The American Federation of Government Employees Voter Protection Coordinator Mark Vinson details the union’s voter protection campaign and the need for all Americans to have an opportunity to vote. He also talks about what we can all do to protect the vote in 2012.
The Brennan Center
made news this week with its report, demonstrating that some 500,000 eligible voters will be disenfranchised simply because they have no way to actually get a state-issued photo ID for voting, even if states are arguing the IDs will be provided free to low-income people. Restricted office hours for elections divisions, lack of public and other transportation, and difficulty getting the necessary documentation to secure an ID are all barriers that will prove too much for many would-be voters.
Voting rights advocates in Minnesota made those arguments this week before the state's Supreme Court against a ballot measure that would amend the state’s constitution to “require all voters to present valid photographic identification to vote.”
The measure, which will be decided by voters in November if the state’s high court allows it, also requires “the state to provide free identification to eligible voters.” Yet those IDs wouldn’t exactly be free—at minimum, taxpayers would foot the bill, as would voters who would first need to obtain a $26 birth certificate and travel up to 100 miles to a Department of Vehicle Services office to apply for their ID.
As AFGE's voter protection coordinator Mark Vinson says in the video above, when people conflate having to have a photo ID to fly, to see an R-rated movie, to buy beer, they're willfully missing the point. Those things are all privileges. Voting is a
right. Plenty of people are precluded from flying, going out to the movies, or drinking beer because they can't afford to do those things. They shouldn't be stopped from voting because they can't afford it. Making people pay to vote, in any way, is indeed a poll tax.
For more of this week's news, make the jump below the fold.
In other news:
- The New York Times gets us up to speed on the status of voter suppression laws and the law suits challenging them around the country, highlighting Mrs. Viviette Applewhite, the "Rosa Parks of voter ID."
“They’re trying to stop black people from voting so Obama will not get re-elected,” Ms. Applewhite said as she sat in her modest one-bedroom apartment in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, reflecting a common sentiment among those who oppose the law. “That’s what this whole thing is about.”
Here's another Pennsylvanian highlighted by the NYT who is suing for her right to vote:
Among them will be Wilola Shinholster Lee, a 60-year-old retiree who was born in Georgia and has been unable to replace her birth certificate, which was lost in a house fire. Officials in Georgia told her that they too had suffered a fire and no longer had a record of her birth.
“I came here when I was 5 with my grandmother, who worked as a domestic,” Ms. Lee said. “She’s 98 and doesn’t have a photo ID either. She’s upset because she loves Obama.”
Ms. Lee has a Social Security card and an employee photo identification from her years working for the Philadelphia Board of Education. But without her birth certificate, she is unlikely to be able to vote in November.
- It's not just women, young people, seniors and minorites who will be denied the right to vote by voter ID laws. It's also the disabled. How many blind people do you know with a driver's license? How many disabled people could afford the costs associated with obtaining and ID?
- Checking in on Florida, this week the Department of Homeland Security granted limited access of its databases to the state for checking immigration status, allowing the purge to move forward, though it is still being challenged legally.
“Our antennae are way up,” said Deirdre Macnab, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida. “We will be watching very, very carefully to make sure that eligible voters are not removed from Florida voting lists.”
Using a more accurate database “doesn’t mean they can run a last-minute purge,” said Diana Kasdan of the Brennan Center for Justice. “The federal government’s decision to come to an agreement” on the database “has no bearing on the legality of what Florida’s doing under the National Voting Rights Act.”
- Beyond Florida, a handful of other states will be accessing the DHS database to purge voter rolls, spearheaded by Colorado's Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who had threatened to sue the federal government for access to the list.
Elections leaders in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio and Utah had signed onto Gessler's request. Five of the states - Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico and Ohio - are expected to be competitive in the 2012 presidential race. Each of the election chiefs in those states is Republican.
The problem for states using this database is that they have to have a "unique identifier," such as an "alien number," for each person they are trying to match up in the DHS database, because that's the only identifier in the federal database. States aren't likely to have those numbers based on the information they have from voter registrations or driver's license databases. So, the likelihood of eligible voters being incorrectly identified as non-citizens is high.
- The Obama campaign and DNC have filed suit to reinstate Ohio's early voting process, and Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted is whining about it. “Why isn’t it a problem in the 49 other states where they do the same kinds of things?" he says. Maybe because 49 other states haven't elminated voting in the three days before the election?
- In case you missed it, a county judge in Wisconsin effectively blocked the new voter ID law there from being implemented before November's election.
- Argument ended last Friday in the Texas's suit against the federal government for blocking their new voter ID law.
The judges were skeptical that Texas had met its burden of showing that DOJ should have cleared the Voter ID law as non-discriminatory, with one judge arguing the statute’s “burden falls disproportionately on minorities . . . .”
A decision is expected in August. This is one of the cases likely to reach the Supreme Court, with Texas (and South Carolina) challenging the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the provision that gives the federal government the authority to block discriminatory voter laws in states and counties with a history of racial discrimination.
- Washington is one state making voter registration easier, now expanding its already existing internet registration process to Facebook.