The War on Democracy

In the year leading up to the presidential election, there has been a massive effort by Republican legislatures across the United States to implement new laws, ostensibly to combat voter fraud.   The design and implementation of these measures leaves little doubt about their intent.  

Let’s look at what happened. 

The key swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania received particular attention, with a variety of new laws which create hurdles to voting. 

I.  Voter Photo ID and Burdensome Voter ID laws:

In 34 states, Republicans introduced laws requiring photo IDs to vote.   The measures passed in 12 states, but have been subject to court review and challenges.  Twenty-five percent of black voters and sixteen percent of Latino voters do not have drivers’ licenses or other photo ID.   Young, poor and elderly voters are particularly less likely to own their own cars, and are therefore less likely to have drivers’ licenses.    A study by the Brennan Center for Justice estimated that between 250,000 to 750,000 young voters may be disenfranchised by the new voting requirements.  Pennsylvania's Republican Representative Turzai is obviously proud of this accomplishment, as seen in his speech to the Republican State Committee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87NN5sdqNt8

Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kansas, Tennessee, and South Carolina tried to invalidate the use of student photo IDs for voting purposes.  Facing opposition, Wisconsin lawmakers cynically amended the law to allow student IDs, but required information on the ID that is not provided by any university in the state. 

If the issue was truly an issue of establishing identity, a university student photo ID should surely suffice.   But disallowing student IDs reveals the intent of the law, which is to impede Democratic voters.  Clearly, the intent of the law is NOT to establish photographic proof of identity, but rather to block voting  by people who do not have a drivers’ license—minorities, youth, senior citizens and the poor. 

Pennsylvania’s law required voters without a drivers’ license to provide both a social security card and a birth certificate to obtain a non-drivers ID card.   However, significant numbers of minorities, youth, senior citizens and the poor are believed not to have such identification.   The Pennsylvania law is still in court, but some version of the law is likely to be implemented by the time of the election.

Something rarely discussed in the articles about this issue are the lines involved in obtaining a voter’s ID for those who do not currently hold a driver’s license.   In a single anecdote, obtaining a voting card in Pennsylvania required a half-day.    (Have you ever been to the DMV office in any state?)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/voto-latino/restrictive-voting-laws-t_b_1120878.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/15/texans-gun-permits-student-ids-voting_n_1095530.html

II.  Early Voting Restrictions

Interestingly, Democratic voters disproportionally participate in early voting.   Various reasons have been suggested:  university students living away from home; work schedules of lower-income workers; lack of transportation on election day for the poor or elderly; limited alternatives for child care; etc.   But the simple fact is that early voting favors Democrats.   Therefore, the Republican effort in 2012 has been to limit early voting.

In Florida, in 2008, more than half of black voters cast an early ballot, as compared to one-quarter of white voters.   Florida reduced early voting from two weeks to one week, and eliminated voting on the Sunday before the election.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/voto-latino/restrictive-voting-laws-t_b_1120878.html

Ohio attempted to restrict early voting in Democratic districts to only business hours, eliminating after-hours and weekend voting, while simultaneously allowing after-hours and weekend voting in Republican districts.  This attempt was overturned in court.   Ohio also attempted to eliminate early voting in the 3 days prior to the election; a procedure that has been in place since 2005.   This effort was overturned in court, but the state plans to appeal the decision.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/10/670441/ohio-limits-early-voting-hours-in-democratic-counties-expands-in-republican-counties/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/09/1118341/-Ohio-sets-up-one-early-voting-system-for-Republican-counties-another-for-Democratic-counties
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ohio-ordered-to-restore-weekend-early-voting-in-judges-ruling/2012/08/31/c7f3b5d4-f3a6-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html

III.  Voter Registration Laws

The effort to suppress Democratic voters in Florida also took the form of changes to the voter registration laws. 

In 2012, Florida required groups and individuals conducting registration drives to submit registration forms within 48 hours of the voter’s signature.   Previously, forms were required to be submitted within ten days of a voter’s signature.  Further, the state imposed a $1000 per day penalty on any group that failed to meet the stricter time deadline. 

Historically, registration drives (by groups such as the League of Women Voters) have been the primary means of registering minorities and students.   The new registration law has been successful in suppressing Democratic registrations.   In 2012, only 11,365 Democrats were registered in July.   By contrast, about 160,000 Democrats were registered in that period in 2004, and 260,000 Democrats were registered in 2008.   On August 30, a judge blocked Florida’s implementation of the new law, but the damage was already done.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/29/us-usa-voting-florida-idUSBRE87S1AK20120829
http://jurist.org/paperchase/2012/08/federal-judge-partially-blocks-florida-voter-registration-law.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/30/us/judge-to-block-changes-in-florida-voter-registration.html

IV.  Selectively Purging Voter Registration Rolls

In 2012, Florida conducted a long campaign to investigate and purge non-citizens from voting rolls.  The effort targeted Latino and minority voters.

The story is long and convoluted, and the state’s efforts were stymied through a cascade of errors and bad data.   But from an initial list of 182,000 voters believed to be non-citizens, 40 were identified as non-citizens.  A group of 2700 was selected for further scrutiny, containing 87.5 percent minorities.  The overwhelming majority (500 to 40) were proved to be citizens before that effort was discontinued.

Despite the flawed processes of previous attempts, the state is continuing in the attempt to purge voter rolls.  The state recently produced a new list of 198 potentially ineligible voters, who now have 30 days to prove their citizenship.   The new list contains names of people who voted in error, and also those who sent proof of citizenship during previous attempts to remove them from the rolls.
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Nearly-200000-Florida-Voters-May-Not-Be-Citizens-151212725.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/floridas-voter-purge-explained/2012/06/18/gJQAhvcNlV_blog.html
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/florida-sends-election-departments-list-of-198-potential-noncitizens-8212/1253538

V.  Voter Intimidation

There is a long history of using “poll watchers” to suppress minority voting.   

Various tactics were used to challenge the voters, sometimes using law enforcement officials to intimidate voters.   These tactics were discredited and abandoned by Republicans in the 1970’s, but have been revived for recent elections.   In Houston, an organization of white, suburban conservatives marched into downtown minority neighborhoods to harass voters and election workers.   The group’s founder has laid out plans to recruit and train a million “poll watchers” for the 2012 election.  

If this trend continues, our elections will become something like we read about in third world countries, marked by intimidation and violence at the polls.   Whoever organizes the biggest mob at the polling precinct wins. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-ballot-cops/309085/

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Conclusion

Individually, any of these efforts might be excused, under the pretext of reducing voter fraud.   But it should be noted that there is no positive evidence that a problem with voter fraud exists.   A Department of Justice review under the Bush administration produced only 86 cases of voter fraud out of 200 million votes.   In Florida, the attempt to find ineligible, non-citizen voters found 40 cases out of 182,000.  The avalanche of new laws and regulations leave little doubt that the intent is to deny the votes of legitimate voters.  In this post, I did not even address other issues, including redistricting, and deliberate misconduct by election officials.  

If this is the way Republicans run a campaign, just imagine how they will govern.