-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Although Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) does not believe “there is any particular evidence of polls barring African Americans from voting,” there is plenty of evidence that States are making it more difficult for African Americans to vote. Paul is using a strawman argument to recast the voting issue to one in which African Americans are prohibited from voting. Preventing African Americans from voting is the intended result of Republican efforts in numerous states. Using analysis of voting habits, Republicans have passed laws that intentionally create voting difficulties for groups that traditionally vote Democratic. Jim Crow has been dressed up a little, to become James Crow, Esq., but statistically speaking, the results are the same.
In Florida, minority voters waited to vote nearly double the time of white voters, as shown by this graph. 
Statistical analysis of voting patterns showed that 61.2 percent of all early voting ballots were cast by Democrats, compared with 18.7 percent by Republicans. The Republican solution: delete six days of early voting and extend voting hours to accommodate those voters who have jobs. A GOP consultant noted that “cutting out of the Sunday before Election Day was one of their targets only because that’s a big day when the black churches organize themselves.” Although not directly targeting African Americans, the intention is to reduce African American voter turnout.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker closed down DMV offices in predominately Democratic areas after passing a voter ID law. In Ohio, Republicans curtailed early voting from thirty-five to eleven days, including the Sunday before the election when African-American churches historically rally their congregants to go to the polls.
In North Carolina, voter suppression has been taken to new levels. Among the new measures are:
- The end of pre-registration for 16 & 17 year olds
- A ban on paid voter registration drives
- Elimination of same day voter registration
- A provision allowing voters to be challenged by any registered voter of the county in which they vote rather than just their precinct
- A week sliced off Early Voting
- Elimination of straight party ticket voting
- Authorization of vigilante poll observers, lots of them, with expanded range of interference
- An expansion of the scope of who may examine registration records and challenge voters
- A repeal of out-of-precinct voting
- A repeal of the current mandate for high-school registration drives
- Elimination of flexibility in opening early voting sites at different hours within a county
North Carolina now has the strictest voter ID law in the country. US military ID cards will be accepted, but IDs from students at state colleges will not be accepted. In the election of 2012, 1.4 million voters voted straight-ticket Democrat, while just 1.1 million voted straight ticket Republican, so that feature is gone. During the first seven days of early voting in the 2012 election, now eliminated, 458,258 Democrats used in-person early voting, while just 240,146 Republicans did so. Although not directly targeting African Americans, the intention is the same.
There doesn’t appear to be any help from the Constitution which states:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
In a 2007, the Brennan Center for Justice reported (pdf) that “by any measure, voter fraud is extraordinarily rare.” If Republicans can’t win by getting more votes than Democrats, they’ll lessen the number of Democratic voters and achieve an identical result.
As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965 regarding the right to vote:
Every device of which human ingenuity is capable, has been used to deny this right.
H/T: Tom Anstrom, Dara Kam and John Lantigua, Ian Millhiser, Washington Post, Associated Press, Charles P. Pierce.
@Nal: I hope the blockquote stuff comes out right.
Crucial difference??? Hmmm. They both have provisional ballots. Don’t you think that a fair minded person writing a fair minded article might mention the fact that some states which require Photo ID are run by DEMOCRATS??? Or, would that spoil the smear?
That was about a 114 page report as I recall. As far as other reforms, I am not against them. I am all for Mobile ID offices! To date, the Democrats and their ground game have been avoiding all the Republican neighborhoods, and it would be nice if somebody could help get those people voting!
But my original point was, that a BIPARTISAN group decided that Photo ID was necessary. Hmmm, is there any connection between that fact and (a) above??? Oh wait, once again Democrats themselves said that it was fair. Mentioning that kinda ruins the whole “Republicans are racists!” smear.
Yes, it would have been a nice addition. That would have presented BOTH SIDES of the issue from some neutral parties. Then people could also have read that it was a case where the Democrats couldn’t present any plaintiffs who had actually been harmed. And that the Democrats were just mad because their ground game was going to cost more. Presenting BOTH SIDES of an issue is usually a good thing. But, once again, that interferes with the smear.
Well, if a report contains poo which supports your smear, then I expect you will present it!
Well, assuming arguendo for the moment, that there isn’t any widespread fraud, is there something wrong or inherently racist with being proactive? Isn’t that what good government is all about? People put “controls” on all kinds of things to prevent fraud. Even lowly beauty pageants have CPA firms count the vote. Same with the Oscars.
But, off the arguendo, there is a long history of election and voting fraud all over the world, including here. Most Democrats still think that Bush stole the election from Gore. Which is one reason why that bipartisan commission above was created. That 2005 report you failed to mention. Do you really expect people to believe that nobody rigs elections in Chicago? Or Philadelphia? Even Chris Matthews was choking on that one. And if people don’t believe it, does that automatically make them racists?
