This Week in the War on Voting is a joint project of Joan McCarter and Meteor Blades.
• Georgians in court over allegedly missing registrations:
By the NGP's estimate, some 800,000 Georgians—"people of color, voters between the ages of 18 and 29, and unmarried women—what the group calls the 'Rising American Electorate'" weren't registered to vote at the beginning of this year. Since then the group—founded by state Rep. Stacey Abrams, Democratic leader of the Georgia House—says it and 12 partner groups have registered around 116,000 new voters. But earlier this month, NGP complained that the registrations in five counties—all of them surrounding large Democratic strongholds in Atlanta, Columbus and Savannah—had not processed some 40,000 of these registrations. Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp said the claim is wrong.
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Garrett Epps sharply questions Chief Justice John Roberts' commitment to non-discrimination as a consequence of ruling on Texas voter ID case.
• GOP officials withheld data on voter ID:
[The] state officials working to pass a voter photo ID law in 2011 knew that more than 500,000 of the state’s registered voters did not have the credentials needed to cast ballots under the new requirement. But they did not share that information with lawmakers rushing to pass the legislation.
Now that the bill is law, in-person voters must present one of seven specified forms of photo identification in order to have their votes counted.
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Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UCI School of Law, says Supreme Court erred badly in Texas voter ID ruling:
The Supreme Court’s decision Oct. 18 to allow Texas’ restrictive voter identification law to go into effect is deeply disturbing and simply wrong. [...]
There are so many things that are troubling about the court’s action. It is the first time in decades that the Supreme Court has allowed an election law to go into effect after a federal trial court found it to be unconstitutional race discrimination. Appellate courts, including the Supreme Court, are supposed to defer to the fact-finding by the trial courts. Here, the district court held a trial, engaged in extensive fact-finding and wrote a very detailed opinion.
Also, this continues a trend in recent weeks of the Supreme Court deciding which election systems can go into effect in unsigned orders without written opinions.
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Jesse Richman and David Earnest argue that voting by non-citizens is high enough that it could alter the results of some close races.
• Colorado's new voting law means candidates must make their final arguments earlier: By Friday, more than half a million Coloradans had already mailed in their ballots. By Nov. 3, the day before Election Day, it's quite possible that the majority of those who going to vote will have already voted. Every registered citizen received a ballot in the mail, and those who aren't registered can do so right up through election day.
"Now you gotta get the vote out for literally almost three weeks," said Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, who signed the election changes passed by his party and is now running for re-election against Republican Bob Beauprez, a former congressman.
Beauprez is feeling the same urgency.
"You pretty well have to have your whole game plan out there and your case made so early now," he said.
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Sixth Circuit Court rejects an appeal over the right to vote absentee of Ohioans jailed but not convicted: The decision was predicated on the view of two judges on the three judge panel that the coalition of 22 churches that brought the case did not have standing. Chief Judge R. Guy Cole dissented, arguing that the coalition was right to assert standing because it had had its limited get-out-the-vote resources diverted by having to train its canvassers about the problem for "late-jailed voters" who missed the absentee deadline by being arrested and would not be able to cast a ballot in person on Election Day because they have not yet been released. Cole also stated he agreed with the district court's ruling that late-jailed people have the same right to cast a ballot as late-hospitalized people even though they have missed the absentee ballot deadline.
• Right-wing True the Vote group claims elections will be stolen this year: Among the reasons: same-day registration, Department of Justice attacks on voter ID laws, Homeland Security's blocking of information that might identify non-citizens who vote, failure of electronic equipment and the alleged pre-marking of ballots.
• Jonathan Chait on how Republicans justify poll taxes:
During the Obama era, the Republican Party has made the modern revival of the poll tax a point of party dogma. Direct poll taxes have been illegal for 50 years, but the GOP has discovered a workaround. They have passed laws requiring photo identification, forcing prospective voters who lack them, who are disproportionately Democratic and nonwhite, to undergo the extra time and inconvenience of acquiring them. They have likewise fought to reduce early voting hours on nights and weekends, thereby making it harder for wage workers and single parents, who have less flexibility at work and in their child care, to cast a ballot.
The effect of all these policies is identical to a poll tax. (Indeed, a study found that the cost they impose is considerably greater than existing poll taxes at the time they were banned.)
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Emily Badger calls out Rich Lowry's take on voter ID: The National Review editor argues that voter ID doesn't hurt many citizens, a small percentage at most wind up not having their votes count. Writes Badger:
What stands out about this argument is the idea that any disenfranchisement would be OK, when a central rationale for voter ID laws in the first place is that any voter fraud is not.