Des Moines — Two articles today highlighted the issue of voter access and the impact Republican led efforts to suppress the vote had on the 2012 election.

“As several observers have noticed, one party’s strategy this year involved getting far more people to vote, while another’s seemed to involve having fewer people vote; the more democratic approach prevailed,” said Michael Hunt, Communications Director for the Iowa Democratic Party.

In an article titled, How the GOPs War on Voting Backfired, The Nation’s Ari Berman writes that “while we’re still waiting on the data to confirm the impact of  efforts to pass restrictive voter laws, the backlash against voter suppression laws could help explain why minority voter turnout increased in 2012.

Additionally, Iowa’s Secretary of State Matt Schultz, who was one of the key players in the Republican Party who desperately sought to put restrictive laws on the books to limit citizens access to voting, made ThinkProgress’ list of the nation’s top five worst election officials.

See both articles below:

How the GOP’s War on Voting Backfired

The Nation // Ari Berman

Since the 2010 election, Republicans passed new voting restrictions in more than a dozen states aimed at reducing the turnout of Barack Obama’s “coalition of the ascendant”—young voters, African-Americans and Hispanics.

“This is not rocket science,” Bill Clinton said last year. “They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate.” By pushing voter suppression laws, Republicans wanted the 2012 electorate to be older, whiter and more conservative than the young and diverse 2008 electorate.

But the GOP’s suppression strategy failed. Ten major restrictive voting laws were blocked in court and turnout among young, black and Hispanic voters increased as a share of the electorate relative to 2008.

Read the rest of the article here: http://bit.ly/YS07wY

Meet The Nation’s Five Worst Election Officials

ThinkProgress // By Ian Millhiser

Despite long lines, voter suppression laws and Republican efforts to discourage voting, President Obama won reelection last night. Many of these roadblocks to voting did not happen by accident.

Meet five of the Republican state elections officials who spent this election cycle thwarting the franchise:

Matt Schultz: Like Colorado and Florida, Iowa attempted its own voter purge targeting the illusionary problem of non-citizen voting, with Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz spearheading this purge. An Iowa court temporarily blocked this purge, however, warning that it “created confusion and mistrust in the voter registration process [and] have created fear that new citizens will lose their right to vote and/or be charged with a felony and [have] caused some qualified voters to feel deterred from even registering to vote.”

Read the rest of the list here: http://bit.ly/RVpY16

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