Last-Minute Ohio Directive Could Trash Legal Votes And Swing The Election

By Judd Legum on Nov 3, 2012
 Think-Progress

A last-minute directive issued by Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) could invalidate legal provisional ballots. Ohio is widely viewed as the most critical state for both presidential campaigns and — with some polls showing a close race — the 11th-hour move could swing the entire election.

The directive, issued Friday, lays out the requirements for submitting a provisional ballot. The directive includes a form which puts the burden on the voter to correctly record the form of ID provided to election officials. Husted also instructed election officials that if the form is not filled out correctly by a voter, the ballot should not be counted.

According to a lawsuit filed by voting rights advocates, this is “contrary to a court decision on provisional ballots a week ago and contrary to statements made by attorneys for Husted at an Oct. 24 court hearing.”

Indeed, it also appears directly contrary to Ohio law. From the lawsuit:

Ohio Rev. Code § 3505.181(B)(6) provides that, once a voter casting a provisional ballot proffers identification, “the appropriate local election official shall record the type of identification provided, the social security number information, the fact that the affirmation was executed, or the fact that the individual declined to execute such an affirmation and include that information with the transmission of the ballot . . . .” (Emphasis added.)

The law “ensures that any questions regarding a voter’s identification are resolved on the spot or, consistent with due process, the voter is informed that he or she needs to provide additional information to the board of elections. This protects the integrity of the voting process, and provides a reasonable opportunity to resolve deficiencies.”

The last-minute directive changes this and switches the burden to the voter, greatly increasing the chances that legal provisional ballots will be discarded.

The court gave Husted until Monday to respond to the lawsuit and indicated it will resolve the dispute before provisional ballots are counted on November 17.

Husted has also tried to limit voting in Ohio by reducing early voting hours.

GOP Seeks to Overturn Historic Civil Rights Law

Voting Rights Under Attack
Friday, September 7, 2012 by Common Dreams

Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) told the audience at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night, “we have come too far together to ever turn back,” warning that Republican-led voter suppression laws are taking America back to the days when states had the right to deny voting capabilities to minority voters. Voting rights for minority voters continue to come under attack as Republican leaders are now turning to the Supreme Court to overturn historic civil rights legislation.

Several federal judges recently struck down voter suppression laws in multiple states, introduced by Republican legislators and governors, such as voter identification laws, provisional voting restrictions, limits on voter registration drives, and reduced availability for early voting.

The court rulings in Florida, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin, marked a widespread rejection of so called 'voter fraud' legislation, which seeks to greatly limit who can and cannot vote.

However, as Chris McGreal at the Guardian reports today, "Several state governments are [now] looking to the conservative-leaning supreme court, which has already expressed its doubts about racially-based policy," in order to overturn these rulings. This step would seek to challenge the historic Voter Rights Act of 1965, which gave the federal government some control over voting rules in states with a history of blocking African Americans from voting.

In question is Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires "pre-clearance" for nine states – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia – before making changes to voting laws or procedures.

Civil rights leaders and activists have expressed concern over whether the Supreme Court will actually uphold this anti-discrimination law.

"The question is not whether Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act will be struck down, but when and how. Will it die a death of a thousand cuts? Or will it be killed with one swift blow?" Nathaniel Persily, a Columbia University law professor, told the Guardian.

"There has been a proliferation of cases that aim to take down and rip out this core provision of the Voting Rights Act," said Debo Adegbile, acting president and lead counsel of the NAACP legal defense fund. "I think it's fair to say that the supreme court invited these challenges."

Speaking to the DNC Thursday, Lewis continued:

Brothers and sisters, do you want to go back? Or do you want to keep America moving forward? My dear friends, your vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful, nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect union. Not too long ago, people stood in unmovable lines. They had to pass a so-called literacy test, pay a poll tax. On one occasion, a man was asked to count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. On another occasion, one was asked to count the jelly beans in a jar—all to keep them from casting their ballots.

Today it is unbelievable that there are Republican officials still trying to stop some people from voting. They are changing the rules, cutting polling hours and imposing requirements intended to suppress the vote. The Republican leader in the Pennsylvania House even bragged that his state’s new voter ID law is “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state.” That’s not right. That’s not fair. That’s not just.

Federal court rejects Texas' voter ID law

by MATT GOODMAN & BRAD WATSON 
wfaa.com
Posted on August 30, 2012

DALLAS – A federal court has swatted down Texas’ voter ID law, saying it would likely disenfranchise poor and minority voters.  

Although the state hoped the law –– passed by the Republican controlled legislature last year and signed by Governor Perry –– would be in effect for the November election, the likelihood is now remote since Texas said it needed a ruling by Aug. 31 to proceed.

The 56 page opinion, issued Thursday morning by a three-judge panel in Washington D.C., said the ID law would be “the most stringent in the country” and “would almost certainly have retrogressive effect.” 

Quoting from the opinion:

“It imposes strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor, and racial minorities in Texas are disproportionately likely to live in poverty.” 

Presented during the last legislative session by state Sen. Troy Fraser (R –– Horseshoe Bay), Texas Senate Bill 14 would require voters to present a driver’s license or state ID, a passport or a Texas concealed weapon license before voting at a polling booth. 

The law triggered a bitter divide along party lines, sparking controversy among state and federal politicians. Supporters maintain it's needed to stop voter fraud.

Critics, which include the Obama Administration, have said the law would keep poor and elderly voters from the polls because 81 of the state’s 254 Texas counties lack DMV offices, making it difficult for them to obtain necessary identification. 

 

In July, Attorney General Eric Holder veered from his prepared comments at an NAACP conference in Houston, equating the bill to a modern-day poll tax.

“Under the proposed law, concealed handgun licenses would be acceptable forms of photo ID but student IDs would not,” Holder said, in a video of the speech posted by the Talking Points Memo. “Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them and many of them would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes.” 

