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If You Can’t Beat Them, Enjoin Them (From Voting)
All eyes are on Iowa this week, as the hodgepodge field of Republican contenders gallivants across that farm state seeking a win, or at least “momentum,” in the campaign for the party’s presidential nomination. But behind the scenes, a battle is being waged by Republicans—not against each other, but against American voters. Across the country, state legislatures and governors are pushing laws that seek to restrict access to the voting booth, laws that will disproportionately harm people of color, low-income people, and young and elderly voters.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund have just released a comprehensive report on the crisis, “Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America.” In it, they write: “The heart of the modern block the vote campaign is a wave of restrictive government-issued photo identification requirements. In a coordinated effort, legislators in thirty-four states introduced bills imposing such requirements. Many of these bills were modeled on legislation drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—a conservative advocacy group whose founder explained: ‘Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.’”
It is interesting that the right wing, long an opponent of any type of national identification card, is very keen to impose photo-identification requirements at the state level. Why? Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, calls the voter ID laws “a solution without a problem. ... It’s not going to make the vote more secure. What it is going to do is put the first financial barrier between people and their ballot box since we got rid of the poll tax.”
You don’t have to look far for people impacted by this new wave of voter-purging laws. Darwin Spinks, an 86-year-old World War II veteran from Murfreesboro, Tenn., went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a photo ID for voting purposes, since drivers over 60 there are issued driver’s licenses without photos. After waiting in two lines, he was told he had to pay $8. Requiring a voter to pay a fee to vote has been unconstitutional since the poll tax was outlawed in 1964. Over in Nashville, 93-year-old Thelma Mitchell had a state-issued ID—the one she used as a cleaner at the state Capitol building for more than 30 years. The ID had granted her access to the governor’s office for decades, but now, she was told, it wasn’t good enough to get her into the voting booth. She and her family are considering a lawsuit, an unfortunate turn of events for a woman who is older than the right of women to vote in this country.
It is not just the elderly being given the disenfranchisement runaround. The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law points to “bills making voter registration drives extremely difficult and risky for volunteer groups, bills requiring voters to provide specific photo ID or citizenship documents ... bills cutting back on early and absentee voting, bills making it hard for students and active-duty members of the military to register to vote locally, and more.”
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently spoke on this alarming trend. He said: “Our efforts honor the generations of Americans who have taken extraordinary risks, and willingly confronted hatred, bias and ignorance—as well as billy clubs and fire hoses, bullets and bombs—to ensure that their children, and all American citizens, would have the chance to participate in the work of their government. The right to vote is not only the cornerstone of our system of government—it is the lifeblood of our democracy.”
Just this week, the Justice Department blocked South Carolina’s new law requiring voters to show photo IDs at the polls, saying data submitted by South Carolina showed that minority voters were about 20 percent more likely to lack acceptable photo ID required at polling places.
By some estimates, the overall population that may be disenfranchised by this wave of legislation is upward of 5 million voters, most of whom would be expected to vote with the Democratic Party. The efforts to quash voter participation are not genuine, grass-roots movements. Rather, they rely on funding from people like the Koch brothers, David and Charles. That is why thousands of people, led by the NAACP, marched on the New York headquarters of Koch Industries two weeks ago en route to a rally for voting rights at the United Nations.
Despite the media attention showered on the Iowa caucuses, the real election outcomes in 2012 will likely hinge more on the contest between billionaire political funders like the Kochs and the thousands of people in the streets, demanding one person, one vote.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
25 Comments so far
Show AllWhere is President Obama on this? Does he plan on doing anything about it? We can bail out the banks but we can't ensure that people are allowed to vote? Don't we oversee foreign elections so that they are conducted fairly? Can't that be done for US citizens as well? I would think this is a "Homeland Security" issue.
Homeland security is busy helping Bloomberg and the mayors torture the occupy movement.
Now we get concerned about this, when it's too late to change things. This mess goes back to our constitutional underpinnings which have always allowed individual states to have too much say about how elections are to be carried out. As a result crooked elections are just as much an American tradition as fair ones. Two stolen presidential elections in recent memory have done very little to change that. In fact electronic voting has arguably made it worse. Now that Barrack faces defeat due to voter disenfranchisement, now he finally gets concerned about it? Fair and free elections are not in fact valued in this country and never really have been. They have functioned to provide a viel of legitamcy to our our governmental process but that is no longer needed as we transition to oligarchy and authoritarian rule in this country. After all it seems to be what the people really want--to be lead by a strong man.
I haven't seen much concern on his part. Not enough to make any difference before the next election anyway. But that is the way he operates isn't? Always promising that if re-elected...just need more time. He just need to extend the Bush tax cuts and foreign policy one more time.
Could swear I heard him make noises against the Supreme Court's Citizen's United ruling during a State of the Union address a while ago, but haven't been able to recognize any actual actions that he's taken to deal with it. Would appear he's accepting contributions from the same players that profitted from it.
