As part of a "turn back the clock on civil rights" movement in government, star Republican vote-suppressors like Brad Schlozman, "Thor" Hearne, Tim Griffin, and "Spaz" VonSpakovsky have made caging and false accusations of minority voter fraud tools of their trade.
Perhaps unwittingly (giving the good Senator the benefit of the doubt), Dianne Feinstein has introduced a new method of minority voter suppression into pending legislation.
I apologize to anyone, including Senator Feinstein, who may have taken offense to the earlier version of my diary and the implication that the Senator meant to promote voting suppression. I was simply being ironic and I did not make that clear. All hurt feelings aside, the consequences of voter disenfranchisement are the same, whether those provisions are included deliberately (as in Jim Crow) or unwittingly (as in HAVA). My goal is to bring attention to the problem, not to show anyone up.
Senator Feinstein's S. 1487, the sequel to HAVA includes the following:
In addition to the usual secret vote-counting and centralized federal control of elections by presidential appointees, with which we have become familiar from the Holt Bill, S 1487 contains a clause which states that certain communities always vote differently than other communities and may therefore be treated differently.
4(C) HISTORICALLY HIGH INTENTIONAL UNDERVOTES-
`(i) FINDING- Congress finds that there are certain distinct communities in certain geographic areas that have historically high rates of intentional undervoting in elections for Federal office, relative to the rest of the Nation.
`(ii) TREATMENT OF CERTAIN DISTINCT COMMUNITIES- In establishing the benchmark described in subparagraph (B), the Commission shall--
`(I) study and report to Congress on the occurrences of distinct communities that have significantly higher than average rates of historical intentional undervoting; and
`(II) promulgate for local jurisdictions in which that distinct community has a substantial presence either a separate benchmark or an exclusion from the national benchmark, as appropriate.'.
Ellen Theisen has an excellent analysis on http://VotersUnite.org. Teresa Hommel wrote a treatise on the subject on her web site, http://WheresthePaper.org.
The highlight: by saying "distinct communities in certain geographic areas... have significantly higher... rates of historical intentional undervoting", an incorrect assumption is made.
First, a question. Historically, which are the certain groups of people who undervote? If you answered African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans, you would be correct. The incorrect assumption is that the undervoting is intentional and unfixable.
Undervoting is often a matter of how a ballot is configured. Perhaps the causes of undervoting, such as language barriers, or technological barriers should be investigated rather than taken as conventional wisdom. Furthermore, undervoting among Latinos and Native Americans magically disappeared, when New Mexico switched from DRE touchscreen voting machines to paper ballots. Hmmmmmm.
Who gets to decide which groups are the hopeless undervoters? "The Commission" gets to decide. The Election Advisory Commission is a four-person, presidentially-appointed panel, which has flawless judgement, informed by the very best of conventional wisdom and personal prejudices. Think of them as a group of Deciders (snark).
By designating certain distinct communities in certain geographic areas as habitual undervoters, the Voting Czars of the EAC can create a separate (but equal?) standard for voting irregularities in minority communities, decreasing the likelihood that election fraud in those communities will be investigated.
IMO, It begs the question, what if the historically high rates of undervoting are not based on intention? What if the undervoting is based on historical disenfranchisement? Once a pattern of undervoting is created, it is a short step, within several election cycles, to dismiss that community's undervoting as traditional and "intentional". Who's to say? The question is rhetorical, but the answer is: The EAC.
This provision has no place in this bill and it must be removed.