The Department of Justice cited the difficulty in acquiring identification when it initially blocked the legislation. In the most recent opinion, the three-judge panel elaborated further by comparing Senate Bill 14 to Georgia’s voter ID law. 

In order to gain preclearance from the attorney general, as required by the federal Voting Rights Act,  the state must prove that “all prospective voters can easily obtain free photo ID” and “that any underlying documents required to obtain that ID are truly free of charge. 

Quoting again from the opinion: 

“Unlike SB 14, the Georgia law requires each county to provide free election IDs and further allows voters to present a wide range of documents to obtain those IDs. The contrast with Senate Bill 14 could hardly be more stark.” 

In a statement, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott promised an appeal to the Supreme Court, saying:

“Today's decision is wrong on the law and improperly prevents Texas from implementing the same type of ballot integrity safeguards that are employed by Georgia and Indiana - and were upheld by the Supreme Court. The State will appeal this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, where we are confident we will prevail."

But the Mexican American Legislative Caucus hailed the ruling as victory for all Texans. 

“It would have muffled the voice of those that need government’s ear the most - Latinos, African Americans, the poor, and the elderly,"  said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio), Chairman of MALC.

DOJ argues in court Texas Voter ID law could disenfranchise 1 in 10 voters

By Chris McGreal, The Guardian
Friday, July 13, 2012

The US department of justice has defended its ban of a Texas voter ID law by telling a federal court that the legislation is an attempt by the state’s largely white Republican party to resist the political impact of changing racial demographics.

A five-day hearing in Washington over whether the Obama administration has the power to block Texas from requiring voters to produce photo identification wrapped up on Friday with justice department lawyers strongly challenging the motives behind the legislation.

Texas says it is intended to combat a rising tide of voter fraud by requiring people to show specified forms of identification, such as a driving or gun licence, at the ballot box.

The justice department said the law was racially motivated because it was constructed by the Republican-controlled Texas legislature to disadvantage the growing Latino and black communities in the state which heavily favour the Democratic party.

The outcome of the case, expected in August, is likely to have an impact in other states where the justice department is challenging similar laws, including South Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida.

The issue is expected to end up before the supreme court.

An administration lawyer, Matthew Colangelo, told the court on Friday that as many as one in ten voters in Texas could be disenfranchised under the law because of the difficulties poor people face in getting the necessary identification, such as having to travel long distances or pay for copies of birth certificates. He said that was the intent of the law.

“Four million new people moved into Texas between 2000 and 2010. Ninety percent of those were minorities. Texas acted to take away that voting strength on the brink of that minority exercising it,” he said. “It was enacted against the backdrop of a huge explosive growth in the Hispanic population.”

The administration also contends that the costs involved in obtaining identification amount to a poll tax forbidden by the constitution.

A member of the Texas legislature, Trey Martinez Fischer, told the court that the voter ID bill was rushed through without proper debate using measures such as declaring it emergency legislation.

“There was a determined effort to pass this bill in record time,” said Martinez, who chairs the Mexican American Legislative Caucus.

Another Democratic legislator, Wendy Davis, said her attempts to introduce amendments to the legislation that would help voters obtain identification, such as making it available at every county courthouse so that voters did not have to make roundtrip journeys of up to 250 miles to special offices, were blocked by Republicans.

“The voter ID bill, we all believed, was a racially motivated bill,” she said.

Henry Flores, dean of St Mary’s University graduate school in San Antonio, said in evidence that the voter ID law was only the latest of scores of pieces of legislation in response to significant demographic changes over the past 40 years.

“It seemed to me that [the ID law] had been turned into an anti-immigration bill,” he told the court. “Race was at the heart of the whole thing.”

A California Institute of Technology professor, J. Morgan Kousser, told the court that Texas Republicans had been trying to push through a voter ID law since 2005 and that politics in the state is “very racially polarised”, with the state’s Democratic party now dominated by Latinos.

“In 2011, the vast majority of Democratic legislators are minorities. So a bill that has partisan effects would have racial effects,” he said.

The Obama administration blocked the law using a central piece of civil rights legislation, the 1965 voting rights act, which requires 16 states with a history of racially discriminatory laws and practices to clear all or some changes in voting laws and constituency boundaries with the justice department.

Texas brought this week’s legal challenge in federal court on the grounds that the justice department has no authority to apply the voting rights act because the voter ID law was motivated solely by an attempt to prevent fraud.

The state said up to 50,000 dead people remain on the electoral roll. But the justice department said there is little evidence of significant illegal voting and that the state has only prosecuted one case in recent times.

John Hughes, acting for Texas, derided the administration’s claim that as many as 1.5 million people who are registered to vote may not be able to.

“If that were remotely true the courtroom would be filled with people [without photo ID to vote],” he said. “It’s hard to find people who don’t have photo ID. Certainly the defendants didn’t find anyone.”

The justice department called only one witness who claimed to be directly affected by the law.
Victoria Rodriguez, 18, told the court that while her birth certificate and student ID were enough to permit her to board a plane, they wouldn’t be sufficient voter identification under the new law. Lawyers for the state told the court Rodriguez could obtain the necessary ID using her birth certificate.

Texas constructed part of its case around social science studies that he said show voter ID laws have no effect on voting, he said.

“Common sense is people who want to vote already have ID or can get one,” he said. “The evidence is that it is easy to get one in Texas and that’s why it won’t have a turnout impact.”
Daron Shaw, a University of Texas professor of political science, said his research in states that already have voter ID laws suggests few people are kept from the polls by the requirement.

“I think the weight of the evidence is that it will not have an impact on turnout,” he said.

The justice department challenged Shaw’s objectivity on the issue, eliciting from him that he worked as a political strategist on both of President George W Bush’s presidential campaigns.
Shaw’s research also came under scrutiny from other witnesses who challenged the methodology of the study including that only 2% of those asked whether the law would affect them had responded.

