Speaker O’Brien: Liberal? No Voting for You

By on January 14, 2011 in

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Speaking to the Rochester 912 crowd last night, Speaker O’Brien slipped up on his talking points and voiced what’s really happening when conservatives trump up charges of voter fraud: they are trying to suppress votes.

Turning to the issue of voter fraud prevention, O’Brien said his party will “tighten up the definition of a New Hampshire resident.” He said that Plymouth, a college town, experiences 900 same-day voter registrations.

“They are kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience,” he said. He then discussed the need for voters to have a photo I.D., to prove who they are, just as they must do when cashing a check.

Speaker O’Brien, just what age do you deem appropriate for people to have voting rights? And more to the point – why are you trying to undermine democratic participation just to please your own political interests?

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  • elwood

    five college kids in a row buying beer at the grocery store, with the clerk checking each one’s ID, you’ll LOVE voting under O’Brien’s rule.

    It will slow the lines down to a crawl. It won’t be just college kids who don’t turn out – it will be a broad cross-section of citizens who can’t wait that long in line.

    • susanthe

      could be streamlined considerably by only allowing Republicans to vote.

      • JonnyBBad
      • Douglas E. Lindner
  • Douglas E. Lindner

    Those who claim to hold it dear should therefore be familiar with the 26th Amendment:

    Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

    Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

  • Rep. Jim Splaine

    No, I take that back.  Bill O’Brien said it.  

  • JonnyBBad

    he’s voting his feelings, with life experience.

  • Dean Barker

    * VOTE FRAUD!

    * Young adults are liberal.

    * Young adults don’t use their brains.

    * Young adults have no experience worth anything..

    * VOTE FRAUD!

    • Douglas E. Lindner

      I’m very eager to hear what my Republican counterparts have to say about this.

  • Kathy Sullivan 2

    Brunelle is a Democrat, throw him out.
    College students are liberal, don’t let them vote.
    Who died and made this guy dictator of New Hampshire?

    • JonnyBBad
    • JonnyBBad
    • ProfessorMike

      The Tea Party, but they are not dead yet.  However they do seem to be committing suicide with the voters.

  • Mike Emm

    O’Brien sets the stage, but it takes legislation to make it happen. Here is one of the bills that will make it real

    The state will now tell you where you must go if you want to exercise your right to vote. If you are young and likely to vote Democratic, we will make it as difficult as possible for you.

    This is called freedom.  

    • Paul Twomey

      No person shall be deemed to have lost or changed his or her domicile by reason of his or her absence from such town, city, ward, or unincorporated place while employed in the service of the United States, while engaged in the navigation of the waters of the United States or of the high seas, while a student at any institution of learning, while confined in any public prison or other penal institution; or while a patient at or confined for any reason in any nursing or convalescent home, hospital, or like public or private facility.

      So a member of the United States military born elsewhere who is stationed in NH cant change his domicile to NH while here, but an executive on temporary posting for IBM is welcome? Why can middle age people who come here for limited work periods of under four years vote without a problem, but the young and the military and federal employees cant?

      Aside from a primer on how to be a chair, these people need a primer on how to be a responsible citizen in democratic society.

      Note: the apart about people in nursing homes seems to be in conflict with current rules that allow them to vote directly from the nursing home.

      I guess the elderly and infirm have been trending Democratic a bit too much and their participation in elections are now longer needed by our new masters.

      Bill O’Brien’s naked desire to disenfranchise people because of their age and the way they vote is simply reprehensible and the majority should reexamine if that is the face they wish to show the world.

      • Kathy Sullivan 2

        My later Aunt Lou lived in Quincy for decades. In her elderly years, she lived in an assisted living facility in New Hampshire for several years. She voted in New Hampshire.   Bill O’Brien would have disenfranchised her.

        One of my colleagues mentioned to me yesterday how a sister he knew lived and worked in New York for several decades; when she reached her elder years, her order transferred her to a convent in New Hampshire because that facility had what we would consider assisted living and some skilled nursing care. Bill O’Brien would disenfranchise her.

        Discrimination on the basis of status is so at odds at who we are as Americans.
         

        • RealNRH

          There’s always the Law of Unintended Consequences option. If Republicans do pass a bill like that, then it would be possible to take a page from the Republican playbook. Put watchers at polling places and start challenging the voting rights of (demographically Republican-leaning) senior citizens who live in nursing homes. They’re not the only ones who can make spurious claims of fraud for electoral advantage.

          The difference being that Republicans are unethical scum who would actually do that, while Democrats actually support the right to vote.

  • Lucy Edwards

    that the current majority of the NH Legislature are much in agreement with one of their previous political leaders, GWB, who said that it would be a lot easier if he were a dictator.  

    Why do these people remind me of the kind of parent who says, “Because I told you so!’ whenever questioned or challenged.  

    They really don’t get it, do they?  Back to civics class for the bunch of them.

  • hannah

    Horn recounted that former President George Bush had said that immigrants were needed for the U.S. labor force. Her answer to that was that if millions of abortions had not been conducted, America would not have difficulty in boosting its labor force.

    Women are to be forced to have children, so Americans can be forced to labor.

    Force is obviously a conservative desideratum.  Explains why the AUMF has never been revoked.  Force is the answer to the endemically insecure.  To secure is, of course, to hold by force.

    National security = rely on force

    • Ref

      to find out where these “millions” of abortions they always talk about are taking place.  Finding providers for those services gets harder every year in this country.

      • susanthe
      • hannah

        compunction about mangling the facts.  It is well established that the majority of fertilized human eggs are in fact aborted, many before implantation and some soon after.  By using the term that applies to a natural process for intervention from outside, it’s possible to include all prematurely terminated non-viable gestations.  The reason, outside of propagandistic preference, “premature termination” can’t be objected to is because every caesarean section qualifies as such.

        Basically, what authoritarians object to is individuals having intent and acting on it.  What they prefer is that humans be obedient to mother nature or the fates or paternalistic determinants.

        • Ref

          a good point.  Some of these morons think ANY use of ANY birth control is tantamount to an abortion.

  • tchair

    Is this what you voted for?????

    • JonnyBBad

      Few read ‘newspapers’, and only a small circle is engaged in forums like this. It would surprise me if a majority of voters are really upset, not because I distrust them, but because their lives are so difficult right now. They don’t have time to invest in the news. I am pleased to say though the Union Leader, of all the main stream media did a good job last week exposing the ‘imbecility’.

      I still suspect the majority of voters think our complaints are the bellyaching of whiny partisan losers. They may just give the newbies the benefit of the doubt psychologically, because to do otherwise is to recognize how badly we all were pwnd.

      I saw this coming…and told as many folks as I could,n the street, at the party, knocking on doors, and on the phone. For 18 month I did anything I could.

      My frustration boiled over a week ago as my worst fears  began immediately to become realized. In retrospect, I really hoped that I would have been seen to have been over wrought in November, not now.

  • smileydem

    “Speaker O’Brien, how old were you when you cast your first vote? Where were you? What was the extent of your life experience at that date? What was your prevailing emotion when in the voting booth?”

    All 399 other members of the House should be required to answer the same questions before pressing their voting button on this bill.

  • susanthe

    GOP trolls friends seem interested in this thread. Interesting.