Voting Rights in 2011: A Legislative Round-Up

As the 2012 elec­tion approaches, a massive crack­down on voting rights is unfold­ing – the most signi­fic­ant such assault in decades.  Millions of Amer­ic­ans risk disen­fran­chise­ment, blocked from cast­ing ballots or having them count.

The wave of new, restrict­ive legis­la­tion includes bills making voter regis­tra­tion drives extremely diffi­cult and risky for volun­teer groups, bills requir­ing voters to provide specific photo ID or citizen­ship docu­ments that they may not have, bills cutting back on early and absentee voting, bills making it hard for students and active-duty members of the milit­ary to register to vote locally, and more.

Even though these bills will clearly affect citizens’ right to vote, there seems to be no press­ing reason for the meas­ures—in a piece of brutal satire that cited Bren­nan Center research, Stephen Colbert recently took weak claims about voter fraud head-on.

The Bren­nan Center has produced a number of public­a­tions deal­ing with these issues, includ­ing most recently The Cost of Voter ID Laws: What the Courts Say. This analysis outlines the wave of legis­la­tion and other changes that have swept through many states this year. We will also be publish­ing a fuller report and analysis in the coming days, access­ible from this page.

Summary of State Legis­la­tion and Selec­ted Exec­ut­ive Actions

Restrict­ing the Right to Vote in 2011

Updated July 15, 2011

Photo ID Require­ments for Voting

• In this legis­lat­ive session, at least 34 states intro­duced photo ID require­ments for voting. (Three addi­tional states intro­duced other voter ID legis­la­tion.)[1]
• Accord­ing to the National Confer­ence of State Legis­latures (NCSL), at the begin­ning of 2011, 27 states already had non-photo voter ID laws going beyond the require­ments of the Help Amer­ica Vote Act (HAVA).  (The other 23 and DC follow HAVA and require ID only from first-time voters who register by mail, and allow non-photo IDs.)  14 of these 27 considered legis­la­tion this year to require photo ID at the polls and make exist­ing iden­ti­fic­a­tion require­ments more restrict­ive, and 14 did not.  An addi­tional 20 states that did not have photo ID laws proposed such legis­la­tion this year.
  • Photo ID bills have already been signed into law in Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Caro­lina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wiscon­sin.  (Alabama, Texas, and South Caro­lina will need to obtain preclear­ance of their new laws from the U.S. Depart­ment of Justice or a three-judge court before imple­ment­a­tion; Texas and South Caro­lina have already filed for preclear­ance.)  Note: the Rhode Island, South Caro­lina, and Tennessee bills offer an altern­at­ive mech­an­ism for most voters without ID to cast a ballot that will count.
  • An active photo ID bill in Pennsylvania has passed through the cham­ber of origin.
  • Governors in Montana, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hamp­shire, and North Caro­lina vetoed photo ID bills that passed the legis­latures. New Hamp­shire’s legis­lature is hold­ing a special session on Septem­ber 7 to try to over­ride the Governor’s veto on this, and other, legis­la­tion.
  • A consti­tu­tional amend­ment author­iz­ing voter ID passed the Missouri legis­lature and will be on the Novem­ber 2012 ballot.  (As noted, the accom­pa­ny­ing bill requir­ing photo ID was vetoed by the governor.)
  • A ballot meas­ure requir­ing photo ID will be on the Missis­sippi ballot in Novem­ber 2011; it was not initi­ated by the legis­lature.
  • Citizens in Massachu­setts have begun the peti­tion initi­at­ive process to get an ID provi­sion on the ballot for 2012.

Proof of Citizen­ship Require­ments for Regis­tra­tion or Voting

• At least 10 states—Alabama (here and here), Color­ado (and another bill related to Sec. of State powers), Connecti­cut, Kansas (same as voter ID bill), Maine, Nevada, Oregon (pending), South Caro­lina (no further action this session—­car­ries over), Tennessee, and Texas—intro­duced legis­la­tion that would require proof of citizen­ship to register or vote.
• The laws in Alabama, Kansas, and Tennessee passed and were enacted. (Unlike the Alabama and Kansas laws, the Tennessee proof of citizen­ship require­ment applies only to indi­vidu­als flagged by state offi­cials as poten­tial non-citizens based on a data­base check.)
• Previ­ously, the only state to attempt to require proof of citizen­ship was Arizona.  That law has been enjoined by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which has recently heard that appeal en banc.