As the case was heard, the political confrontation continued in Texas where the attorney general, Eric Holder, told a conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) that the justice department “will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right”.

Holder said that about one in four African Americans lacks government-issued photo identification of the kind required to vote in several states while fewer than one in ten white people do.

He said he opposed the Texas law because many people would have to travel too far to obtain the IDs, or would struggle to meet the cost of the necessary documentation.

The US supreme court in 2008 upheld the right of states to require voters to produce identification, but that case, involving Indiana, did not touch on the voting rights act.

Since then, 15 other states have passed laws requiring voters to show photo identification, although some of them offer alternatives. Texas has the most restrictive law.

ALEC Disbands Task Force Responsible for Voter ID, 'Stand Your Ground' Laws

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 by The Nation
by John Nichols


Pressured by watchdog groups, civil rights organizations and a growing national movement for accountable lawmaking, the American Legislative Exchange Council announced Tuesday that it was disbanding the task force that has been responsible for advancing controversial Voter ID and “Stand Your Ground” laws.

ALEC, the shadowy corporate-funded proponent of so-called “model legislation” for passage by pliant state legislatures, announced that it would disband its “Public Safety and Elections” task force. The task force has been the prime vehicle for proposing and advancing what critics describe as voter-suppression and anti-democratic initiatives—not just restrictive Voter ID laws but also plans to limit the ability of citizens to petition for referendums and constitutional changes that favor workers and communities. The task force has also been the source of so-called “Castle Doctrine” and “Stand Your Ground” laws that limit the ability of police and prosecutors to pursue inquiries into shootings of unarmed individuals such as Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

The decision to disband the task force appears to get ALEC out of the business of promoting Voter ID and “Stand Your Ground” laws. That’s a dramatic turn of events, with significant implications for state-based struggles over voting rights an elections, as well as criminal justice policy. But it does not mean that ALEC will stop promoting one-size-fits-all “model legislation” at the state level.

Pressure by CMD, civil rights groups such as the NAACP, the Urban League and ColorOfChange and good government organizations such as Common Cause and People for the American Way—which have expressed concern with ALEC’s meddling in public safety and democracy debates at the state level—has in recent weeks led to decisions by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s and other corporations to drop their affiliations with ALEC.

Indeed, the disbanding of the “Public Safety and Elections” task force looks in every sense to be a desperate attempt to slow an exodus of high-profile corporations from the group’s membership roll.

Anger over initial failure of Florida police and prosecutors to address Martin’s shooting led to an intense focus on the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law, and on the role of ALEC and the National Rifle Association in passing similar laws in states across the country.

That expanded interest in ALEC, a conservative “bill mill” that has been under scrutiny since the Center for Media and Democracy and The Nation launched the “ALEC Exposed” project last summer.

Pressure by CMD, civil rights groups such as the NAACP, the Urban League and ColorOfChange and good government organizations such as Common Cause and People for the American Way—which have expressed concern with ALEC’s meddling in public safety and democracy debates at the state level—has in recent weeks led to decisions byCoca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s and other corporations to drop their affiliations with ALEC.

In many cases, the corporations that have quit ALEC have suggested that—while they were comfortable working with the right-wing group in order to advocate on behalf of tax and regulatory policies that are favorable to their business interests—they are ill at ease being drawn into debates about issues such as voting rights and gun control.

ALEC’s decision to disband the Public Safety and Elections task force—which worked on those issues—cannot be seen as anything other than a response to the pressure the group has felt as high-profile corporate members have been quitting it on an almost daily basis.

While the group is not acknowledging as much, its statement on the disbanding of the task force speaks volumes.

“We are refocusing our commitment to free-market, limited government and pro-growth principles, and have made changes internally to reflect this renewed focus,” announced Indiana State Representative David Frizzell, ALEC’s national chairman. “We are eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues, and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy.”

While this is a dramatic development in the struggle to expose and challenge ALEC’s one-size-fits all assault on local and state democracy, it should be remembered that ALEC remains a prime proponent—via task forces working in other areas—of state-based assaults on labor rights, environmental protections and public education.

“Dozens of corporations are investing millions of dollars a year to write business-friendly legislation that is being made into law in statehouses coast to coast, with no regard for the public interest,” explains Bob Edgar of Common Cause. “This is proof positive of the depth and scope of the corporate reach into our democratic processes.”

ColorOfChange Executive Director Rashad Robinson promised that the group's advocacy would continue.

"ALEC has spent years promoting voter suppression laws, Kill at Will bills, and other policies that hurt Black and other marginalized communities. They have have done this with the support of some of America's biggest corporations, including AT&T, Johnson & Johnson and State Farm," said Robinson. "ALEC's latest statement is nothing more than a PR stunt aimed at diverting attention from its agenda, which has done serious damage to our communities. To simply say they are stopping non-economic work does not provide justice to the millions of Americas whose lives are impacted by these dangerous and discriminatory laws courtesy of ALEC and its corporate backers. It's clear that major corporations were in bed with an institution that has worked against basic American values such as the right to vote. Now that these companies are aware of what they've supported, what will they do about it? If ALEC's corporate supporters will not hold the institution accountable for the damage it has caused nationwide, then the ColorOfChanng community will hold them accountable."

Court sets July 9 trial date in Texas voter ID case

Court sets July 9 trial date in Texas voter ID case
The D.C. district court has set trial in Texas’ voter ID suit for July 9-13.

That’s nearly three weeks earlier than requested by the Justice Department and intervenors.

However, the court also directed that issues related to the constitutionality of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act be bifurcated from the main trial and said that those issues would “not be addressed unless the Court denies judicial preclearance of Senate Bill [14].”

