Thomas is an independent, but he has chosen the side of Saint Obama this election. Mitt Romney's multiple gaffes and flip-flops have soured him for good.
Thomas broke down for me the issue of voter identification. He went beyond the headlines to the realities that many voters face in a way I had never fully understood.
Here goes.
In the United States, the Republicans have created roadblocks to voting in many of the pivotal "swing states".
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (SKIP IF YOU ALREADY KNOW)
It is a tactic that has been used successfully before, when, for example, certain Southern states required a poll tax be paid prior to voting. This poll tax was too costly for African Americans, often paid half of the wage paid to white Americans. Even poor white Americans were given a pass, while Blacks were effectively stripped of their voting rights.
Other voter suppression tactics used extensively by Democratic party operatives in most Southern states until the Voting Rights Act (1965) included literacy tests, aimed at African Americans voters. There is an added irony that these weasels preached "separate but equal" education systems, while requiring educational skills to vote for those who got a raw educational deal.
The vote suppressors never openly used race as a litmus test. They stressed the taxation and the literacy tests as non partisan, fair and unbiased barriers to "fraudulent voters".
TODAY'S REALITY: GOING TO THE BACK OF THE VOTER BUS
Today, (and some would say in 2000 in when GW Bush was elected via Florida's organized voter disenfranchisement movement), the Republicans have equally "unbiased" requirements for voters in the form of "voter identification". They have manufactured a "fear of fraudulent voters", though only 60 cases exist in the pat 50 years (says Thomas), as an excuse to restrict voting. Surely Fox News endorsed this alarmist view of American suffrage. The climate was set for the laws to be changed -- chiefly in pivotal swing states -- to revive these discriminatory practices.
WHY IS IT SO HARD TO GET ID ?
This is the part that was new to me. Many people migrate within the USA. Many blacks, hundreds of thousands of them, moved from the South northward over the past 50 years. To get a valid photo ID, they must first get their birth certificate from the town they were born in. That can be, in some cases, 1000 miles away.
Thomas, who was born 3 hours away in Ohio, took 3 weeks to get a valid identification card in order to vote. He was able to drive back and forth from Detroit's suburb to his hometown to get the paperwork done.
The majority of lower-income voters cannot afford the three-day drive to Alabama, nor can they afford the lawyer fees that may be required to get legal attestations for the birth certificate. The odyssey can be expensive, time consuming and damn-near impossible to someone who does not own a car (cannot afford one) and who does not have a driver's license (obviously). One can only imagine how the working poor can afford a 3-6 week unpaid vacation to surmount this legal hurdle before the drop-dead date called "voter registration deadline".
The Republicans have calculated that most of these would-be voters are Liberal leaning. With elections won or lost by a few hundred thousand, this ruse could very well tip the scales towards Republicans.
CANADA IS DIFFERENT, BETTER
And there you have it. Doesn't this make you happy you live in Canada where our lax voting laws allow my grand-ma (R.I.P.) to vote despite not speaking English and not having a driver's license? If my grand-ma were alive, she'd be rooting for Obama, too.
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