Blog
Voter ID
By Nic Riley & Molly Alarcon – 01/20/12
This Monday, as the Republican presidential field convened for a debate before the South Carolina primary, the candidates sparred over a variety of familiar debate topics, each one touting his past political achievements, electability, and virtuous campaign tactics. But, amid these familiar talking points, the candidates also broached a topic that had yet to surface in previous debates: namely, the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On the day named in Dr. King’s honor, the GOP candidates struggled to reconcile some of their controversial stances on voting rights policy with Dr. King’s celebrated struggle to expand the franchise. Former Sen. Rick Santorum invoked Dr. King’s memory by challenging the veracity of an attack ad run by a pro-Romney Super PAC, which falsely painted Santorum as supporting voting rights for incarcerated prisoners. Santorum used the opportunity to clarify that while he did support legislation, named in honor of Dr. King, to restore voting rights to people who completed their sentences, he never advocated letting current prisoners vote. Former Gov. Mitt Romney responded by taking a harder line, arguing that a person who has committed a violent crime should never be allowed to vote, regardless of how long ago the crime was committed and irrespective of whether criminal justice officials in the state have deemed the individual fit to re-enter society. This position — permanent disenfranchisement — is so extreme that only a handful of states have actually adopted the policy.
Santorum also highlighted another problem with Romney’s position: “This is Martin Luther King Day. This is a huge deal in the African-American community, because we have very high rates of incarceration — disproportionately high rates, particularly with drug crimes — in the African-American community.”
Santorum is right to highlight the link between the mass incarceration of African Americans and the racial disparities in voting that criminal disenfranchisement laws cause. But disenfranchising people with criminal convictions is more than just a “huge deal” for the African-American community — it is an issue of fairness for all our communities. More than 4 million Americans who currently live, work, and pay taxes in our communities are disenfranchised by state laws that bar individuals with criminal convictions from voting even after they’ve been released from prison. Dr. King’s struggle for equal access to the ballot box cannot be reconciled with state policies like these that disenfranchise free citizens — something Coretta Scott King noted shortly before her death.
Dr. King’s legacy surfaced again in Monday’s debate when Texas Gov. Rick Perry, responded harshly to a question about the enduring legacy of the Voting Rights Act. Moderator Juan Williams asked Mr. Perry, “Are you suggesting on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that the federal government has no business scrutinizing the voting laws of states where minorities were once denied the right to vote?”
Rather than acknowledging the evidence of continuing racial discrimination in voting — evidence that led to the bipartisan, nearly unanimous reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006 — Perry instead replied that Texas was “under assault by the federal government” and that “South Carolina is at war with this federal government,” referring to the Justice Department’s recent objections to voting changes in those states under the Voting Rights Act. Perry’s response to Williams’ question represents a very different view of the VRA than that of two of our recent presidents from Texas and of Dr. King himself. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the original VRA in Dr. King’s presence and, in 2006, President George W. Bush reauthorized the law, which was re-named in honor of Dr. King’s wife. It’s ironic that Texas’s latest presidential candidate would describe this seminal piece of civil rights legislation in such militaristic terms on the same day that the nation remembers a man who famously helped bring the law into being through nonviolent activism.
Shortly after the Civil War, with the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, our country made a pledge that no state would be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race when it comes to voting. A century later, our national government reaffirmed that pledge by enacting the Voting Rights Act. There should be little doubt that Dr. King would expect the federal government, as he did during his time, to ensure that states cannot backslide on the promises this country has made to prohibit racial discrimination in voting, or to provide equal opportunity for all its citizens, including those who have paid their debts to society.
Tags: Democracy, Voting After Criminal Conviction, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter ID
By Keesha Gaskins – 12/21/11
I read a blog this morning about the pre-Christmas hysteria suffered by children fueled by unrestrained anticipation, constant media-driven red and green stimulation and naked greed. This year, I can relate. All I want for Christmas is for the Department of Justice to deny preclearance for South Carolina’s discriminatory voter ID law.
