Republican hypocrisy is on display with Board of Canvassers vote

The two activist Republican members of the State Board of Canvassers refused to vote to certify the petitions of the Tea Party and place its candidates on the November ballot, resulting in a 2-2 deadlock and sending it to the courts.

The Tea Party had submitted 59,535 petition signatures, and based on sampling, the state found the group had 45,150 valid signatures, well above the 38,013 signatures required by law. The board of canvassers was only charged by law to verify the signatures, not how they were collected; and nothing else.

The fake, Astroturf teabaggers have always claimed this was a nonpartisan, grassroots effort that was neither Republican nor Democratic, and teabaggers are claiming this petition drive was an effort by Democrats to place the “tea party” on the ballot and drain off Republican votes.

That may or may not be true, and I could care less if they are on the ballot or not. However, it has proved that the teabagger farce is just the militant arm of the Republican Party that was bought and paid for by a pair of rightwing, Washington, D.C. think tanks and lobby firms, and not some nonpartisan, grassroots movement consisting of both Republicans and Democrats.

That’s what I and others have been saying since this farce began last year.
This vote by the two board members just displays the hypocrisy of the Republicans. A similar situation occurred in 2006 when fraud and deception were used to place Proposal 2 on the ballot that banned affirmative action programs based on race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin.

Despite widespread allegations of fraud, no other body or office in the state was allowed to look into the fraud committed, In fact, Republicans went out of his way to take powers away from the state Board of Canvassers because they were concerned with the fraud committed.

The Board off Canvassers also voted 2-2 in 2006 to deny putting it on the ballot, but after court challenges, both state and federal courts ruled the board of canvassers did not have the ability to deny ballot access based on how signatures were collected or fraud was used to collect them.

That ruling should have prevailed today.