Since that means that hearings on constitutional issues would take place only after a ruling on the preclearance claims (by definition some time after the July 13 end of trial), that would seem to make it less likely that the constitutional issues could be teed up in time to get them to the Supreme Court before the November elections.
The court’s scheduling order set a discovery cutoff of June 15 for both fact and expert testimony and directed that any dispositive motions (such as a motion for summary judgment) be filed by June 18.

Wisconsin Voter ID Law Struck Down by Court

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 by Common Dreams
A Wisconsin law that requires voters present a photo ID when voting, was struck down by a Wisconsin Court today. Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess ruled that the law, signed by Walker in May of 2011, violated the Constitution.

"Without question, where it exists, voter fraud corrupts elections and undermines our form of government," wrote Niess in his decision. "The legislature and governor may certainly take aggressive action to prevent its occurrence. But voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression. Indeed, they are two heads on the monster."

Gov. Scott Walker said he would appeal the decision and vowed to continue to fight for a photo ID requirement in the voting booth.

* * *

From the Huffington Post.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed the voter ID bill into law in May, calling it a "common sense reform" that would "go a long way to protecting the integrity of elections in Wisconsin." 

"It’s a shame activist Dane County judges continue to stand in the way of common sense," said Cullen Werwie, a spokesman for Walker. "We are confident the state will prevail in its plan to implement photo ID." 

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen (R) said he plans to appeal the decision. 

"In its rush to enact a Voter ID law, the Wisconsin Legislature failed to pay attention to the Wisconsin Constitution. Luckily, the League of Women Voters had the courage to stand up and defend the fundamental right to vote that our constitution guarantees," said Pines. "The proponents of Voter ID assert that it is meant to prevent fraud. We all know the truth: it is designed to suppress voting by poor people and students. Now, in Wisconsin, that will not happen." 

This is the second time in two days that such a law was struck down. Yesterday, a similar law in Texas was blocked by the Justice Department. Activists are hailing the curbing of these laws as a victory for minority communities that, many argue, would be disproportionately impacted by this kind of legislation.

Texas Law Requiring Voter IDs Is Blocked

By DANIEL GILBERT March 12, 2012 - Wall Street Journal

HOUSTON—The U.S. Justice Department on Monday blocked Texas from enforcing a law that requires voters to show state-issued photo identification at the polls, saying it would disproportionately affect Hispanics.

The agency's move is likely to fan the flames around the issue nationally, as state legislatures consider toughening voter-ID laws in an election year. Republicans argue that requiring voters to show IDs will help combat fraud; Democrats claim the measures are designed to make it harder to vote for minorities, the elderly and other groups who tend to back Democrats.

Texas is one many jurisdictions, mostly in the South, required to get permission from the Justice Department or judges in the District of Columbia federal court before making changes to voting laws. This requirement applies to states that were found by the U.S. to have restricted the opportunity to vote.

See a state-by-state breakdown of
voter-identification requirements.

The Justice Department said that Hispanics registered to vote in Texas are considerably less likely to have drivers licenses or state-issued IDs than other voters, citing data supplied by Texas in its bid to win clearance for the law passed last May. Under the Voting Rights Act, states must prove that voting legislation does not make it harder for racial or ethnic minorities to vote.

"I cannot conclude that the state has sustained its burden," wrote Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general, in a letter to Texas's director of elections on Monday. He added, "The state has failed to demonstrate why it could not meet its stated goals of ensuring electoral integrity and deterring ineligible voters from voting" without the new law.

Also Monday, a county judge in Wisconsin blocked part of a voter-ID law passed last year, ruling the Wisconsin legislature and GOP Gov. Scott Walker "exceeded their constitutional authority" by requiring citizens to show a photo ID to vote.

In the ruling, Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess agreed with a local voter group that the law violated the state Constitution by disenfranchising citizens without a photo ID. Judge Niess also questioned the effort to prevent voter fraud with voter-ID laws. Voter "fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression," he wrote. "Indeed, they are two heads on the same monster."

Another Wisconsin judge last week temporarily suspended the law until a hearing next month. The law, which drew four lawsuits, is now blocked pending a successful appeal of Judge Niess's ruling. Wisconsin holds local elections and the Republican presidential primary on April 3.

Mr. Walker's office said, "Requiring photo identification to vote is common sense—we require it to get a library card, cold medicine and public assistance.… We are confident the state will prevail in its plan to implement photo ID."

The Texas decision marks the second time in recent months the Justice Department has blocked a state from requiring voters to show a state-issued photo ID. In December, it objected that such a law in South Carolina would disproportionately affect minority voters. The state has sued the agency in federal court in Washington to get judicial approval of its law.

Texas, anticipating the agency's rejection, also sued, arguing its law should be approved because of similar laws in effect in other states. State Attorney General Greg Abbott said Texas "should not be treated differently and must have the same authority as other states to protect the integrity of our elections."

The spat is likely to ripple across the nation: Voter-ID legislation is pending in 32 state legislatures, and 10 of them are considering proposals to tighten requirements, said the National Council of State Legislatures.

Attorney General Eric Holder, in recent speeches and congressional testimony, has said instances of voter fraud are rare, and that he views voter-ID laws as a "solution in search of a problem."

In a speech last month at Tulane University, Mr. Holder said that while voter fraud wouldn't be tolerated by the Justice Department, "new state rules requiring photo identification to cast a vote too often appear to make a mockery of the promise of real participation in our electoral system."

Five Million Voters May Lose Rights in the 2012 Elections

Tuesday, March 6, 2012 by Color Lines
by Brentin Mock


Today’s Super Tuesday primary involves 10 states and 437 delegates at stake for the Republican Party’s presidential prospects. There are two states among that crop that are worth taking a look at: Georgia and Tennessee. Both are emblems for a growing, and troubling, legislative trend in which new election laws mandate citizens to produce photo identification to vote, ask people to prove their citizenship to vote, or outright curtail voter registration efforts.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as many as five million eligible voters could meet difficulties this Election Day due to these new, imposing voter laws.