Every day I wake I wait for my Google Alert to tell me that the Department of Justice has denied preclearance for the no-photo, no-vote Voter ID law passed by South Carolina. The Brennan Center for Justice, along with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the League of Women Voters of South Carolina led by the ACLU Voting Rights Project submitted two comment letters urging the Department of Justice to deny preclearance to South Carolina for this blatantly retrogressive law. During his speech at the LBJ Library, Attorney General Eric Holder implied that there might be something good in my proverbial stocking if our letter was very, very good and South Carolina’s law proves to be more naughty than nice. Like every child that wants to believe in Santa but is starting to suspect that the legend is too good to be true, I operate with a level of hopeful cynicism. anta Holder has not demonstrated a zeal for pushing back on efforts to undermine individual voting rights — will this Christmas be different?
The good people of Mississippi could represent the Grinch that may steal my Christmas. In November 2011, Mississippi voters passed a no-photo, no-vote constitutional amendment. I worry that this administration, for good reason, may not have the political will to refuse to preclear a state constitutional amendment that was passed by popular vote. But if they deny preclearance to South Carolina and Texas and reject their new laws, there is no clear, principled reason not to deny preclearance to Mississippi’s constitutional amendment — but a strong political talking point in the fact that Mississippi’s amendment was approved by a direct popular vote. Will this political problem make it harder to deny preclearance to these disenfranchising laws in other states and ruin my Christmas?
But I hope that the elves at the Department of Justice can see that there’s a clear political difference between a law passed by popular vote and one passed by a partisan legislature. Even if they are inclined to preclear Mississippi’s no-photo, no-vote voter ID law, it need not affect the determination that both Texas’ and South Carolina’s voter ID laws are retrogressive and discriminatory.
Every day my fear of proverbial coal in my stocking grows. Please, Santa Holder, make it a very Merry Christmas season.
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter ID
By Yanick Saila-Ngita – 12/08/11
I can clearly recall the image sprawled across the cover of my local newspaper back in 2005: a photograph of a group of Iraqi women, dressed in niqabs, proudly waving their purple inked thumbs shortly after casting their ballots in the first election following the fall of the Hussein regime. Seventy-five percent of eligible voters cast their ballots. This momentous occasion came on the heels of a presidential election convened in Afghanistan. American politicians who had supported the invasion and subsequent wars viewed this as an example of the United States transporting its values of freedom and democracy across the globe. But one must ask if these values are truly being protected and promoted within our own borders.
We often talk about voter suppression laws, as running afoul of the basic American right to vote. However, these measures also contradict our obligations as a country under international agreements. Felon disenfranchisement laws, limits on early voting—especially Sunday voting—and voter ID laws disproportionately affect minorities. This exacerbates our failure to uphold a UN convention to eliminate racial discrimination, adding yet another reason to reject these suppressive measures.
This year we have seen states impose strict voter ID laws under the guise of ensuring that the voting process is secure. These laws disproportionately impact the right to vote for communities of color, as the Brennan Center has documented. The United States is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which requires nations, including our own, to "pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms.” In 2001, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called into question the “political disenfranchisement of a large segment of the ethnic minority population [in the United States] who are denied the right to vote by disenfranchising laws and practices.” They urged the United States to take necessary steps to ensure that all of its citizens are able to access the vote without any form of discrimination.
We are moving backwards from this goal. Currently, numerous state laws prohibit inmates and the formerly incarcerated from participating in the vote. The result? 8 percent of African Americans are disenfranchised, three times the national average. Allowing these individuals to vote would be one way to decrease disparity and comply with human rights law.
Photo ID requirements to vote disproportionately impact minority citizens who, for a variety of potential reasons, are more likely to lack required identification documents. The NAACP is presenting evidence of these suppressive measures this week to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. In March, the organization will send a delegation to Geneva to gather support from the UN Human Rights Council.
Even though many of our nation’s political leaders point to the United States as a superior model of participatory democracy, other countries far outmatch the U.S. in eliminating discriminatory voting practices. The Constitutional Court of South Africa has struck down measures that disenfranchise prisoners, remarking, “The vote of each and every citizen is a badge of dignity and of personhood.”