American Corporations rake in billions from foreign investments and sales and, with Citizens United, can spend and launder whatever they want on elections. They don't even need to vote; they decide who runs in the first place. Keeping voters out of the booth is just frosting on the cake. Just wait till a voting location blows up.
Money now has more of voice in US politics than actual citizens. We are forced to pay for photo ids and corporations get to hide behind anonymity.
This isn't the first time.
In Maine, legislators passed a law in the '30s that those who'd been thrown out of work by the Depression were now "paupers" who no longer had a connection to the community and therefore no right to vote.
The elites are unceasing in their efforts to deprive us of the ballot because then, as Frederick Douglass wrote in his memoirs, our sole remaining recourse would be the bullet. And they know how completely they've already managed to get the bullet demonised. Their paid agents work unceasingly at that, too, in league with the hard-of-thinking and what Coffin called "gentle cowards who [wrongly] think their gentleness excuses their cowardice".
Decreasing the amount of the population that has the franchise has long been an elite goal in the United States. What is truly mind boggling is how state after red state has passed voter disenfranchisement measures cloaked as 'voter protection' or 'voter ID' laws for the last two years; and only now federal law enforcement appears to have awakened from its' slumber. What this whole fiasco bespeaks to is what an utter mess identity laws are in the USA. From Social Security numbers being default national identity numbers (and private companies 'managing' credit histories), to a myriad of identity laws that are firmly planted in the 19th Century, a population where less than 20% of citizens have ever held a US passport (quite a few nations issue passports to their citizens as national identity documents upon one's achieving their majority), and no biometric national identity cards (many European Union nations issue them and it has made identity theft quite hard). But in retrospect, the 1% are quite comfortable with a large sector of disenfranchised who do not officially exist, as that is how their compatriots in the Third World reduce the voting population.
In no way would I argue that using intimidation or a burdensome bureaucracy to deny someone the vote is right, but it's ludicrous for Amy to imply that an Obama presidency is our bulwark against the horrors of the GOP. He has proven himself to be a Trojan Horse, sneaking right-wing policies into the city under the cover of a slick PR campaign, while his suppporters twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain away his actions.
And I guess Amy lacks any sense of humor or irony, otherwise she wouldn't be quoting the despicable Eric Holder's phony outrage about the abuse of civil rights workers in the past, while knowing that Holder and Obama have stood by and allowed peace protesters, Occupy activists and others to be brutalized by the police and the FBI with their full knowledge.
I couldn't agree more, satyrich.
Even allowing for Amy's straight-down-the-pipe reporting style, piously quoting utterances from the forked tongue of a poisonous reptile like Holder is a bit much.
Maybe Denis Moynihan shoehorned in that bit while Amy wasn't looking.
X2
satyrich: " He has proven himself to be a Trojan Horse ". No, like I posted in 2008 BO IS a Trojan Horse and anyone who took the time to check him out, needed no further proof, but the politically sophomoric needed more proof and it looks like the Trojan Horse is still an unproven Trojan Horse to millions of naive Americans as BO looks like Wall Streets hand picked, boy in 2012.
No, really, I must ask: Does Amy or anyone actually realize that the act of voting under the conditions and absurdities of our present system is utterly futile? All of this discussion; all of these articles and sage advice are for nothing. You are dealing with a profoundly broken mechanism here. Once the engine has blown you don't simply tinker with the distributor cap and hope that will get it going again.
I'm sorry, but the concerns about disenfranchised voters, etc. here are actually petty: we are ALL disenfranchised whether we vote or not. Things are so bad that even a 'fair' election is not going to actually yield any significant changes. As the old saying goes: "Don't vote; that only encourages the buggers!"
As long as progressives (old guard; not prone to 'outlandish conspiracy theories' or anything that would compromise their credentials; their professionalism) continue to believe we can still effect change through LEADERS and mega-state structures, they shall remain deluded and helpless in their quest for justice and democracy. Real change goes far beyond putting marks on a ballot...
Real change goes far beyond putting marks on a ballot...
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True. But that doesn't make ballot-marking unimportant. Without the ballot-marking, nothing changes no matter how much prep there's been.
Be honest with yourself: we do not have actual democracy right now. Your remark goes nowhere unless one can prove that there is dynamic and beneficial progress in effect. I very much doubt you can convince me.
No one can debunk the act of voting alone, really. But under the circumstances, and taking an unflinching, critical look at the process as it stands now, it is absurd to concentrate so strongly on the virtues and sanctity of this act. If we were dwelling in a functioning, truly fair society, we wouldn't even be having this discussion to begin with.
Before voting starts to mean anything again, there must be a total disruption of current politics: no more business-as-usual. Voting should also be about issues and ideas, not charismatic figures. As it stands now, we are just electing new daddies all the time! I spend most of my life trying to avoid being told what to do by someone else. In order for this to have any lasting effect, I must be responsible and accountable to myself, and assume the attributes of what would otherwise be recognized as 'leadership'. To me it's just sensible behavior, and part of what it takes to be a valuable member of a community.