Plus, you haven’t yet provided any reason why a lack of arrests for voter fraud PROVES there isn’t voter fraud. I mean, it could prove that. Or it could just mean that this is a hard crime to catch. Gee, do you really think there are less than 10 hookers in Wyoming because there were only 7 arrests in 2010. I don’t, yet I have no evidence to the contrary.
You never bothered to address exactly how somebody would even go about proving voter fraud. The Rhode Island state legislator says she saw a guy vote, come out and change clothes and go back in to vote again. How do you catch that kind of stuff. How do you catch it when people are registered in multiple states as discussed in the 2005 report?
A lack of arrests may or may not mean that there is no widespread fraud. But can you fairly smear people who have doubts? I guess if they are Republicans, YOU can. In a second!
No, very relevant because it provides a good non-discriminatory basis for the PHOTO ID type laws, and other election reforms. Plus, if most Americans, including Democrats, are concerned about voter fraud, doesn’t that undercut your contention that it is just racist Republicans who are concerned enough to change the laws? Oops, I think I just accidentally stumbled on the real reason you find it irrelevant.
That’s a clever one! Its racist because you presume it’s racist.
Sure, so do I. The point is, that if Photo ID for voting is inherently racist, why isn’t Photo ID inherently racist in other areas, whether it’s rights or privileges? Hmmm. OH, I bet I know! Once again whenever Democrats don’t think it is inherently racist to require Photo ID on something, that undercuts your whole “Republicans are racists!” smear. Photo ID, as such, is only inherently racist when it suits your partisan purposes.
Plus, you would feel pretty silly trying to convince people that drivers licenses, which require certain documents, and the federal REAL ID ones which requires photo ID, that those are just plain racist and Jim Crow-y! Even though, according to some of the pro-YOU stuff above, “78% of young black men don’t have identification.” Sooo, where’s all the “Let my people drive!” and “I had a dream that I could enter a federal building!” stuff??? Yeah. What I thought.
Now, lets take a step back and do a gestalt thingy! Overall, whether you agree with my assessment or not, don’t you think that me and others here have raised enough doubts about the whole presumption “Jim Crow-y racism” thing, that you really don’t have a reasonable basis for your presumptions? Don’t you honestly find yourself in the same position as a prosecutor who may suspect that someone is guilty of something, but realizes the proof just isn’t there?
I am going to say that if you have an ounce of integrity, you will put a strikethrough on the word “Demise” in the title to this thread. And then add some “???” at the end. I would ask, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” But those would not be fair questions if your intention was simply to post some Democratic talking points.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Gene,
I will be because it is the “technical point” around which the whole argument revolves. Now, by saying “I will be”, I don’t mean I will persuade Bob, but it will be most persuasive in gun control legislation.
Gene, The WaPo poll has the %’s as 48% major problem, 33% minor problem, 14% no problem.
I’m not sure you’ll be successful in deploying that one, Blouise.
But you’re welcome.
Gene,
Too late … I’m always lurking about looking for fodder for my 2nd argument … thank you for the small rights/privilege tool.
Slartibartfast
1, August 21, 2013 at 2:55 am
Gene said: “I remember when we used to have professional propaganda trolls.”
Bdaman where art thou?
===========================================
Probably happily surfing somewhere
The mercenaries/scotland prisoners were my favorites with anon, the vagina-boy, running a close second.
Ah, the good old days when republican operatives actually had money to pay good trolls.
Blouise,
And yet it is a crucial technical point that I do think everyone should know although I understand it when they don’t. Knowing that rights are inherent and that rights confer power (not the inverse) is a critical perspective which lays part of the proper foundation for understanding Constitutional Law, and therefor the rest of American jurisprudence, in the right context.
That it irritates Bob that people don’t understand that point is perfectly understandable.
Slarts,
you are right. Where is Bdaman?
nick,
Or maybe the levels of black voting will stabilize and/or increase now that more blacks have taken an interest in politics upon seeing that a black man can indeed become President.
There simply aren’t enough data points to call that trend yet.
Also, don’t mistake that the “14%” don’t believe there is no individual voter fraud. It does happen. It is so rare though and has such a negligible impact (I remember reading somewhere the net impact was something like 0.03% variance although it may have been less) as to be statistically insignificant, ergo a non-existent problem.
Sorry, Bob, I screwed up the typing:
“… when someone doesn’t know the difference between a right and a privilege, even though many don’t fully understand from where their rights arise. The second can be somewhat understood as it is a technical point … (Gene)
Ahem
nick,
once again, where is the voter fraud that you are trying to curb? It isn’t there. Why do these law allow municipalities and counties to reduce voting machines and sites in Black areas and reduce the number of registration sites in some of these same areas, when they increase voting machines and locations in white areas if blacks are voting at a higher rate? Why does Texas make people travel, hundreds of miles, to get to a site where they can pick up a id card. Why are states outlawing students attending college from using their school id’s if they are a legal resident? Why the long lines in the black areas to vote? This isn’t about a black candidate running or not running. This is about making it harder and in some cases,, downright impossible for legal citizens to vote all under the guise of voter fraud, that is statistically non-existent. The draconian laws are designed to prevent minority voters and other likely Democratic voters from being able to vote. These are ALEC designed bills that are strictly partisan and disgusting.