The same cannot be said for judges here in the U.S., and the Brennan Center estimates that more than 5 million Americans are ineligible to vote due to a criminal conviction. Only two states allow prisoners to vote. However, in the case of Sauvé v. Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that laws that sought to eliminate prisoners’ ability to vote failed to further any reasonable state aim.
The U.S. must take bigger steps to comply with the obligations it has agreed to and promoted internationally by enacting measures that improve minority access to the ballot box. There exists a troubling contradiction when so many of our resources continue to be invested in making sure people abroad are able to vote and our own citizens find it difficult to do so in their own neighborhoods. As Congressman Emanuel Cleaver passionately expressed in a recent House hearing on voter suppression laws, “we're trying to get folks around the world to vote and stopping it at home."
Tags: Democracy, Voting After Criminal Conviction, Post-Incarceration Restoration of Voting Rights, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter ID
By Sundeep Iyer – 11/16/11
On May 27, 2011, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed into law Senate Bill 14, which requires that voters show government-issued photo identification at the polls in order to cast a ballot. Because Texas is a “covered” jurisdiction under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Department of Justice must “preclear” Senate Bill 14 before the law can take effect. In other words, Texas must demonstrate that the law has neither a discriminatory purpose nor a retrogressive effect on minority voters. After Texas’s initial submission urging the Department of Justice to preclear Senate Bill 14, the Justice Department requested more information from the state, including data – broken down by race - detailing the number of registered voters without ID. The data that Texas provided in response to the Department of Justice’s request clearly demonstrates that Senate Bill 14 has a harmful and discriminatory impact on Latino voters.
Texas sent the Justice Department a spreadsheet detailing the number of registered voters statewide who neither had an ID issued by the state’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) nor matched an ID record in the DPS database. The State also provided the number of Spanish surname registered voters who didn’t have ID and who didn’t match any record in the DPS database. Because the State doesn’t collect data on the race or ethnicity of registered voters, Spanish surnames serve as the best available proxy for Hispanic or Latino origin. Absent data on the race of registered voters, however, the State was unable to estimate the number of black and Asian voters who didn’t have a DPS-issued ID.
Texas’s data shows that there are currently 174,866 registered Latino voters who do not have a DPS-issued ID and who do not match an ID record in the DPS database; this is 6.28% of all registered Latino voters. By comparison, just 4.29% of the state’s non-Latino registered voters did not have a DPS ID and did not match an ID record the DPS database. This strongly suggests that Texas’s Latino voters would be adversely impacted by Senate Bill 14.
Because the State does not report rates of ID possession among non-Latino registered voters of different races, there is no way of knowing exactly what the rate of ID possession is among white voters. Therefore, at first glance, it might seem impossible to definitively prove that Senate Bill 14 has a discriminatory impact on Hispanic voters. But despite the obvious limitations associated with the information Texas provided to the Justice Department, the discriminatory impact of voter ID laws on the state’s Latino population is unmistakable.
Using data from the November 2010 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration Supplement, we calculate the percentage of non-Latino registered voters in Texas who are white. We found that 77.8% are white.[1] Applying that estimated percentage to the data provided by the State, we estimate that there were 7.8 million white registered voters in Texas.[2] As noted above, 6.28% of registered Latino voters did not have a DPS-issued ID and did not match an ID record in the DPS database. For the percentage of registered white voters without DPS-issued ID to be equal to the percentage of registered Latino voters without DPS-issued ID, about 490,000 white registered voters must not have a DPS-issued ID.[3] But as Texas’s own data demonstrates, there were only 429,026 non-Hispanic registered voters without DPS-issued ID in Texas!
In other words, it is impossible for white voters to lack ID at the same rates that Latino voters lack ID. Even if every non-Latino person of color had a DPS-issued ID, the percentage of white registered voters without ID would still be lower than the percentage of Latino registered voters without ID: just 5.5% of white registered voters would not have ID, compared to 6.3% of Hispanic voters.[4] Given that several national studies have found that African-American voters are significantly less likely to possess a state-issued photo ID than white voters, this disparity is almost certainly much larger in reality.
