|
Pennsylvania's new voter identification law "will allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania." So bragged State Representative Mike Turzai, Republican majority leader of the state House of Representatives, to a June 23 meeting of Republicans. His remarks - caught on video and posted widely on the internet - are a blatant admission by a leading Republican lawmaker of the real intent behind legislation, appearing in state after state, to make voting more difficult.
More than 30 state legislatures considered voter suppression bills in 2011, and over a dozen passed such laws. More have been introduced and passed in 2012 - including Pennsylvania's bill. These include not only photo ID requirements, but laws making it harder to register, restrictions on early voting, and tougher residency requirements.
It is no coincidence that politicians in so many states all decided, around the same time, to restrict the right to vote, and to do so with similar legislation. The initiative for voter suppression laws is coming from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the organization of corporations and "conservative" politicians that is also behind the anti-union legislation we've seen over the past two years in Wisconsin, Ohio and many other states. ALEC doesn't just lobby for right-wing legislation - it writes the legislation, drafting "model bills" which its loyal legislators then dutifully submit in their states. A copy of ALEC's model voter ID bill was leaked to the Center for American Progress, which then posted it online.
PENNSYLVANIA
Under Pennsylvania's ID law, passed in March by the Republican-controlled legislature and signed by Republican Governor Tom Corbett, beginning on November 6 this year, in order to vote in person a voter will have to present a specific form of government-issued photo ID: a Pennsylvania driver's license; non-driver ID issued by the state transportation department; U. S. passport; military ID; student ID from a Pennsylvania college or university if it includes an expiration date (which many do not); or one of a few other approved forms of ID. During debate on the bill, Corbett insisted that only 1 percent of Pennsylvania voters lacked an acceptable ID, but later his own department of transportation estimated that 758,000 registered voters - 9.2 percent - didn't have the required ID and therefore could lose their voting rights.
University of Washington political science Professor Matt Barreto has studied the Pennsylvania law and the state's electorate, and he estimates that more than 1 million Pennsylvanians - 14.4 percent of eligible voters and 12.6 percent of those who voted in 2008 voters - lack a form of ID that will allow them to vote under the new law. To get a photo ID from the state division of motor vehicles (DMV), a voter must travel to a DMV office (itself a hardship for many, including elderly people in rural areas), bringing along a birth certificate with a raised seal and two proofs of residency. Barreto's study found that 27.6 percent of voters don't have all the needed documents, and that one-third of voters don't even know about the new requirements. He also found that the groups most likely to lack photo ID - the elderly, minorities, young and low-income people - were more likely to vote Democratic.
In 2008, Barack Obama beat John McCain in Pennsylvania and won the state's 21 electoral votes, by a margin of 620,478 votes. Whether the voter ID law keeps 1 million or three-quarters of a million voters from casting ballots, Representative Turzai is right - voter suppression on this scale could tip the state to the Republican candidate. (Just in case that doesn't work, Corbett has also proposed that the state's electoral votes no longer go to the presidential candidate who wins the state's popular vote, but instead be split up by congressional district.)
The ACLU and other organizations sued in state court to overturn the photo ID law, saying it violates the state constitution's protection of "the free exercise of the right of suffrage." On August 15 the judge hearing the case -- a Republican -- turned down the ACLU's request for an injunction and let the photo ID law stand. The ACLU is now appealing to the state supreme court.
PREVENTING "VOTER FRAUD", OR DEFRAUDING VOTERS?
The Republicans rationale for these photo ID laws, and a variety of other election laws they've been pushing, is that they are needed to prevent "voter fraud." But in-person voter fraud - where someone pretends to be a voter who they're not, the only kind of fraud that a voter ID law might stop - is extremely rare. The existing criminal penalty - five years in prison and a $10,000 fine - is obviously an effective deterrent.
That "voter fraud" is a fraudulent argument is confirmed by Republicans themselves. In a signed court stipulation in advance of the trial over the ACLU lawsuit, Pennsylvania's GOP attorney general admitted that "there have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states."
In Iowa, Republican Secretary of State Mike Schultz "has made it his top priority" to pass a voter ID law - an effort in which, fortunately, he has so far failed. In February Schultz promised to show "that there are cases of voter fraud in Iowa." After investigating the only three allegations of voter fraud they could even find, Schultz's office was forced to admit that none of them really amounted to voter fraud.
