-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.
@Elaine:
Thank you for proving voter fraud occurs!!! Requiring IDs will stop both the Democratic and Republican vote fraudsters! I am all for that.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
GOP Voter Fraud Accusations Suddenly Blowing Up In Their Faces
By Dan Froomkin
Posted: 10/25/201
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/25/gop-voter-fraud_n_1990104.html
Excerpt:
Republican officials, who have used hysteria about alleged voter fraud as an excuse to support measures that disproportionately block Democratic voters, are furiously trying to distance themselves from a growing number of GOP voter registration drives that either submitted false applications or threw away authentic ones.
The incidents might have been overlooked if not for the GOP’s clamorous campaign to restrict registration drives, purge voter rolls, roll back early voting, and pass voter ID laws that opponents point out have the effect of depressing the vote among minorities, the poor and other generally Democratic constituencies.
As one Southern California alt-weekly put it, it’s turning into a story of “The Wolf Who Cried Wolf.”
The latest drama began to unfold on Oct. 17, when the manager of a Tuesday Morning discount store in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley saw a man throwing a garbage bag into the store’s private dumpster. Inside the bag was a file folder containing eight completed Virginia voter registration forms.
The manager described the man to Rockingham County sheriff’s deputies, who the following day arrested Colin Small, 23, a voter registration drive contractor for the Virginia GOP — and charged him with eight felonies and five misdemeanors related to the destruction and disclosure of the applications and obstruction of justice.
@Elaine:
Think about how one would go about actually proving that somebody voted at Precinct 17 as Bill Smith, and then at Precinct 42 as John Williams, and then at. . .
Now, factor in absentee ballots mailed out, and then mailed back in. How would one ever prove that Bob Jones filled out ten of them for non-voters and mailed them in.
Could be happening. Could not be happening. If showing an ID is required, there is less chance, and more confidence in the numbers. Many other countries require some form of ID, and they aren’t exactly “Jim Crow” countries.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/voter-id-proponents-point-to-laws-in-other-countries/2012/07/12/gJQAVlGCfW_blog.html
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Republican Party Paid $3.1 Million To Firm Under Investigation For Voter Registration Fraud
By Aviva Shen
September 28, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/09/28/926521/republican-party-paid-31-million-to-firm-under-investigation-for-voter-registration-fraud/
Excerpt:
The Republican National Committee is cutting ties to Strategic Allied Consulting, a voter registration firm under investigation for turning in fraudulent voter registration forms in Florida. The RNC hired the firm to do voter registration drives for $3.1 million this year.
The firm’s founder, Nathan Sproul, is a longtime Republican strategist whose reputation was tarred by widespread accusations of voter registration fraud and attempts to suppress Democratic voter turnout. George W. Bush’s campaign reportedly paid Sproul over $8 million for his work in the 2004 election. Sproul, now under new scrutiny, claims he started Strategic Allied Consulting because the RNC wanted to hide his past:
Sproul said he created Strategic Allied Consulting at the RNC’s request because the party wanted to avoid being publicly linked to the past allegations. The firm was set up at a Virginia address, and Sproul does not show up on the corporate paperwork.
“In order to be able to do the job that the state parties were hiring us to do, the [RNC] asked us to do it with a different company’s name, so as to not be a distraction from the false information put out in the Internet,” Sproul said.
Democracy in a Trash Can
A voter registration outfit largely funded by the Republican National Committee is being accused of destroying the registration forms of hundreds of newly registered Democratic voters in Nevada.
http://www.alternet.org/story/20183/democracy_in_a_trash_can
October 14, 2004 |
These days, schemes to suppress the vote are coming down the pike at a NASCAR-like clip: In July, Michigan State Rep. John Pappageorge told a gathering of party officials at an election strategy meeting of the Oakland County Republican Party that “If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we’re going to have a tough time in this election cycle.” In Orlando, Fla., members of the Orlando League of Voters – an African-American civic group made up of mostly elderly women that has helped turn out large numbers of Democratic voters in the city – were the subject of an intimidating house-to-house investigation by Governor Jeb Bush’s state police, who were supposedly checking out charges of electoral irregularities. The Rev. Jesse Jackson recently charged Republican Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell with “trying to reverse gains made by the civil rights movement by limiting where some Ohioans can cast their ballots,” the Palm Beach Post recently reported.