When Texas filed its preclearance submission with the Department of Justice, the state ostensibly wanted to show that Senate Bill 14 would not have a discriminatory impact on people of color. But the State’s own data demonstrates exactly the opposite.
[1] The 95% confidence interval for the estimate ranges from 76.0% to 79.7%.
[2] The 95% confidence interval for this estimate ranges from 7.61 million to 7.99 million.
[3] The 95% confidence interval for this estimate ranges from about 478,000 to 501,000.
[4] The 95% confidence interval for the estimated percentage of white voters ranges from 5.37% to 5.63%.
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter ID
By Nicolas Riley – 11/09/11
It’s official. With yesterday’s off-term elections now behind us, the one-year countdown to Election Day 2012 has officially begun.
One year is an awful lot of time for political campaigns. Candidates can thrive, perish, and come back to life in less time, particularly in today’s fast-paced media environment. But for election officials—many of whom are now tasked with educating the public about several recent changes to state voting laws—one year is not very much time at all.
That’s why these election officials must begin reaching out to voters right now to make sure they have all the information they need to cast ballots in next year’s election. With the rash of restrictive state voting laws that have passed in recent months—many of which impose burdensome new requirements on voters—state election administrators must work diligently to prepare voters for the 2012 election.
This will be especially important in states that have recently enacted strict voter ID laws. These laws, which typically require voters to show a valid government-issued photo ID at the polls, pose a significant barrier to electoral participation for the 11% of eligible voters who do not have such identification. These individuals will likely lose the chance to cast a meaningful ballot next November unless they obtain the necessary ID before then—regardless of whether they’d voted regularly in previous elections without an ID. Election administrators must therefore develop comprehensive voter education programs to inform these people about the new laws and show them how and where to obtain requisite photo IDs.
Unfortunately, state lawmakers and election administrators often underestimate the time and cost required to conduct effective voter education campaigns. In 2006, for instance, a federal court blocked initial enforcement of Georgia’s voter ID law after the state failed to commence its voter education program far enough in advance of the primary election to meaningfully inform voters of the new ID requirement. A recent analysis of Kansas’s new voter ID law concluded that lawmakers there had similarly underestimated the cost of public education efforts.
This problem doesn’t just apply to the new voter ID laws but also to other new voting restrictions. Maine lawmakers skimped on voter education funding this summer when they passed a bill to eliminate Election Day voter registration opportunities. Although the state’s Election Day registration policy had been in place for nearly four decades, state lawmakers nevertheless concluded that they could spend less than $3,000 to notify the state’s one million eligible voters about the changed rule (Maine voters approved a referendum yesterday repealing the new law).
Florida lawmakers went even further by passing a bill in May that actually cuts back on state funding sources for voter education. The bill—which also raises several new roadblocks for community-based voter registration drives—repealed a provision of Florida law that previously allocated revenue from fines for election-related violations to the state’s voter education budget. Worse still, the bill failed to allocate any new funding to inform the public about the new restrictions on voter registration activities. As a result, a pair of Florida high school teachers are now facing major fines for unwittingly breaking the new law by organizing voter registration drives for their students.
Although Florida’s bill provides an extreme example of neglect, election officials elsewhere are still struggling to reach voters most affected by the new voting restrictions. This is not surprising given that election budgets have been slashed in many states. And, even without the budget cuts, the voters who bear the greatest brunt of the new voting restrictions—namely, the poor, the elderly, people with disabilities, and people of color—are often the hardest to reach through traditional public education campaigns because of language barriers and diminished media access in their communities.
These difficulties highlight the need for more creative thinking—and more research—about how voters find information about election rules. Initiatives like the Voting Information Project, a Pew-sponsored partnership between election administrators and media companies like Google, illustrate the possibilities for future innovations in voter education. But they require greater buy-in from election officials. More importantly, they require broader recognition of the fact that voters’ familiarity with our new voting rules can influence democratic participation as much as the new rules themselves.