Restric­tions on Voter Regis­tra­tion Drives

• At least six (6) states—Cali­for­nia (pending), Flor­ida, Illinois (pending), Missis­sippi, North Caro­lina (pending), and Texas (vari­ous bills intro­duced: HB 1570, HB 2194, HB 2587, HB 2391, HB 2589, HB 3057, HB 3113, HB 3521, HB 3594)—all intro­duced legis­la­tion to regu­late voter regis­tra­tion drives.  
• The bills in Flor­ida and Texas (HB 1570 and HB 2194 enacted) passed and have been signed into law.
• The Cali­for­nia and North Caro­lina bills limit groups’ abil­ity to compensate employ­ees based on the number of regis­tra­tions collec­ted. 
• The Flor­ida bill is extremely oner­ous and is described in signi­fic­ant part here. Due to five of its counties being protec­ted under the Voting Rights Act Section 5, the law is subject to preclear­ance. Flor­ida filed for preclear­ance with the Depart­ment of Justice where parts of the bill were precleared, and parts of the bill were with­drawn and filed in a D.C. District Court instead, to be heard in front of a three judge panel.
• The Illinois bill reduces the time period for submit­ting completed voter regis­tra­tion forms to 2 days and prohib­its groups from copy­ing any inform­a­tion from voter regis­tra­tion forms (subject to crim­inal penal­ties).
• The Missis­sippi bill (that failed) would have imposed a range of require­ments on voter regis­tra­tion groups, includ­ing pre-regis­tra­tion, report­ing, compens­a­tion rules, and a 10-day submis­sion dead­line.
• The Texas bills that passed require voter regis­tra­tion drive work­ers and volun­teers to go through mandat­ory train­ing, require them to be qual­i­fied voters, and prohibit perform­ance-based compens­a­tion.

Cutting Down Early Voting Peri­ods

• At least nine (9) states—Flor­ida, Geor­gia (HB 92 enacted; HB 138 and SB 192 intro­duced), Mary­land, Nevada, New Mexico, North Caro­lina (pending), Ohio, Tennessee (vari­ous bills enacted: SB 772, SB 923, SB 922), and West Virginia (SB 581 and 391 enacted, HB 2857 intro­duced)— intro­duced bills to reduce their early voting peri­ods this year. 
• The bills in Flor­ida, Geor­gia, Tennessee, Ohio, and West Virginia have been enacted.
• Texas intro­duced a bill that would omit early voting loca­tions from offi­cial notices of a general or special elec­tion. The meas­ure did not pass.

Redu­cing Voter Regis­tra­tion Oppor­tun­it­ies

• Three states —Maine, New Hamp­shire, and Montana—saw the intro­duc­tion of bills to elim­in­ate elec­tion day regis­tra­tion.  In two states, North Caro­lina and Ohio, legis­lat­ors intro­duced bills to elim­in­ate same day regis­tra­tion during the early voting period. 
• Maine’s bill was enacted.  EDR had been in place in Maine since 1973.
• Ohio’s bill – elim­in­at­ing what some had called “golden week, ” the first seven days of absentee voting before a general elec­tion when the early voting period over­lapped with the period before the voter regis­tra­tion dead­line, and during which eligible citizens were able to register and vote on the same day – was also enacted.
• Montana’s bill passed but was vetoed.
• North Caro­lin­a’s bill is still pending
  • A bill that passed in Wiscon­sin (which also contains the voter ID require­ments) increased the state’s resid­ency require­ment for regis­tra­tion from 10 days to 28 days of consec­ut­ive resid­ency, and also moved the dead­line for late regis­trants to register to the Friday before an elec­tion from the day before an elec­tion.
  • Flor­ida passed a law that elim­in­ates the oppor­tun­ity for regis­trants who move across counties to change their regis­tra­tion addresses and vote a regu­lar ballot at the polls. Ohio enacted a bill that elim­in­ates this form of port­able voter regis­tra­tion.

Disen­fran­chising People with Past Felony Convic­tions

• This session, both Iowa and Flor­ida rescin­ded prior gubernat­orial actions that restored voting rights of people out of prison. (In Flor­ida, 150,000 citizens got their rights restored until the process was halted; now, up to one million Flor­ida taxpay­ers, dispro­por­tion­ately African-Amer­ican men, are all but perman­ently disen­fran­chised.) 

[1] These 34 states are: Alabama, Alaska, Arkan­sas, Cali­for­nia, Color­ado, Connecti­cut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mary­land, Massachu­setts, Minnesota, Missis­sippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hamp­shire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Caro­lina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Caro­lina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wiscon­sin. The three addi­tional states are Arizona, Idaho, and Wash­ing­ton.