Now, a new voter suppression scheme has been uncovered: One that thwarts the democratic process before voters even exercise their franchise. A voter registration outfit largely funded by the Republican National Committee is being accused of destroying the registration forms of hundreds of newly registered Democratic voters in Nevada.
On Tuesday, Nov. 2, when hundreds and perhaps thousands of registered Democrats enter their polling places in Nevada, they will be in for a rude surprise: They won’t be allowed to vote. Even though they filled out their registration forms properly and they did it way ahead of the deadline, there will be no record of their being registered to vote. That’s because, according to an investigation by Las Vegas television station KLAS, a private voter registration company called Voters Outreach of America – an outfit largely funded by the Republican National Committee – has trashed hundreds of registration forms of registered Democrats.
GOP voter registration fraud probe widens
Virginia looks into potential systemic fraud while investigation spreads to Colorado
By Alex Seitz-Wald
11/3/12
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/03/gop_voter_registration_fraud_probe_widens/
Excerpt;
Just as Virginia is coming back into play before Tuesday’s election, authorities there are expanding their investigation into potential voter registration fraud by Republican contractors. Colin Small, a former employee with a firm contracted by the Virginia Republican Party had been scheduled to appear before a grand jury last week after he was arrested and charged with 8 felony counts relating to the destruction of completed voter registration forms. But now state prosecutors and expanding their investigation and want more information from him before the appearance.
They’re trying to determine if Small was acting on his own, or if he was acting under orders from superiors when he threw out several completed registration forms his canvassers had collected from Democrats. If true, that would indicate a very different situation. Instead of one rogue GOP operative, it would suggest a systematic effort by a contractor playing a key role in GOP voter registration efforts in several key states to disenfranchise Democrats. Marsha Garst, the Virginia prosecutor overseeing the case, told the Washington Post Friday, This is a very important investigation to the state, and we intend to prosecute Mr. Small to the fullest extent.”
Small worked for a company run by GOP operative Nathan Sproul called Strategic Allied Consulting which had also been employed by the Republican National Committee and state Republican Parties in several other states. Among them is Florida, where authorities are also investigating the firm. The investigation has spread to Colorado as well, where an employee of Sproul’s is under investigation in Arapahoe County for tearing up a Democratic voter registration form. KDVR in Denver also reports that the FBI interviewed Sproul in April (read the transcript here) about potential suppression efforts.
The firm was led by notorious GOP operative Nathan Sproul, who has faced allegations of voter suppression and dirty tricks for years. After the allegations of fraud came out, the RNC said it had fired Sproul and canceled all contracts with his firm, but he may still be working with state parties. Companies created or led by Sproul have received more than $3 million in payments from the Republican party during this election campaign, and Mitt Romney’s campaign paid Sproul’s firm $71,000 last year for “field consulting.”
@jamesK:
Not that you will actually read it:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/walking-around-money-how-machine-politics-works-in-america-today/276503/
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Roxanne Rubin, Nevada Republican, Accepts Plea Deal After Committing Voter Fraud
The Huffington Post
By Luke Johnson
Posted: 01/28/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/roxanne-rubin_n_2566297.html
Excerpt:
A Nevada Republican arrested for voter fraud in the 2012 election, after claiming she was trying to test the system’s integrity, pled guilty and accepted a plea deal Thursday, forcing her to pay almost $2,500 and promise to stay out of trouble.
Roxanne Rubin, 56, a casino worker on the Las Vegas Strip, was arrested on Nov. 3, 2012 after trying to vote twice, once at her poling site in Henderson and then at a second site in Las Vegas. The poll workers at the second site said that she had already voted, but Rubin said that she hadn’t and insisted on casting a ballot, which the poll workers refused to allow her to do.
Rubin said that she was trying to show how easy it would be to commit voter fraud with just a signature. “This has always been an issue with me. I just feel the system is flawed,” she told the AP Thursday. “If we’re showing ID for everything else, why wouldn’t we show our ID in order to vote?”
Rubin, like many Republicans, claim that the threat from voter fraud — which is close to non-existent — is why voter ID laws need to be in place. But Nevada has no voter ID law — other than for first-time voters who didn’t show ID when they registered to vote — and she was caught anyway.