There are currently eight states with photo voter ID laws containing specific criteria for what qualifies as “identification”for voting purposes. Some states require that identification be state-issued and only for the state a person is voting in; some prohibit college IDs; some demand that the full name and address on the card be current; while some require that an ID card has an expiration date.

Looking at those stipulations, it’s not hard to imagine how low-income citizens, African Americans, Latino Americans, college students, and elderly voters—groups the Brennan Center has identified as the most burdened by new voter laws—might get tangled up on voter day. The Center estimates that as many as 11 percent of eligible voters lack proper identification right now. For African Americans, it’s 25 percent—that’s 5.5 million voting-age black Americans who could get turned away at the polls for being undocumented and unphotographed.

Other groups like Native Americans, transgendered people, newly divorced, newly married couples or people who’ve recently lost their homes could all have information on their drivers licenses that reflect names, addresses and faces that aren’t current. The costs for these groups will be more than an inconvenience: fees for new birth and marriage certificates, hours lost waiting in lines for updated materials and transportation costs to handle it all.


How did we get to this point? Let’s just say the emergence of these laws are no coincidence. Thousands of Republicans from dozens of states didn’t all just wake up one day and decide we need an ID card to vote. And yet almost every voter ID law now in play or pending happened in the last four years—since Barack Obama ran for and became the nation’s first black president.

Republicans in state legislatures around the country have tried to pass these laws for years. Their efforts had been repeatedly voted down or vetoed out, mostly because the U.S. Constitution prevents meddling with voters’ rights. But in 2010, Republicans not only took over Congress, they became majorities in state legislatures across the country. Numerous states that previously had Democratically controlled general assemblies turned Tea Party-red, and one of the chief items on their agendas was changing the rules of the voting game.

An example of this is Tennessee, which for the first time since the Civil War ended saw its House of Representatives, Senate and governor’s office all controlled by Republicans in 2010. Swiftly, Tennessee passed new voter ID laws, and last year made headlines when a 96-year-old African American woman named Dorothy Cooper was denied an ID to vote.

Georgia was one of the first states with a voter ID law, first passed there in 2005, and today hosts one of the Super Tuesday primaries. Today’s vote in Georgia, and fellow photo voter ID state Tennessee, will probably reveal little about how the new restrictions impact minorities and other at-risk voting groups because they mostly vote Democrat—a fact that voter ID critics stress is not lost on the Republicans who push it. Nonetheless, election officials in Tennessee and Wisconsin, which have already hosted local elections using their new voter ID laws, have bragged about how there have been no problems.

In Wisconsin, the chief elections officer Kevin J. Kennedy noted only a few voter ID glitches where people showed up with the wrong kind of ID to vote.

The story, however, is not as much what happens at the polls when the wrong ID is used as it is what happens when people don’t bother showing up at the polls at all because they think they don’t qualify due to lack of identification. The U.S. has a long history of voting shenanigans, from Jim Crow era poll taxes to current era rumors circulated, often exclusively in black communities, about who can and can’t vote.

Come this November, during the general election, the impacts of the new laws will begin to surface. Besides the eight states already holding strict voter ID laws, there are 31 more states lurking hoping to do the same. At least eight of those states could pass voter ID laws before Election Day. And of the eight that already have strict voter ID laws, five want to pass legislation this year that would make them even stricter.

Who are the movers, shakers and shapers of these potentially disenfranchising laws? A great deal of funding comes from the Koch Brothers, who’ve vowed to remove President Obama from the White House by any means, and by any billions of dollars necessary. Another player is ALEC—or, the American Legislative Exchange Council—a body that includes banks and corporations working alongside Republican legislators to craft laws that would dismantle not only voter rights, but also environmental and labor protections.

ALEC, which has Koch funding, has drafted the model legislation that many states with strict voter ID laws have followed.

This is at least true for Tennessee, but is also true for many other states. In Nebraska, where a voter ID law is being mulled, a state senator flat-out lied when a news reporter asked him about his ties to ALEC. Sen. Charlie Janssen said he wasn’t a member of ALEC and had never been to their functions, but then was confronted with the evidence that his name was listed on their site as a committee member.

Other states share similar connections. ALEC’s Minnesota state chairman, state Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer, is also the author and pusher of a voter ID proposal that the governor has already vetoed once.

In Iowa, a voter ID law co-sponsor, state Sen. Linda Upmeyer, is ALEC’s treasurer. And in Tennessee, the state’s GOP Caucus Chairman, Sen. Bill Ketron, is an ALEC member.

All of this has set up a massive and high-stakes battle for civil rights organizations in 2012. The NAACP, the League of Young Voters, AARP, black church groups and college student organizations are all rallying to preserve voter protections by scrapping photo ID laws.

In Wisconsin, lawyers from The Advancement Project, League of Women Voters, ACLU and Voces de la Frontera, are in the courts battling to have Wisconsin’s law repealed on the grounds that it discriminates against people of color.

This week, Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network is leading a march from Montgomery to Selma, in commemoration of the historic Civil Rights march and to protest stifling voter ID and immigration state laws. In the federal government, the Department of Justice has intervened, blocking voter ID laws in South Carolina and redistricting laws in Texas (where there are also voter ID laws), by saying they both violate the Voting Rights Act. Attorney General Eric Holder has denounced the laws across the board and the department is side-eyeing other states that have passed them.

The irony, though, is that voter ID law proponents are using the same civil rights arguments made to secure voting rights protections to now upend them. In Texas, the state initially failed to provide data on the number of African Americans that would be impacted by new voting laws as requested by the Department of Justice. As an excuse, they said they didn’t collect data on race because the Voting Rights Act told them to be colorblind.