With less than a year to go until next year’s election—and primary elections just around the corner—election officials must not wait to begin educating voters about these new rules. The clock is ticking.
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter ID, Voter Registration Drives
By Sundeep Iyer – 09/13/11
The Accessibility of Texas Driver's License Office Locations
On May 27, 2011, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed into law Senate Bill 14, which requires that voters show photo identification at the polls in order to cast a ballot. Only the following forms of ID are acceptable for purposes of voting:
- Texas driver’s license;
- Personal identification card issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety and featuring the voter’s photograph;
- Election identification certificate (a new form of state photo identification created by the legislation);
- U.S. military identification card featuring the voter’s photograph;
- U.S. citizenship certificate featuring the voter’s photograph;
- U.S. passport; or
- Concealed handgun permit issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety.
To obtain an election identification certificate, personal identification card, or driver’s license, individuals must travel to a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) office. Texas DPS runs the state's Driver License Offices (DLOs). If the forms of identification mentioned above are obtainable at a DLO location, then assessing whether minorities must travel longer distances to reach their nearest DLO location is relevant to understanding the effect of Texas’ voter ID law. My analysis shows that Latino voters in Texas must travel farther than white voters to reach their nearest DLO.
Texas DLO locations are available on the DPS website; I use that information to construct a shapefile (viewable in ArcGIS) with all active DLO locations. Then, using Census 2010 population data by block group, I determine how many Texans live in Census block groups that are in their entirety more than 10 miles away from their nearest DLO location.
The analysis reveals that nearly one million African-American and Latino voting-age citizens would have to travel more than 10 miles in order to reach the closest DLO to their home. In particular, Latino citizens are more likely to have to travel this distance in order to reach their nearest DLO: Latinos constitute 35.2% of the citizen voting-age population more than 10 miles from the nearest DLO, but just 33.2% of the citizen voting-age population in the rest of the state.
The disparity is even greater when assessing the number of Texas citizens who must travel 20 miles or more to the nearest DLO. The citizen voting-age population living more than 20 miles from the nearest DLO is 60.7% Hispanic. The citizen voting-age population in the rest of the state? Just 32.7% Hispanic. Hispanics are dramatically overrepresented in areas of Texas that are far from DLO locations: the relative concentration of voting-age Hispanic citizens in these areas is 85.6% greater than in the rest of Texas, while the relative concentration of voting-age white citizens is 34.3% less than in the rest of Texas.
These facts undermine the accessibility and effectiveness of Texas’ “free” election identification certificate. Indeed, voting-eligible Latino citizens face the added burden of traveling farther than others to obtain the identification deemed acceptable by Texas Senate Bill 14.
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter ID
By Keesha Gaskins – 08/23/11
Photo ID has been a hard-fought battle in the 2011 legislative session.
- In Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin, supporters of restrictive voter identification measures have been successful in passing laws requiring photo ID for in-person voting at the polls.
- In Kansas, Texas, and Wisconsin photo ID requirements are now in place for absentee balloting.
- In Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, and North Carolina,vetoes prevented photo ID measures from being passed into law.
- In many states -- Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia -- photo ID measures didn’t make it out of the legislature -- at least not yet.
In response, photo ID supporters have turned to ballot measures and initiative and referendum processes to pass laws restricting access to the polls. This Astroturf movement to enact photo ID laws has been effective in Missouri and Mississippi, where both states will see ballot measures on this issue. The Minnesota legislature introduced a bill in the July 2011 Special Session allowing for a constitutional amendment that would appear on the November 2012 statewide ballot. A city councilmember in Massachusetts has begun a signature petition to get a photo ID measure onto the ballot in the Commonwealth. These new ballot measures are not part of a grassroots movement; rather they are being pushed by legislators, and other elected officials, to advance a very specific political agenda.