You're absolutely right of course, and I would never be fool enough to suggest that there's anything good about the current corrupted system -- apart from the fact that, to maintain the sham, they have to let us vote, and that gives us a way in.
If we clean up the process we can take over the government via the ballot box rather than the ammo box. And to clean up the process only takes work. It'll be a hard slog, if we do it, but not at all an impossible one.
Probably the greatest obstacle to success will be that so many of us believe in sitting on our arses waiting for someone else, politicians usually, to come in and "make it all better". That sort of attitude is very chlidlike (and that's me being so polite my teeth hurt).
When the bad guys are willing to act and we aren't, they win and we lose. Every time.
Apparently the Voting Rights Act gives the Justice Department the ability to block laws, such as the one passed in South Carolina.
Yet, on the face of it there is nothing inherently discriminatory in the law-and there is no issue of due process. It would also be difficult to prove that bias was a motivation. This is probably an issue of equal protection, where the courts have specifically enumerated rights to Congress to address disparate impact against suspect classes of people. Yet if laws can be struck down based on an interpretation of whether their impact is discriminatory- then a window exists to challenge the fairness of every law. For example, it would seem perfectly legitimate to make the environment a protected/suspect class-and by doing so strike down laws that permit their wanton degradation. What if the "poor" were considered a group routinely discriminated against? Numerous laws could be struck down on the basis of their de-facto discrimination.
Finally, even if the Supreme Court won't extend protected status to the environment or the poor, what is to stop states and localities from doing so? There is I believe nothing in the US constitution that prohibits the protection of any class of citizen, unless by so doing the rights of other classes or the citizenry as a whole are adversely affected-all of which is subject to interpretation.
In summary, it is not our laws or the Constitution that perpetuate abuses of power, but those in power who use their power to restrict the rights of others in order to perpetuate their unfair advantage.
"Just this week, the Justice Department blocked South Carolina’s new law requiring voters to show photo IDs at the polls, saying data submitted by South Carolina showed that minority voters were about 20 percent more likely to lack acceptable photo ID required at polling places."
Low voter turnout ALWAYS favors the GOP, and they've known that for a long time now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPsl_TuFdes
I understand that Diebold has adopted their new motto from Joseph Stalin.
"It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes."
Texas passed their voter ID bill on their third attempt, by my count, and on May 27, 2011, Governor Perry signed SB 14 into law. There was the expected waving of the flag and the patriotic frenzy, with the promises to bring integrity to the voting system. I had mailed many letters to my local State Senator in the years prior to this bill passing asking him to consider that there has been a lot of research into this suggestion of voter fraud and voter disenfranchisement and the results of this inquiry boils down to a single registered case of voter fraud in 1993 in the Pennsylvania Second Senatorial District.I asked him to consider the focus of a bill that demands another barrier to voter participation was a bad law.. I asked him to consider instead the benefit of applying all of that effort and money to reduce drunk driving, giving the local Police more funds to buy equipment, or funding rehabilitation programs etc..You see the logic makes no difference to them,
If you want to see where the real threat to voting is, then I suggest that the question of voter integrity points a strong hand toward the States whose power to regulate and enforce election laws is a constitutional fact.
Ask about how soon does your state vote on the form and function of all of it's scheduled election activities within the next calender year and you will see that it's usually the first order of business after the year begins. Is that in itself a concern? Not usually unless the question of how many election machines to provide to how many election districts is an issue. The State of Ohio pulled it's election machines from the national election during the middle of the election process in the 2004 election campaign, and only in those districts that were expected to vote heavily in one particular manner.
We don't need to ask about the Florida 2000 election process do we? Go and look this information up and learn about the practices of the electoral system in your State. Voter ID bills is just the tip of what's been happening and it's going to favor the candidates when more of you guys get disgusted and give up the power to vote altogether, believe me they don't care.
Any U.S. citizen with a social security number who has reached the age of 18 at the time of any election should be required to vote by law. No one (including ex-cons and prisoners) should be excluded. A real democracy demands it. Are you listening Rocky Anderson and every other third party out there?
So, I should be forced, under penalty of "law", to participate in a farcical system, the goal of which is to perpetuate the ruling class status quo, in the name of "real democracy"? Wow... No thanks, Space Cadet. I prefer to retain the right to exercise one of the few freedoms that remain, i.e., the freedom to NOT SUPPORT a rigged process that only exists to give Amerikans the illusion of democracy.
Here in Oregon we have universal absentee, vote-by-mail, and it works great. You can fill out the ballot at your leisure, looking up any information you need. Ballots are counted by human beings, with members of different parties agreeing on the voter's intent. We haven't had any problems with voter fraud.
Did I mention that Republicans don't usually do well here?