In South Carolina and Georgia, election officials argue that they should be released from federal oversight—put in place because of the South’s violent history with stopping African Americans from voting—because civil rights legislation has worked, and no discrimination exists now.

The states are perverting and exploiting civil rights laws in order to pretend that racial discrimination has been completely eradicated. Some even point to the election of the first black president and the record turnout of voters of color in 2008 as evidence that no traces of discrimination are left in the system. Instead, they claim to trace voter fraud—people voting with the names of other displaced, deceased or fictionalized voters—and argue this is why voter IDs are needed.

All the data shows that instances of voter fraud are negligible at best. The voter fraud argument is in many cases a ploy to disguise the racial animus that fuels the voter ID push, especially as it pertains to Latino voters. Many state legislators will state emphatically that the need for voter IDs is driven by the need to keep “illegal immigrants” from voting. Former Maryland governor and congressman Robert Ehrlich Jr., now an attorney, wrote in defense of a Maryland voter ID law that, “This ‘welcome wagon’ for illegal immigrants may reflect a majoritarian view in progressive Maryland; nevertheless, it makes the realization of free and fair elections far more difficult. … Every illegal vote cast and counted degrades our democracy. Lax immigration enforcement only magnifies the problem.”

Many voter ID proponents might argue that voter ID are made possible by the success stories of the civil rights movement, but they also want to place barriers to voting because civil rights legislation may have been too successful, as evidenced by a U.S. president who’s not only a Democrat but is black. Those working to put voter restrictions in place don’t want that kind of election to happen again.

Koch Brothers, ALEC and the Savage Assault on Democracy

Friday, December 9, 2011 by The Nation

by John Nichols 

 

Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch finally got their way in 2011. After decades of funding the American Legislative Exchange Council, the collaboration between multinational corporations and conservative state legislators, the project began finally to yield the intended result.

For the first time in decades, the United States saw a steady dismantling of the laws, regulations, programs and practices put in place to make real the promise of American democracy.

That is why, on Saturday, civil rights groups and their allies will rally outside the New York headquarters of the Koch Brothers to begin a march for the renewal of voting rights in America.

For the Koch Brothers and their kind, less democracy is better. They fund campaigns, with millions of dollars in checks that have helped elect the likes of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich. And ALEC has made it clear, through its ambitious "Public Safety and Elections Task Force," that while it wants to dismantle any barriers corporate cash and billionaire bucks influencing elections, it wants very much to erect barriers to the primary tool that Americans who are not CEOs have to influence the politics and the government of the nation: voting.

That crude calculus, usually cloaked in bureaucracy and back-room dealmaking, came into full view in 2011.

Across the country, and to a greater extent than at any time since the last days of southern resistance to desegregation, voting rights were being systematically diminished rather than expanded.

ALEC has been organizing and promoting the assault, encouraging its legislative minions to enact rigid Voter ID laws and related attacks on voting rights in more than three dozen in states.

With their requirements that the millions of Americans who lack drivers licenses and other forms of official paperwork go out and purchase identification cards in order to cast ballots, the Voter ID push put in place new variations on an old evil: the poll tax.

“We are in the midst of the greatest coordinated legislative attack on voting rights since the dawn of Jim Crow,” says NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. “Voter ID laws are nothing but reincarnated poll taxes and literacy tests, and ex-felon voting bans serve the same purpose today as when they were created in the wake of the 15th Amendment guaranteeing ex-slaves the vote—suppressing voting numbers among people of color.”

Voter ID laws represent only the beginning of the assault on voter rights. In states across the country in 2011, conservative governors and legislators who had swept to power in the 2010 election moved to restrict access to the polls in other ways. They ended election-day registration programs in state such as Maine, ending a practice that had allowed new voters to come to the polls, fill out a simple form and cast a ballot. They restricted early-voting in states such as Ohio, making it dramatically harder for citizens to cast ballots in the run-up to an election. They scrapped weekend-voting in Ohio, where working men and women had been able to cast ballots on their days off. They placed new restrictions on voting by students at colleges and technical schools, even going so far in Wisconsin as to move the primary election date to when most students were on summer break. They reduced the number of polling places in some states, making it harder for voters who lack transportation to get to the polls. And after they established the Voter ID requirements in Wisconsin, and said that citizens had to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get the proper paperwork, they tried to reduce the number of DMV offices.

“For nearly a century, there were Jim Crow laws in place that discouraged people of color from voting, explains Wade Henderson, the president and CEO of The Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights. “Today, there are different laws, but the objective is the same—to prevent millions from exercising their right to vote.”

No one who is serious about voting and elections misses the point of the project.
The point is not just to make it harder to vote. The point is to make it harder for citizens to elect legislators, governors, members of Congress and presidents who will regulate and tax multinational corporations such as Koch Industries, while at the same time establishing programs that meet the needs of the great mass of Americans. “Now, just as before, they are seeking to block us from voting in order to make it easier to come after our other rights,” says Mike Mulgrew, President of the United Federation of Teachers. “Everything we care about is at stake, from the right to a quality education to the right to a fair wage.”

It is with all of this in mind that the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund and allied civil rights and civil liberties organizations, churches and unions have endorsed the  “Stand for Freedom” voting rights campaign, which will launch with a march Saturday from the offices of the Koch Brothers to the United Nations. At the United Nations, the groups will mark Human Rights Day by calling for an end to assaults on voting rights in the United States.

The choice of the Koch Brothers office as a starting point is not symbolic. It is practical. For decades, the Koch Brothers and their foundation have funded ALEC and other groups that are now driving the attack on voting rights in states across the country.

The people are pushing back. In November, Mainers voted by an overwhelming margin to restore election-day registration. In other states, voting rights has become a central political issue. And, now, that issue is being raised at the headquarters of the Koch Brothers -- and the United Nations.

