Voting Newsletter: Brennan Center Study Shows Struggle to Get Photo ID
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- Latest Developments – Brennan Center Study: 500,000 Americans Could Face Significant Challenges to Obtain Photo ID to Vote
- State Updates – Movement on Florida Purge
- New Data and Research – Deceptive Election Practices
- Media Round-Up – U.S. News and World Report Debates Photo ID
Brennan Center Study: 500,000 Americans Could Face Significant Challenges to Obtain Photo ID to Vote
A new Brennan Center study undercuts the claim by many politicians that eligible voters can easily obtain a free ID to vote. Nearly 500,000 Americans in the 10 states with restrictive ID laws could struggle to get an ID, the report found.
These voters live in households without vehicles and reside at least 10 miles from an ID-issuing office open more than two days a week. Because many of them may not have driver’s licenses — and nearly all live in rural areas with dwindling public transportation options — it could be significantly harder for these voters to get an ID and cast a ballot.
A federal court considered this issue last week during a trial over Texas’s law, and Pennsylvania’s ID law will go before a state judge next Wednesday.
“The Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal, but new voter ID laws are preventing eligible Americans from participating in our democracy,” said Keesha Gaskins, Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center and co-author of The Challenge of Obtaining Voter Identification. “Voters find closed offices, long trips without cars and spotty public transit, and prohibitive costs for documents needed to get ID. Unless states with voter identification laws address these barriers now, many eligible citizens could lose their opportunity to vote this November.”
The report also provides an extensive look at the scarcity of ID-issuing offices in areas heavily populated by people of color and those in poverty — the exact population that most lack government-issued photo ID. In Texas, in 32 counties near the Mexico border (pictured above right), there are 80,000 Hispanic eligible voters but only two ID-issuing offices open more than two days per week.
Read more on the findings of the report at The Washington Post, NPR, and USA Today.
A federal court last week considered whether to approve Texas’s voter ID law, which the Justice Department, the Brennan Center, and others contend could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of minority voters.
The Justice Department presented evidence that 1.4 million registered voters in Texas lack the required state identification, including a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic voters. Texas claims only 167,724 registered voters do not have ID.
“To put the Texas estimate in perspective, it is the equivalent of denying the vote to every person in Grand Prairie or in Brownsville,” wrote The Dallas Morning News. “That is plainly unacceptable. When you consider that most of those affected are minorities, the harmful intent and effect of the law are clear.”
To make matters worse, more than a quarter of the counties in Texas do not have an ID-issuing office. Some voters would need to travel up to 200 miles to get an ID, an issue highlighted in the Center’s new report noted above.
Under the Voting Rights Act, the federal government must approve changes to Texas’s election laws before they can go into effect. The judges are expected to issue a decision by the end of August.
Read more on why the court should not approve the law at The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Austin American-Statesman. Listen to the Center’s Keesha Gaskins discuss the trial on Southern California Public Radio.
Alabama – The D.C. Circuit has upheld the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, but the county says it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The county has until August to file its petition. Read a debate about whether Alabama’s voter ID law would stop election fraud.
Colorado – Secretary of State Scott Gessler is following Florida’s lead in asking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to verify the citizenship of some voters. Gessler said that DHS should expect similar requests from the top election officials in 11 other states. Read more here.
Florida – The Department of Homeland Security agreed to provide Florida access to a federal database to help the state purge suspected non-citizens from the voter rolls. “No matter what database Florida has access to, purging voters from the rolls on the eve of an election could prevent thousands of eligible voters from exercising their rights,” said the Center’s Jonathan Brater. Read an overview of Florida’s history of purges from Slate’s David Weigel.
Meanwhile, an administrative challenge has been filed against Florida’s decision to apply two different sets of election laws throughout the state. In 62 of Florida’s 67 counties, the state is applying a new elections package passed in 2011, which includes changes to early voting and voter registration. The remaining five counties are subject to “pre-clearance” under the Voting Rights Act, and an older set of election laws is still in place in those counties. The Brennan Center and several voting rights groups contend this system is unfair, confusing to voters, and unlawful.
Finally, the Sentencing Project published a new report showing that a full 10 percent of Florida’s voting-age population can’t vote because of past criminal convictions – the highest rate in the nation, and one with dramatic impacts on the state’s African-American citizens. Read more here and here.
Iowa – One of Gov. Terry Branstad (R) first acts upon assuming office last year was issuing an executive order making Iowa one of hardest states to restore voting rights after a criminal conviction. Out of the 8,000 Iowans who have completed their sentences since the order, fewer than a dozen have had their voting rights restored, according to an Associated Press analysis. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin (D) called Branstad’s policy "part of a ‘scary’ national trend.”
Kansas – The state’s new photo ID law could make it harder for college students to vote in November. Although county election officials are seeking to explain the new law to students, they are hampered by fiscal constraints. “We’ve planned for it as much as we could, but our budget has even been cut under the fiscal situation that we’re in,” said Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew. Donald Merriman, elections official in Saline County, has paid for voter outreach materials out of his own pocket.
Michigan – Several columnists praised Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) veto of three restrictive voting laws.
Minnesota – Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie made waves when he announced the title of the restrictive voting law ballot measure up for a vote in November, naming it “Changes to In-Person & Absentee Voting & Voter Registration; Provisional Ballots.” Supporters of the measure say Ritchie’s title is misleading because it does not mention the voter ID provision. But others, including the Brennan Center’s Keesha Gaskins, noted that the proposed state constitutional amendment goes much further than requiring ID, by, for example, changing Election Day registration procedures. Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in the lawsuit to kick the amendment off the ballot.
