a time when only Right Thinking People are granted the ability to vote. A few of the techniques being used follow:- Require documentation that a large percentage of poor people do not possess.
- Voter intimidation, threatening them with prison if they vote.
- Phone banks designed to give out phony voting locations.
- Pumping up the felony convictions in minority communities and thus making it illegal for them to vote. Nationwide, over 8% of African-Americans have been disenfranchised by this method.
- "Sleepover" voting machines where poll workers are given the voting machines a day ahead of voting so that they have plenty of time to hack the systems.
- Misallocation of voting equipment. This is a favorite technique in San Diego where poor and minority voting precincts invariably have less equipment, and hence long lines, while white precincts will have equipment sitting around unused. Being white in San Diego, I have never had to stand in line to vote.
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