“From the beginning of our nation’s founding, Americans have understood that voting was fundamental to their pursuit of freedom and equal opportunity,” says Lillian Rodríguez López, President of the Hispanic Federation.  “Any attempt to undermine the right to vote, especially when that effort is directed at historically marginalized groups, must be treated as an attack on the very ideals that created our country: democracy and equality. And that is why we stand up for freedom and continue to fight for the right to vote for all Americans.”

ALEC Politicians Spin Special "Interest" Bill to Protect Corporate Wrongdoers as "Job Creation"

 (To my tea party friends--this is the end result of tea party politics: corporations exploiting you and your family so that they profit and don't get prosecuted for breaking laws...well, they'd be breaking laws had they not gotten those laws changed so that THEY don't get prosecuted, and THEY don't pay huge fines...but you do. ALEC exists to further cement profit as a higher priority than the rights of citizens. When you vote all tea party, you are in essence approving of your very own rape, figuratively, of course. But you'll still blame the other guys--and welfare moms and homeless people and minorities, and teachers--instead of the guys who are passing you around and having their way with you. Cognitive dissonance meets the Stockholm Syndrome...--jef)


Saturday, October 15, 2011 by PR Watch

by Lisa Graves

 

For years, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), has been itching to protect big corporations from high interest rates charged in cases where corporations have killed or injured Americans. Now, Wisconsin politicians serving on key ALEC task forces are pushing a bill embracing this idea as part of ALEC alumnus Scott Walker's latest effort to force the ALEC agenda into law based on claims that doing so will help "job creators."

Citizens Pay 12% but Companies that Injure or Kill Pay 4.25% 

 

The bill, introduced by Wisconsin State Senator Rich Zipperer of Pewaukee and Representative Paul Farrow, also of Pewaukee, would reduce the interest rate on court-ordered payments for Wisconsin residents who have convinced a jury and a judge that a corporation injured them, killed their loved ones, or violated consumer protections guaranteed by law. Under current law, in almost all types of civil lawsuits, Wisconsin requires the losing party to pay 12% interest on the judgment, until the amount owed is paid in full or unless overturned on appeal.

But ALEC politicians Zipperer and Farrow want to slash the interest rate charged (to about 4.25%) -- but only in cases involving personal injury and consumer claims. By definition these are cases in which virtually the only time there will be a financial judgment is when a Wisconsin resident proves in court that the defendant company violated his or her rights. But when a corporation, such as a bank or leasing company, sues a citizen and wins, the Wisconsin citizen still has to pay interest at 12% until the bill is paid in full.
How does this aid job creation?

"Lowering the price of breaking the law doesn't target job creation or economic development," says Laura Dresser an economist from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy. To put it less academically, "the only jobs it creates are for undertakers," said Democratic Rep. Brett Hulsey at a press conference about the so-called job creation bill package. To call legislation that rewards adjudicated corporate wrongdoers "job creation" is simply spin.

Anti-Consumer Bill Echoes ALEC "Model" 

 

The Zipperer-Farrow bill serves very special interests with their own special interest rate. It looks like ALEC's Pewaukee Posse -- a former estate lawyer and a current home inspector -- has taken a page from ALEC's "Prejudgment and Post-Judgment Act." That so-called "model" bill, which the Center for Media and Democracy exposed this summer through our ALECexposed.org project, would reduce the interest charged to corporations that kill or maim Americans.

This ALEC wish list item is a piece of the ALEC corporations' so-called "tort reform" agenda, an unabashed effort to tilt the scales of justice in favor of corporations in nearly every imaginable way. But Zipperer and Farrow have one-upped ALEC by adding consumer cases into the mix, on top of the cases involving Americans who have lost their lives or livelihood to corporate neglect, malfeasance, or greed. The Pewaukee Posse also tweaked the interest rate calculation of ALEC from using the Treasury bill rate to the prime rate plus one percent. These are differences without distinction -- both slash the interest rate paid by corporations that kill or maim. The Zipperer-Farrow bill is the ALEC bill on steroids by sweeping in all consumer cases in the state as well.

Pewaukee Posse Pushes ALEC Agenda in State 

 

It should come as no surprise that Zipperer sits on the ALEC Civil Justice Task Force. "Civil justice," in this case, is an Orwellian term for giving corporations whose products or policies happen to ruin people's lives more "justice" in the judicial system than corporations get under longstanding rules that protect people done wrong by corporate greed or negligence. The "private sector" head of that task force is none other than the so-called "King of Tort Reform," Victor Schwarz, who has long advanced the interests of tobacco and asbestos companies that for decades deep-sixed scientific proof that their products were literally killing Americans.

Zipperer is also one of the politicians who asked Wisconsin taxpayers to pay the $50 bucks a year ALEC charges for politicians to be members. And he's received financial compensation of over $1000 from ALEC for at least one trip, likely to an ALEC gathering known for schmoozing with corporate lobbyists -- lobbyists interested in legislation just like the one Zipperer and Farrow introduced. Like Zipperer, Farrow is no ordinary member of ALEC. He was chosen to sit on its Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force alongside lobbyists from AT&T and other companies that have been sued for policies and practices that take advantage of consumers.

Pfizer Lobbyist One of ALEC's Corporate Co-Chairs for Wisconsin 

 

This is not the only bill being spun as job creation that has ALEC DNA and that would adversely affect injured Wisconsin residents. Another ALEC bill sponsored by Zipperer would limit the rights of Wisconsin residents to recover any damages in strict liability cases (the primary legal basis for cases involving injurious products) if they are injured by prescription or over-the-counter drugs. Like the special interest rate bill, the drug bill goes even further than the ALEC model -- adding in medical devices and barring lawsuits for drugs approved by the FDA, not just barring punitive damages for regulated drugs, ALEC policy since 1995.