To Bob,
“… when someone doesn’t know the difference between a right and a privilege, even though many don’t fully understand from where their rights arise. <b?The second can be somewhat understood as it is a technical point … (Gene)
Ahem
Kudos Nal!
raff, Once again. In the 2012 election, 66.2% of blacks voted, compared to 64.1% of whites. I see this campaign by the 14% of people who don’t believe there is any voter fraud as a preemptive strike. It appears there will not be a black person running for prez in 2016. Almost certainly, black voting will go back to pre-Obama percentages. Then “AHAH, we’ll have a smoking gub..err gun. “See what these draconian laws have done!”
Nal,
When I first read Sqweakly’s litany, my initial thought was “This is going to be a fun response” and you did not disappoint.
You’d think by now I would no longer be surprised when someone doesn’t know the difference between a right and a privilege, even though many don’t fully understand from where their rights arise. The second can be somewhat understood as it is a technical point, but the first? Not knowing the difference between a right and privilege is either ignorant or disingenuous.
Corporations’ ties to voter ID laws
By Andrew S. Ross, Chronicle Columnist
Sunday, August 26, 2012
http://www.sfgate.com/business/bottomline/article/Corporations-ties-to-voter-ID-laws-3815349.php
Excerpt:
(The American Legislative Exchange Council, which helped design many voter ID laws, is funded by many U.S. firms.)
On Friday, just days before the opening of the Republican National Convention, the party’s platform committee gave a ringing endorsement to a plethora of voter ID laws passed by state houses in the past few years. That must have pleased the American Legislative Exchange Council, which helped design many of those laws, seen by some as thwarting voter fraud and others as “voter suppression” – especially of Democrats.
The Washington, D.C., nonprofit, which seeks “to advance the fundamental principles of free-market enterprise, limited government and federalism,” is funded primarily by U.S. corporations, including several in the Bay Area. But its efforts to influence legislation on the state level, especially relating to voting rights, has stirred considerable controversy, prompting a number of major U.S. corporations, including Hewlett-Packard and Intuit, to quit the organization in April. But not others, like Visa, Chevron, eBay, and Yahoo.Founded 39 years ago by “a small group of state legislators and conservative policy advocates,” the council began working up “model legislation” for voter ID laws soon after President Obama took office in 2009, along with a Democratic-controlled Congress. Since then, 35 states – all Republican except for Rhode Island – have passed, tightened or considered laws mandating that voters show a driver’s license or other government-approved identification at the polling booth.
Many of them came right out of ALEC’S playbook. More than half of the 62 separate bills introduced in the 2011 and 2012 state legislative sessions were sponsored by members or conference attendees of ALEC, according to an analysis by News21, a student journalism consortium sponsored by the Carnegie Corp. and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Concerns raised earlier this year by good-government and civil rights groups, including Common Cause and the NAACP, led to a corporate exodus from ALEC in April. Fearing more defections, ALEC disbanded the task force that drew up the model legislation, whose corporate members included Koch Industries, whose owners Charles and David Koch have funded numerous right-wing organizations and pro-Republican super PACs. None of the corporate members were from the Bay Area…
In 2011, New Hampshire’s Republican House Speaker William O’Brien, speaking to a local Tea Party group in support of a bill ending same-day registration and placing restrictions on student voting, referred to “kids voting liberal. That’s what kids do – they don’t have life experience, and they just vote their feelings.” A less-restrictive photo ID requirement became law in New Hampshire last month.
In June, referring to a package of laws recently passed in Pennsylvania, Republican House Majority Leader Mike Turzai remarked at a Republican State Committee gathering, “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.” His statement was reported to have drawn “a loud round of applause from the audience.”
Squeeky:
You ignored the crucial difference that Rhode Island’s voter ID law provided.
You mean the Commission that wrote:
To prevent the ID from being a barrier to voting, we recommend that states use the registration and ID process to enfranchise more voters than ever. States should play an affirmative role in reaching out to non-drivers by providing more offices, including mobile ones, to register voters and provide photo IDs free of charge.
How many voter ID states have provided mobile ID offices to prevent the ID from being a barrier to voting?
You mean the SCOTUS case in which Indiana presented no evidence of voter fraud that actually occured? That would have been a nice addition to the post.
When reports contain poo, what do you expect?
If people who disagree provided evidence instead of poo, then their honesty would not be in question.
Irrelevant on Constitutional grounds.
