Controlling the vocabulary used in the argument can often win the argument.  Newsbusters posted an article yesterday about charges made by MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts that the Republicans are planning to engage in ‘voter suppression’ in the 2012 election.  The list of things included in voter suppression:  “ID requirements, tightening up residency requirements that largely impact college kids, and/or repealing last-minute voter registration at the polls.”

This is not a move to suppress the vote–this is a move to prevent the fraud that has, unfortunately, found its way into our voting system.  On September 29,2010, rightwinggranny reported on an investigation into voter fraud in Houston, Texas. 

In that article, I reported:

“Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Sean Caddle, who formerly worked for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.”

Asking for voter identification is not voter suppression–it is making sure that the idea of ‘one man, one vote’ is upheld in our elections.  No one is trying to suppress the vote–they are simply attempting to make sure everyone’s vote counts equally.