Besides Pennsylvania, Republicans have passed strict voter ID laws in Texas, Indiana, Kansas, Tennessee Georgia and Wisconsin. Laws passed in Michigan, Florida, South Dakota, Idaho and Louisiana are only slightly less difficult. Some other states have new laws requiring voters to provide proof of residency, but will accept non-photo documents such as utility bills.
The Wisconsin law has twice been struck down by judges, but Governor Scott Walker continues to appeal. Texas's law - which experts say could keep as many as 1.4 million Texans from voting - has been blocked by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) as violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Texas is one of the states, mostly in the South, that are required under the Voting Rights Act to get DOJ approval before changing their voting laws, because of their history of electoral discrimination on the basis of race. In response, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has sued the Justice Dept., and his aim seems to be to get the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Many progressives fear that the Republican majority on the Supreme Court - which two years ago opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate spending on elections in the Citizens United case - may be eager to declare the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.
MAKING REGISTRATION HARDER
Republicans are finding other ways to suppress the vote. Several states are making it harder to register to vote. Florida and Texas have both attacked voter registration by nonprofit volunteer groups such as the League of Women Voters (LWV). Florida's complicated new rules include a requirement that volunteer registrars submit completed registration forms within 48 hours of signing, or face a hefty fine. As a result, LWV has abandoned its voter registration efforts in Florida. Kansas, Alabama and Tennessee all decided to require residents to prove their citizenship, with a birth certificate or passport, before allowing them to register. Obtaining your birth certificate may cost you money (as it will for many voters in other states who will need one to get a photo ID.) This is probably a violation of the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlaws poll taxes.
Michigan's Republican legislature passed three voter suppression bills in June. One of them would make it nearly impossible for groups like LWV to conduct voter registration drives. Another bill required a photo ID for absentee voting. To the surprise of many, Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder vetoed the three bills. But Snyder is undermining democracy in other ways. He has imposed "emergency managers" on four Michigan cities - state-appointed dictators with the power to overrule elected mayors and city councils, and to tear up union contracts. Voters are trying to get a referendum on the ballot to overturn the Michigan emergency manager law.
ROLLING BACK EARLY VOTING
Early voting was adopted by many states in the wake of the 2000 Florida election debacle, to ease waiting lines and other problems. In 2008 half of Florida's voters cast their ballots before Election Day, but now the legislature has cut back the early voting period from two weeks to eight days. Georgia cut early voting back from 45 to 21 days, Wisconsin eliminated 16 days of early voting. The Republican-controlled Ohio legislature passed a law cutting the early voting period from 35 days to 11, but when opponents gathered enough signatures to put a repeal referendum on the ballot, the legislature backed down and repealed its own law. Then Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted decided to allow extended hours of early voting -- evenings and weekends -- but only in counties that voted for John McCain in 2008, not in counties that went for Obama. This blatantly partisan manipulation brought Husted such a firestorm of criticism -- including editorials in newspapers across the state -- that on August 15 he changed course and eliminated the extra hours for early voting in all counties.
Some states are trying to get rid of voters by purging them from the lists of eligible voters. Texas has "suspended" 10 percent of its registered voters in a process that is riddled with mistakes. In some cases voters are purged because their name is the same as someone else's, and in one Texas country, 70 percent of the people receiving purge letters were valid voters. Another line of attack is tightening residency requirements. This is aimed especially at college students. In Maine last September, the secretary of state sent a threatening letter to hundreds of college students who were legally registered to vote in the state. His letter implied that they were violating election laws and urged them to unregister. How did the secretary of state's office decide which students to mail the intimidating letter to? The list came from the chairman of the Maine Republican Party. (The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that it is unconstitutional to create special obstacles to prevent college students from voting.)
Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the conservative Heritage Foundation and of ALEC, once said, "I don't want everybody to vote." If the goal of the anti-labor right wing is to steal the 2012 election by keeping millions of old, young, poor and working-class people away from the ballot box, that's all the more reason to work hard to make sure that all of us vote.
Click here to read about the struggle for voting rights throughout U.S. history.