Mississippi – Although it has yet to take effect, some citizens have already identified a Catch-22 in the state’s restrictive voter ID law — they need a birth certificate to get an ID, but they need an ID to get a birth certificate, the Jackson Free Press reported.
New Hampshire – Gov. John Lynch (D) allowed a measure to become law that reduced the questions voters without ID will have to answer on an affidavit before being allowed to vote. Read more here.
New York – The Brennan Center’s Jonathan Backer wrote about his struggle to vote in New York City’s June primary. After not being listed in the poll book, Backer had to appear before a judge before he was allowed to vote. “The proliferation of voter ID laws, ill-conceived voter purges, and other potentially vote-suppressing laws drastically increase the likelihood that voters will mistakenly be turned away from the polls,” he wrote. “Without any of those factors present, I needed to invest two hours of my time to participate in the election.”
Ohio – The Obama campaign filed a lawsuit "seeking to restore the three days of early voting prior to Election Day” that were eliminated by the legislature.
Pennsylvania – New data from the Transportation Department showed more than 758,000 registered voters do not have photo ID. State election officials previously said 99 percent of voters already had photo ID to vote, but the new estimate represents about 9 percent of the state’s 8.2 million registered voters. The Brennan Center’s Nicolas Riley spoke to a local radio station about the development. Pennsylvania newspapers (the Daily News, Inquirer, and Patriot-News) and columnists criticized the state, as did The Washington Post and Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Alter. Voting rights advocates launched a campaign to help citizens get photo ID. A law professor calculated it could cost an otherwise eligible voter $40 to assemble the necessary documents to prove their identity to obtain photo ID (the photo ID itself is required to be free).
South Carolina – The state’s voter ID trial was delayed until September, but Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said the ID requirement would go into effect for the November election if the state wins judicial approval. The Justice Department rejected the state’s restrictive voter ID law last December. South Carolina is now challenging that determination in Washington, D.C. federal court.
Tennessee – A report from the Institute for Southern Studies finds that the outreach program to provide photo IDs is “reaching only a fraction of those who likely need it.” The Tennessean editorialized on the battle over voting rights, saying that political parties should not have the power to decide “who has the right to vote.”
Virginia – A columnist for The Virginian-Pilot wrote about confusion over the state’s new voter ID law, urging voters to be prepared in November.
West Virginia – The Charleston Gazette urged West Virginia’s leaders to stop restrictive laws that prevent some groups from voting.
Wisconsin – A second judge rejected the state’s voter ID law as unconstitutional, “further guaranteeing that the ID requirement will not be in place for elections this fall.” Meanwhile, dozens of election officials missed a deadline to send absentee ballots to military and overseas voters. The deadline is mandated in the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act. There “has been a repeated problem” In local officials complying with the Act.
And don’t forget our up-to-date online summary of all pending and passed voting laws.
Deceptive Election Practices and Voter Intimidation: The Need for Voter Protection
“Deceptive election practices and voter intimidation remain a serious problem, and the tactics used to deceive and intimidate voters have become increasingly more nuanced, relying on new technologies and social media.Common Cause and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law reviewed reports of deceptive election practices that targeted voters across the country and offers ways state and federal authorities can address these threats to our democracy.” Read the full report.
- “Politics is one thing, but denying people the right to vote should not just be an acceptable political tactic,” wrote the Brennan Center’s Wendy Weiser in U.S. News & World Report’s Debate Club about requiring a photo ID.
- On Independence Day, the Center’s Lawrence Norden, on CNN.com, recalled our founding value that “all men are created equal” to argue against restrictive voting laws.
- An Associated Press analysis found that photo ID laws could block thousands from voting in 2012. But the numbers could be even higher, according to the Center’s Keesha Gaskins. It doesn’t “take into account people who were discouraged from showing up to vote in the first place or who may be turned away by poll workers,” the AP wrote.
- Attorney General Eric Holder criticized voter ID laws during a speech at the NAACP’s national convention. The head of the NAACP compared the battle against voter ID to the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.
- Political analysts say voter ID laws “could diminish black voter turnout in November,” wrote USA Today. Read an analysis from Nate Silver of The New York Times.
- The Center’s Wendy Weiser spoke to ABC News and the National Journal about the voter ID laws, which some have likened to a poll tax. Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) discussed the laws on Democracy Now. Read more at USA Today and McClatchy.
- “The evidence is overwhelming that recent photo ID laws are politically motivated,” wrote the Los Angeles Times. Read another analysis from The Economist.
- Mother Jones magazine wrote a long analysis of “voter fraud hysteria,” using Brennan Center research to create a series of charts and maps. Read more on fraud from The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson.
- The Brennan Center’s Lee Rowland spoke to The Daily Beast about a new report from The Sentencing Project showing a record 5.85 million people with past criminal convictions are disenfranchised. The laws “have their roots in Jim Crow laws, and were passed along with relics like literacy tests and poll taxes,” she said. Read more about the worst offenders, Florida and Iowa, at USA Today and an editorial from The New York Times.
- CVS, Best Buy, and Hewlett-Packard became the latest companies to leave the American Legislative Exchange Council over the group’s support for voter ID laws.
- TPM’s Ryan Reilly wrote a summary of public education efforts in states with voter ID laws. Meanwhile, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) launched a web app to help voters register and find their polling place.
- Absentee ballots will be this year’s “hanging chad,” according to Columbia Law Professor Nathaniel Persily.
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