Perhaps, it should come as no surprise that the latest corporate co-chair of ALEC assigned to the state of Wisconsin is none other than Pfizer through its lobbyist Bryon Wornson. The list of drugs Pfizer has gotten through the inadequate FDA review process only to recall them later is long. Last year, an intravenous drug it distributed was recalled because it "might kill" hospital patients. That's just the tip of the iceberg on unsafe products produced and recalled over the years by Pfizer, and Pfizer is just one of the many transnational corporations whose drugs or devices got through the FDA's process only to end up killing or causing life-threatening harm to American consumers.

"This proposal does nothing to help employ the people of Wisconsin and everything to help big-time, special interest drug company CEOs," says Phil Neuenfeldt of the state's AFL-CIO, speaking of the drug and device bill.

The interest rate bill and the drug and device bill are part of a package being considered under Governor Walker's "Special Session on Job Creation," but so far it's hard to spot the bills that actually focus on creating jobs.

Very Special Interest Bill Just One of the Posse's ALEC Echoes 

 

The Pewaukee Posse has proven to be such eager sponsers of legislation with ALEC DNA that perhaps they will get gold stars, or "scholarships," from ALEC's new state co-chair Robyn Vos to attend coming ALEC conventions/vacations along with invitation-only parties hosted by global corps. Vos and his predecessor as ALEC state co-chair, Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald, have been charged under ALEC by-laws with a "duty" to get ALEC bills introduced in their home states. ALEC's politician co-chairs also are tasked with distributing the largess raised by state corporate co-chairs, like Pfizer, from corporate coffers to fund trips for loyal legislators.

Zipperer has put his name and effort behind: SB-1, which echoes several ALEC provisions to limit the rights of Pewaukee residents and other citizens of Wisconsin killed or injured by corporations, including negligent nursing homes (signed into law by ALEC alum Walker); AB-7, the so-called "Voter ID" bill that may block tens of thousands of students and others from voting in 2012, and which includes provisions consistent with ALEC's model bill (made law by Walker); SB-10, a tax give-away that benefits Wall Street speculators, similar to ALEC's "capital gains tax elimination act"; and AB-94, which expands taxpayer subsidies for private schools, echoing ALEC's privatization agenda in its "parental choice" bills.

Farrow has also pushed bills echoing the ALEC voter suppression agenda, capital gains, and school privatization efforts, and has introduced even more ALEC-like bills than his Pewaukee brother, including bills limiting the use of transportation taxes and embracing the NRA's shoot first bill known as the "Castle Doctrine," which shares core concepts with a parallel ALEC bill urged by the NRA, the former ALEC Criminal Justice Task Force Co-Chair.

These lists do not include all of the other bills similar to the cookie cutter legislation flowing out of the ALEC bill factory that the Pewaukee Posse voted for or that ALEC Alum Scott Walker signed into law this year.

But their latest foray into advancing the corporate wish list, through their very special interest bill, goes even further than ALEC has dared by targeting not just Wisconsinites physically injured by corporations but also consumers statewide.

Voter ID Is an Attempt to Suppress Democracy

Monday, August 1, 2011 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota)
by Richard Means

At this critical time in our nation's history, when wider participation by the American people in their own democracy should be encouraged, Republican politicians are instead suppressing that participation by limiting access to the voting booth.

So-called "voter ID" laws signed into law this year in several states have nothing to do with their purported aim of protecting the sanctity of elections and everything to do with concentrating political power in fewer and fewer hands.

As a former prosecutor of election-law violations in Chicago, I know a little something about election fraud. But what I found in years of pursuing cases of ballot abuse is that it almost never involved ordinary citizens who, say, voted when they weren't eligible, voted under an assumed name, or voted multiple times.

Instead, the fraud was almost exclusively perpetrated by political operatives, who stuffed ballot boxes, "lost" ballots or otherwise manipulated the vote totals in their precincts and wards.

On the unusual occasions when individual voters were involved, they were bribed or intimidated into cooperating with the scheme by a political operative. National and local investigations over the years have confirmed my personal experience.

Since the supposed target of the new laws is a non-existent problem - systematic or widespread fraud by individual voters - these laws, which require citizens to present a photo ID in order to vote, can only be interpreted as an attempt to further politically marginalize already marginalized populations in our country, including the elderly, the disabled, rural residents, low-income citizens and minorities.

These are the groups who are less likely to have government-issued photo identification, and often face financial and logistical hurdles in trying to obtain it.

While many have voted for years at the same polling place and are well-known to the friends and neighbors who serve as precinct election officials there, they may now be discouraged from exercising their franchise by these onerous new requirements.

In New Hampshire, where a voter ID bill is pending in the legislature but some local clerks posted the proposed law's requirements prematurely for a special election recently, voters were seen turning around at the polling-place door.

These laws can even exacerbate the very problem they are purportedly passed to combat. A clerk in South Carolina has noted that since several of the acceptable forms of ID have no address and yet must be accepted as proof of voter eligibility, the traditional duty of elections officials to ensure that people vote once and only once in their correct districts is actually undermined.

These new ID laws are part of a larger Republican program to limit the franchise of people who are more likely to vote for Democrats, an effort that includes: suppression of the youth vote by rejecting student IDs as acceptable identification and shortening the early voting periods young people disproportionably use to exercise their franchise; voter-roll purges that target minority voters; and lifetime bans on voting by ex-felons who have paid their debt to society.

The sanctity of the ballot is in no danger in our republic, but the trust and engagement of the American people in their own political system is.

Even as citizens across the Middle East are basking in newfound opportunities for political expression in the warmth of the Arab Spring, Republican politicians in America are limiting democracy with chilling voter suppression laws. Long ago we should have learned that the problems of democracy are resolved by more democracy, not less.