ID theft's biggest villains: illegal aliens, Russian mafia, Republican Party

We all know that illegal aliens commonly "buy" fake Social Security numbers in order to get work. This isn't a victimless crime, because it creates two audit trails of work data for the real owner, and when that real owner applies to the SSA to go on Social Security, it can be blocked for months or even years while the person and that SSA try to figure out what happened--and the real owner has to prove that he isn't committing fraud by applying.

And of course the Russian (and Ukranian etc.) Mafia constantly phishes for American ID data and then uses it to empty bank accounts and for other nefarious schemes.

What isn't common knowledge is the fact that the Republican Party is also engaged in ID theft, in the form of taking voters off the voting roles who are legal voters. This, too, is stealing someone's identity for gain. Part is trying to prevent the 10% of Americans who lack photo IDs that the Republican state governments have deemed are lawful. Part is disenfranchising minorities through an elaborate system of differential legal processes that throw blacks in jail for crimes that either shouldn't be crimes or that are defined differently for whites and blacks (not in so many words of course--but it's how it pans out), and then removes their right to vote for life or makes it so hard to get back the right to vote that most don't even try, or give up after hitting one roadblock after another.

And it's not just the right to vote that can get stolen. Today I saw an interview with a lady in Florida who'd been taken off the voter rolls for being dead (she had the same first and last name and birthdate as another Floridian in another city who had indeed died). But then the state of Florida also took away her driver's license and notified Social Security that she was dead. The lady spent months of her life getting back her rights. Mind you she had a different Social Security number from the dead lady, a different middle name, and a different city of residence.

But the GOP's vote suppression conspiracy prefers to disenfranchise valid voters rather than risk not disenfranchising one single invalid potential voter.

The irony is that when you talk to rank and file Republicans they usually express a fear of the State invading the lives of individuals, invading their privacy and robbing them of their freedoms. And then they claim it's the Democrats who they have to fear of doing this! Yet at the same time the leaders of their own party are the ones actually doing to citizens the very thing that Republicans give as their main reason for voting Republican.