The ACLU highlights just one story from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, one story that demonstrates the plight of hundreds of voters in the state.
South Dakota is trying to prevent Eileen Janis — and hundreds of other citizens — from voting.
Eileen grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and does suicide prevention work. She registered to vote for the first time in 1984. “I always vote because my mom told me to,” she says.
But when she went to cast her ballot in the historic 2008 election, she found that she had been illegally removed from the voter rolls. Though she had been convicted of a felony, her sentence to probation meant that she had not lost the right to cast a ballot. “I went [to vote] with my son who had just turned 18. As soon as I tried to vote I was told no because I was a felon.”
South Dakota has a long and shameful history of disenfranchising Native Americans, so Ms. Janis's story is far from unique. The ACLU sued on behalf of Janis and other disenfranchised South Dakotans and won. Which, of course, isn't the end of the story. Here at Daily Kos, robbinsdale radical
alerted us to the South Dakota legislature's efforts to deny the franchise to those with criminal convictions, even those who were never sentenced to jail time. Native Americans are disproportionately represented in the South Dakota criminal system, and this effort would hit them particularly hard.
The ACLU tells how to take action:
Tell the DOJ to protect the right to vote in South Dakota and across the nation. And urge Congress to pass the Democracy Restoration Act, which would let Eileen—and all Americans with past convictions who are living in their communities—vote in federal elections.
For more of the week's news, make the jump below the fold.
In other news:
- The Virginia state Senate passed a voter ID bill this week, including an amendment from state Sen. Steve Newman, that eases requirements for students by allowing students at private colleges and universities to use their student identification for voting.
- TakeAction Minnesota has a new report documenting "how Minnesota’s wealthiest finance institutions and their executives, lobbying groups, PACs and the chamber of commerce have been pooling funds together, sharing resources, and in some cases sharing office suite space in a collective effort that’s at least partially responsible for a Republican takeover of the state legislature in 2010." That, of course, includes efforts to get a photo ID requirement referendum on the ballot in November.
For Dan McGrath, executive director of TakeAction Minnesota, the issue is less about the legal and policy merits of voter ID laws — though that’s important — and more about a larger problem listed in the report as, “An intentional effort to reduce the voting rolls in order to help corporate conservatives further expand their wealth and power.”
- Meanwhile, a coalition of activists is gearing up to fight that effort.
Groups who oppose Voter ID have been getting more active in recent weeks. They packed a Senate Committee hearing and have organized news conferences each day this week.
Celester Webb, with the Churches of God and Christ, said his 84-year-old mother would have difficulty obtaining a government-issued ID because she doesn't have a birth certificate. Webb said that for some the proposal could turn the clock back to before the Voting Rights Act was enacted in the 1960s.
"We call that generation the greatest generation America has ever seen," Webb said. "What a tragedy it would be for her to try to go vote and because she does not have ID as this bill would require, she would be turned away just as she was when she lived in Mississippi."
- South Carolina filed suit on Tuesday against the Department of Justice, which rejected the state's new voter ID law because it violated the Voting Rights Act.
- Voter ID is at the center of debate in the race for the secretary of state seat in Missouri. House Speaker Pro Tem Shane Schoeller, Republican, has is running for the seat and using new legislation he's introduced to stiffen the state's ID requirements for voting as his platform. He's actually using a 2000 controversy, in which thousands of voters were turned away from the ballot box because the state said they had become inactive, as his motivation. Only a Republican would response to voter suppression with more voter suppression.
- After Ohio voters succeeded in getting a repeal of a new restrictive voter ID law on the ballot in Ohio, state Republicans are working on plans to end run the citizen's repeal.
[S]ome Republicans, including Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, are talking about not just repealing the bill but also passing a replacement bill with new “reforms.” By doing this, they could enact a new bill with similar anti-voter restrictions that would go into effect for the 2012 elections unless its opponents waged another time-consuming and expensive petition drive. Ohio has historically been a must-win swing state for Republican presidential hopefuls and suppressing voter turnout could aid the GOP nominee.
Ohio activists, joined by President Obama's campaign, vow to again petition to repeal any replacement legislation.
- Democrats in New Mexico's legislature have turned back three Republican bills to require photo IDs at the polls.
- Finally, Campus Progress comprehensively updates the good and bad news in the last few months of the war on voting.