Photo ID is a polarizing issue and often polls well -- particularly amongst those who do not understand the disenfranchising effect of strict new photo ID requirements. As more and more voters are called upon to decide whether the minority of voters who do not have a photo ID should be prevented from voting, we must remember that this is a true test of our democracy. Those who choose to exercise their right to vote should not be denied access to the polls by operation of circumstance, financial condition or physical infirmity.
In our nation, popular support has at one time or another provided the basis for the existence of slavery, use of child labor, denial of women’s suffrage, denial of civil rights to minority populations, and denial of civil rights to gays and lesbians. Anytime a law serves to disenfranchise Americans, block access to the polls, or limit the ability of any American to participate in the democratic processes that allow her to be part of a self-determining electorate, it should be considered with the utmost scrutiny, not justified by its momentary popularity. Voting is the right of every American citizen. To protect the rights of all Americans, we must stand up to protect the right to vote for every American.
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter ID
By Erik Opsal – 08/08/11
Crossposted at WisOpinion.
What’s up with Wisconsin? I’m surprised when I hear that question, seeing as I now live in New York City. As a former Badger, people outside of the state think I have special insight into the mind of Wisconsin’s political class. But just like all of you, I’m dumbfounded.
The past six months have been quite entertaining. Weeks of protests at the state Capitol, a multi-million dollar Supreme Court election and recount, a polarizing drive for a Voter ID bill, and now a series of recall elections that have brought in millions of dollars from outside interest groups. To the rest of the country, Wisconsin is a mad, mad world.
"This is so out of whack from everything we've ever seen,” said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, in an interview with Mother Jones about the recall elections. Approximately $3.75 million was spent on legislative races in 2010. For Tuesday's recalls, more than $30 million has already poured in, according to McCabe, and that number is likely to rise.
It’s not the candidates spending all this money—it’s outside interest groups, fighting a proxy war over collective bargaining rights, who are keeping voters in the dark. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision is largely to blame for this deluge of hidden spending. That decision, and others, opened the floodgates for corporations and unions to spend at will and obscure that spending through so-called “Super PACs.” Without proper laws to bring this spending out of the dark, Wisconsinites don’t know who is trying to sway their vote.
At the same time voters get blasted with outside TV ads, the new Voter ID bill makes it harder for them to vote.
In my four years at UW-Madison, I lived at four different addresses. Each time, I registered at the polls by bringing my proof of residency (a utility bill) and nothing more. I wasn’t trying to subvert the system. I voted in state elections, city elections, and county elections. I even moderated a debate between two County Board candidates. I wasn’t one of these students who came from out of state and voted in Wisconsin without knowing who I was voting for, as some Voter ID advocates claim. I truly engaged with Wisconsin politics.
If I had to get a new driver’s license every time I changed my address, as I would under the current Voter ID bill, would I have been so involved? Probably. But it represents an unnecessary obstacle to voting—the bedrock of our democracy—and one that many Wisconsinites might not choose to overcome, especially the poor or the elderly, who might find it hard to get to the DMV.
This kind of Voter ID requirement disproportionately affects the elderly, minorities, and students. According to a 2005 UW-Milwaukee study, 23 percent of voters over the age of 65 do not have a photo ID, 70 percent of whom are women. Statewide, 55 percent of African American males and 49 percent of African American females do not have a photo ID, compared to 17 percent of white males and females. And for students living in the UWM, Marquette, and UW-Madison dorms, just 3 percent had a photo ID with their current address.
To be sure, we need to do everything we can to protect the integrity of our democracy, including guarding our elections from voter fraud. But modernizing voter registration and tightening election administration procedures furthers this goal much more than measures making it harder to vote.
Protecting this integrity not only requires easing Voter ID restrictions, but also passing new laws requiring disclosure of political spending. After jumping through hoops just to be able to vote, the least we can do for Wisconsin voters is reveal who is spending millions to influence their decision. Without that, the country will be left asking, what’s up with Wisconsin?
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Disclosure, Voting Rights & Elections, Student Voting, Voter ID
Page 1 of 5 pages 1 2 3 > Last »
Permalink