The Myth Of Voter Fraud
By Michael Waldman & Justin Levitt
This is one of the better articles I’ve read on the subject, but there are many of them out there. The practically non-existent issue is pure propaganda: a combination of straw man, distraction and misdirection aimed at creating unnecessary laws that disenfranchise minority, poor and elderly voters. The primary driver behind this propaganda push to deprive citizens of their rights is Hans von Spakovsky, a Republican lawyer who served in the Bush Administration and is now a senior legal fellow at the neoconservative Heritage Foundation. When dealing with propaganda, never forget part of the primary analysis is “who is delivering the message” and “who benefits”. Now you know both the methodology and the messenger as well as whom he works for and the “benefit” they derive from their actions.
Vote fraud isn’t a real substantive problem.
The effects of the “War on Vote Fraud”, however, are a real substantive problem.
I now return you witting and unwitting propaganda trolls to your weak arguments and cheap rationalizations about how you’re fixing a problem that doesn’t exist.
Despite A 0.0002 Percent Rate Of Voter Fraud, Reince Priebus Claims Wisconsin Is ‘Riddled With Voter Fraud’
By Scott Keyes
December 2, 2011
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/12/02/381172/reince-priebus-voter-fraud/
Excerpt:
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus made a curious claim on MSNBC today, alleging that Wisconsin is a state “that was absolutely riddled with voter fraud.”
The problem? A recent study by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice found just seven cases of voter fraud out of three million votes cast in Wisconsin during the 2004 election, a fraud rate of 0.0002 percent. All seven of these cases involved persons with felony convictions who weren’t eligible to vote after being released from prison.
Unfazed by the minuscule incidence of actual voter fraud – comedian Stephen Colbert joked that “our democracy is under siege from an enemy so small it could be hiding anywhere” – Priebus went on MSNBC to defend Wisconsin’s new photo ID requirement and yesterday’s anti-voting rights measure passed by the House GOP. When host Martin Bashir pushed the RNC Chair about his party’s motivations for restricting voting rights, Priebus pointed to his home state of Wisconsin and declared, “I come from a state in Wisconsin that was absolutely riddled with voter fraud, okay?”
BASHIR: Just last night Republicans in the House voted to dismantle the Election Assistance Commission, the sole purpose of which is to make sure states meet voting standards that prevent fraud. Why would Republicans do that if they’re honestly concerned about preventing fraud? […]
PRIEBUS: Well listen, I don’t want to get into the specifics here, but let me tell you something. I come from a state in Wisconsin that was absolutely riddled with voter fraud, okay? They had the smokes-for-votes exchange in Milwaukee. This is something that has nothing to do with constitutional rights of the people who are committing the fraud, it has to do with the constitutional rights of people under our Constitution that one person gets one vote, not two or three or four or five, by not having reasonable voting standards in this country to make sure that fraud doesn’t occur…
The changes in political party power in the various regions of the nation has a direct correlation to the Voting Rights Act.
Lee Atwater wrote a document he calls The Southern Strategy. Lee went on to become Ronald Rayguns campaign manager. Lyndon Johnson predicted that folks like Lee Atwater, Nixon, and down the road, the likes of Raygun, Bushie I and Bushie II would work these changes. Lyndon was speaking on the phone with Senator Eastland after passage of the Act. In essence he told Eastland that we (the Democrats and the nation) are gonna see the end of the Solid South which at that time in 1965 was solidly Democrat. Yet solidly all white voter. Atlwater, Nixon, Raygun, and the Bushies have all pushed the bigot vote in the South to move further South and join the RepubliCon Party.
The Northeast quadrant of the nation was solidly Republican in 1965 and, except for Maine, is now all Democrat. A place in the middle of the nation called Missoura is straddling between RepubliCon and Democrat. North Carolina had a brief moment in the 2008 election when afircan American turnout was high and the Democrats won, but the RepubliCons, with their crafty little swaggers continue to get more and more rednecks out of bed on election day and to suppress the African American vote.
The Lee Atwaters of the world use little subtle phrases to pull you toward the party of Romney. Words like “welfare cheats” do just as well now as bigot phrases such as the N word. The Atwaters love the Zimmerman case because they foresee a big backlash against the Jesse Jacksons (father like son) and Ben Jealous of the NAACP who preach that one can not defend himself when attacked at night in the streets where one lives.
