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Remember when civic engagement meant "get out the vote?"

Now the Republican Party has decided its goal is "stop the vote" - - and Wisconsin was right in that Right mix with its freshly-narrowed registration and early-voting period, failed effort to stunt the turnout through mandated display of ID's for all eligible and already-registered voters and recently-discovered inaccurate information distributed to GOP poll watchers..

And, by the way, who is limiting early voting in Florida - - a practice favored by many Democrats and minority voters who traditionally vote after Sunday church two days before the election?

Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott.

Who is up to even more restrictive turnout mischief in Ohio? Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, whose efforts to stall early voting are now eclipsed by the discovery that 33,000 registrations were oopsied out by a computer error.

And who is seriously messing with the process in Virginia?

Contractors tied to the Republican Party, including one arrested in an expanding probe of discarded voter registrations:

The investigation following the arrest of a man on charges of dumping voter-registration forms last month in Harrisonburg, Va., has widened, with state officials probing whether a company tied to top Republican leaders had engaged in voter-registration fraud in the key battleground state, according to two people close to the case.

A former employee of Strategic Allied Consulting, a contractor for the Republican Party of Virginia, had been scheduled to appear Tuesday of this week before a grand jury after he was charged with tossing completed registration forms into a recycling bin.

Why does the Right have so much trouble with the right to vote, and why are so many Republicans in official positions where power is wielded using that power to take away a basic right.

Surely it can't be over the phantom menace of 'voter fraud' - - which voter ID did not address - - though the Virginia example should be a bi-partisan outrage.

Cross-posted at The Political Environment.

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