All other things being equal, you’d be right. But, all other things are not equal. That’s why it’s called voter suppression.
Everybody reading this comment understands the difference between the Constitutional right to vote and the privilege of driving a car.
Voting while Black is a horrific crime Elaine!
GOP Voter Suppression Shifts Into High Gear in State After State as ‘Tea Party’ Shell Game Exposed
By Ernest A. Canning
5/23/2011
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8529
Excerpt:
Voter suppression has long been a staple of American politics, but the tsunami of new restrictions on the polling place now being rammed through by newly-elected Republican majorities in state after state is unprecedented, certainly since the era of Jim Crow was supposed to have been ended by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
While most Americans may think of the poll tax and literacy tests as forms of voter suppression associated the Jim Crow South, the confirmation hearings of the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Renquist included sworn testimony from former U.S. Attorney James Brosnahan and others reflecting that, as an early 60’s GOP activist, Renquist intimidated African-American and Hispanic voters in AZ by challenging their ability to read.
1965’s Voting Rights Act outlawed both the poll tax and literacy tests. In more recent times, pursuant to a 1987 federal court consent decree, and a subsequent provision of the National Voting Rights Act of 1993, another GOP suppression tactic, “caging lists,” was banned, though as documented by the BBC’s Greg Palast, the Bush administration-led Plutocrats didn’t let a little matter like illegality get in the way of their use.
21st Century voter suppression operates under cover. Or it had, until the new wave of legislation being passed by GOP legislatures across the country began hitting its stride. Until FL’s then-governor Charlie Crist overturned it, for example, the state banned convicted felons from voting even years after they’d been released from prison. In Armed Madhouse, Palast asserts that prior to the 2000 Presidential election, FL’s then Sec. of State Katherine Harris, appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of candidate George W. Bush, purged 94,000 “felons” from the state’s computerized voter rolls, though the only “crime” at least 91,000 were guilty of was “being Black, Democrat or both.”
The GOP War on Voting
In a campaign supported by the Koch brothers, Republicans are working to prevent millions of Democrats from voting next year
By Ari Berman
8/30/11
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-war-on-voting-20110830
Excerpt:
Republicans have long tried to drive Democratic voters away from the polls. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” the influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” But since the 2010 election, thanks to a conservative advocacy group founded by Weyrich, the GOP’s effort to disrupt voting rights has been more widespread and effective than ever. In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process…
To hear Republicans tell it, they are waging a virtuous campaign to crack down on rampant voter fraud – a curious position for a party that managed to seize control of the White House in 2000 despite having lost the popular vote. After taking power, the Bush administration declared war on voter fraud, making it a “top priority” for federal prosecutors. In 2006, the Justice Department fired two U.S. attorneys who refused to pursue trumped-up cases of voter fraud in New Mexico and Washington, and Karl Rove called illegal voting “an enormous and growing problem.” In parts of America, he told the Republican National Lawyers Association, “we are beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where the guys in charge are colonels in mirrored sunglasses.” According to the GOP, community organizers like ACORN were actively recruiting armies of fake voters to misrepresent themselves at the polls and cast illegal ballots for the Democrats.
Even at the time, there was no evidence to back up such outlandish claims. A major probe by the Justice Department between 2002 and 2007 failed to prosecute a single person for going to the polls and impersonating an eligible voter, which the anti-fraud laws are supposedly designed to stop. Out of the 300 million votes cast in that period, federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for voter fraud – and many of the cases involved immigrants and former felons who were simply unaware of their ineligibility. A much-hyped investigation in Wisconsin, meanwhile, led to the prosecution of only .0007 percent of the local electorate for alleged voter fraud. “Our democracy is under siege from an enemy so small it could be hiding anywhere,” joked Stephen Colbert. A 2007 report by the Brennan Center for Justice, a leading advocate for voting rights at the New York University School of Law, quantified the problem in stark terms. “It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning,” the report calculated, “than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”…
No one has done more to stir up fears about the manufactured threat of voter fraud than Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a top adviser in the Bush Justice Department who has become a rising star in the GOP. “We need a Kris Kobach in every state,” declared Michelle Malkin, the conservative pundit. This year, Kobach successfully fought for a law requiring every Kansan to show proof of citizenship in order to vote – even though the state prosecuted only one case of voter fraud in the past five years. The new restriction fused anti-immigrant hysteria with voter-fraud paranoia. “In Kansas, the illegal registration of alien voters has become pervasive,” Kobach claimed, offering no substantiating evidence.
Kobach also asserted that dead people were casting ballots, singling out a deceased Kansan named Alfred K. Brewer as one such zombie voter. There was only one problem: Brewer was still very much alive. The Wichita Eagle found him working in his front yard. “I don’t think this is heaven,” Brewer told the paper. “Not when I’m raking leaves.”