I have spoken on the Lee Atwater influence several times on this blog. Go on Google. Look for Lee Atwater and Southern Strategy. These folks are in full force. Joe Bob never voted and his daddy never voted. They need his white redneck vote in NC. Whereas, the African American folks did not get to vote until the 1970s and they are doing all they can to suppress them.
This dog is in Europe this month with his half blind guy at Den Haag and other legal venues. I will be back barkin in America after September 1st. I can say that folks in Europe, particularly the Krauts, are mad at America for all the spying. Google the word: “Stasi” and you will see why.
Calling them Jim Crow laws is BS
These laws are to prevent from voting more than once and prevent non citizens from voting. Talk about being paranoid you folks should chill out
Bruce, if the laws were to prevent people from voting more than once, they would make a Federal data base to prevent the mass multiple voting done by Republicans every election. The Congresscritter from TX-22 Olson, voted twice in the 2004 election. He voted once in CT, and then voted in VA. His parents home is in CT and he was living in VA so he voted absentee in CT, and in person in VA. This is also prevelant in Texas when the snowbirds come down for the winter, and vote absentee in their home states and vote in person in Texas.
Then there is the old standby of the military vote. It was so bad at Laughlin AFB, that the county voted in a KKKer as Sheriff because of all the military absentee ballots using that base as their “home”. The area is over 80% Hispanic, but with the military vote., the KKK guy won on the GOP ticket.
I am all in favor of defeating voter fraud, but for some reason the GOP is against fighting REAL fraud in those PROVEN cases.
Squeeky takes up Bruce’s whine with “you go around rounding up drunks and derelicts off the street ”
Evidence, please. Cite both the number of incidents and the impact on the elections where it took place.
Then, produce the law, regulation, section or amendment which states you are ineligible to vote while intoxicated. Then, produce the same that says you cannot help someone get to the polls.
Do you even hear yourself?
It’s the transparent looking down your nose at people while pretending not to that renders practically every one of your “reportings” into vapid self-congratulation.
It would help a great deal if you would stop implicating the motives of “those people” to vote, and instead use your journalistic genius to agitate for the right and unrestricted freedom to vote for everyone, period.
Perhaps you could begin by citing the incidents of actual voter fraud these laws are intended to address. Clue: they don’t exist in any number which comes CLOSE to affecting outcomes of elections. But please do not let me do your reporting research for you. I found the information pretty easily, so you should have no trouble.
Restricting the right to vote for no good reason is a loser’s game.
“Luckily, Bruce’s methods and desired outcomes are so childishly transparent. . .”
Hmmm, What I find TRANSPARENT, is the Democratic Party’s fear of rising costs in their “ground game.”. I mean, if voters have to have ID, then that means before you go around rounding up drunks and derelicts off the street to go pull the “D” lever, you first got to take them back to their cardboard box or park bench, and try to find some ID in their belongings. Which means you have to sober them up first, and they get sooo snarly when they haven’t had a drink.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Jim Crow was the unspoken law which southern African Americans were intimidated into going along with, or else:
(Blind Willie McTell News). Some studies in Agnotology reveal that U.S. citizens know little about their own history.
They don’t really want to know for some reason.
Making things up will suffice.
Bruce whines, “maybe they shouldn’t vote anyway.”
Nice of you to admit you keep lists of those who should vote and those who should not, based on the Criteria of Bruce, and nothing else. It confirms that the mindset is to both restrict (“I don’t see”) and punish (“shouldn’t vote anyway”).
Luckily, Bruce’s methods and desired outcomes are so childishly transparent, visible to all in the digital age and preserved in pristine condition forever, they will be temporary as those who hold his views are not being replaced in near sufficient numbers upon expiration.
If the country can turn on a dime on gay marriage thanks to social media, the backlash against intentional attempts to skew the vote will be most harsh. 2014 is not going to be any 2010, not at the rate Bruce’s temper tantrum proceeds apace.
I urge anyone with the ability to do so: help those around you get to vote where these iron curtains are in place. Bruce is not going to win this. We must see that he doesn’t.
Glenn where did I say that? idiot
Thats right Bruce, ONLY rich white property owners should vote….Right?
nick,
Voter fraud should be addressed in the places where it has actually been proved to be a problem. It makes no sense to make voting more difficult for certain people in our society if there is no proof of voter fraud in their districts.