Democrats (and of course the media, if only) need to make the Republican party pay a high price for its voter suppression tactics.  We all know it happens, particular episodes get reported every so often, but it seems to me that we all mainly go "tsk, tsk" and move on.

Voter suppression is unAmerican.  It is undemocratic.  It undermines the very basis of our system of government.  In short, it should be a serious crime-- if not in the law, then at least in public opinion.  It should simply NOT BE TOLERATED.

In 2004, I was a runner in a precinct in Wisconsin for Kerry, seeking to maximize the turnout.  About 11am, I went to the voting place for the precinct to check in with my coordinator, and discovered that two Democratic pollwatchers had been thrown out of the polling place for "misconduct".  The complaints had been lodged by a Republican lawyer who was pollwatching.  I appointed myself the next pollwatcher for the Dems, and placed myself right next to the Repub lawyer.  While we were still able to chat in a friendly way (that broke down fairly quickly) he told me that he was part of a large group of volunteer lawyers recruited by the RNC to pollwatch in Wisconsin.  Within minutes, it became clear that his job as he saw it was to challenge every possible voter, to minimize (suppress) the vote.  With same day registration and address changes, there was lots of opportunity.  If I had not been there, countering his every move, perhaps two dozen voters would have been excluded.  I made it my goal to see that every person who wanted to could vote.  Yes, the Dems had volunteer lawyers-- a phone call away, and completely useless to the people in the precinct I was in.

Multiply this by the number of precincts in Wisconsin, in the country, by the number of other suppression techniques.

At one point I asked the lawyer how he could look himself in the face in the mirror when he was subverting democracy that way.  His response was to call to the election judge that I was disruptive and should be thrown out.  I'm pretty good at this stuff and created a diversion-- but I have no doubt that the two previous Democratic pollwatchers were thrown out on the say-so of this Republican lawyer, simply for doing their jobs.

Why is Republican voter suppression merely reported, sighed over, and tolerated?  I am sure there are efforts to stop it, but I want public opinion to turn against it, to make it a shameful activity.  Can we raise the visibility of Republican voter suppression tactics so that the American people see what is happening and are disgusted, so that the Republican party is shamed for their behavior?

I'm looking for suggestions about how this can be done.