“A Whole New Form Of Voter Suppression”: Do We Need A New Voting Rights Act?
Ten states have enacted voter-ID laws that will discriminate against minorities and seniors. But the Department of Justice can do little to stop the discrimination in five of them.
On Friday, two counties in Southern states requested that the Supreme Court reconsider a key element of the Voting Rights Act. Both Kinston, North Carolina and Shelby County, Alabama hope the Court will find that Section 5 of the Act—the one that requires states and counties with a history of voter suppression to get permission from the feds before implementing changes to election law—is unconstitutional. The government has previously justified Section 5 under the Fifteenth Amendment, which guarantees the right to vote and prohibits discrimination based on race. The counties—both in states with new voter-ID laws—argue that the provision violates the Tenth Amendment, which gives states the right to regulate elections. Furthermore, they claim it unfairly gives states different levels of sovereignty by treating some differently than others.
With voter-ID laws proliferating around the country, the Voting Rights Act has been in the national conversation for months now, and Section 5 has played a major role in the debate. Voter-ID laws create barriers to voting, particularly for poor and non-white voters who are more likely to lack the necessary photo ID. The effort to suppress the vote is exactly what the Voting Rights Act sought to prevent, and it’s come in handy. While the Bush administration’s Department of Justice approved Georgia’s strict voter-ID law—which became a national model—under Obama, the DOJ has blocked Texas and South Carolina from implementing theirs, finding them to have a discriminatory effect. (Decisions on Mississippi and Alabama’s laws are still pending.) Thanks to the proceedings, we’ve learned a lot more about the impact of these laws. Documents from Texas revealed that Hispanic registered voters were between 47 and 120 percent more likely to lack the necessary ID, while in South Carolina, minorities were almost 20 percent more likely to have no government-issued identification.
Because of Section 5, the Department of Justice has been able to stop voter-ID laws from going into effect in four states. The trouble is, Section 5 only applies to nine list states, based largely on what those states were doing 50 years ago. And with the voter ID frenzy that began after Republicans swept into power in 2010, the states working to suppress the vote don’t totally align with those that require preclearance. In recent years, ten states have passed strict voter-ID laws which require a voter to show government-issued identification to vote and will likely prevent hundreds of thousands from voting. But of those ten, only five require preclearance. Indiana, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Wisconsin all got to enact their versions of these laws without any say from the feds. Across all of them, the impacts are similarly devastating for poor and non-white populations.
As more and more states pass laws that functionally disenfranchise poor and nonwhite voters, it’s increasingly clear that Section 5 is no longer sufficient. The Department of Justice needs a broader ability to be proactive in preventing voter discrimination. When the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, Congress authorized Section 5 for only five years, with the idea that it might not be necessary after that. Since then, however, the section has been reauthorized several times—most recently in 2006, when Congress renewed it for another 25 years. But the section no longer reflects the voting landscape. It seems logical that the Department of Justice’s role should be expanded, so that states not listed in Section 5 cannot implement laws that infringe on voters’ rights.
The right to vote is integral to our political system, one of the defining acts of citizenship, and we should ensure it’s protected. Furthermore, who votes often determines which candidate wins. In 2012, the stakes could hardly be higher. Not including Alabama, where the law is not scheduled to take effect until 2013, the states with strict voter-ID laws comprise 127 electoral votes—almost half the number needed to win.
A report by the Brennan Center for Justice last week offered a devastating look at just how difficult getting ID actually is, and how many people are impacted. Nationwide, 11 percent of eligible voters lack the required ID; among African Americans, that number skyrockets to one in four eligible voters. Hispanics and seniors also disproportionately lack a government-issued photo ID. The Center’s report focuses on two key factors: the cost of acquiring the necessary documents, and the difficulties of getting to an office that issues IDs. Even in states that offer free IDs for voting, most still charge people to obtain the documents necessary to get that ID—and the costs are not insignificant. Birth certificates can run anywhere from $8 to $25. In Mississippi, there’s a special Catch-22: You need a birth certificate to get a government-issued ID, but you need a government-issued ID to get a birth certificate. Meanwhile, 10 million eligible voters live more than 10 miles away from a government office that can issue an ID—and in Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Wisconsin, those ID issuing offices are closed on weekends.
While many of the most egregious examples are in Section 5 states, many are not. In Wisconsin, which does not have to preclear its election laws, more than 30 percent of the voting-age population lives more than 10 miles from an ID office. In Kansas, which also isn’t listed in Section 5, the voter-ID law shows similar problems with discrimination. Outside of Wichita, there’s one office that issues IDs for every 22,000 eligible voters; in downtown Wichita, there is one office for every 160,000. Twenty-two percent of Kansas’ black population lives in downtown Wichita where, in order to get their free IDs, they must wait much longer than their neighbors outside the city. In Tennessee, another state that doesn’t need preclearance, three rural regions have large populations but no offices that issue IDs.
Perhaps the best argument for expanding the Voting Rights Act is unfolding in Pennsylvania. Only a few months ago, the state legislature passed a strict voter-ID law that required a government-issued ID that included an expiration date. The state’s House majority leader, Republican Mike Turzai, openly touted it as a law that will guarantee that Mitt Romney wins the state. There’s reason for his confidence: A recent study from the Secretary of the Commonwealth in Pennsylvania showed that as many as 9 percent of state voters may lack necessary identification. In Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold with a high number of African-American voters, it could be as high as 18 percent. Yet the DOJ cannot block the law.
For those states not listed in Section 5, challenges must be fought in the courts, where the bar is much higher. The DOJ or others can claim that voter-ID laws violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination either in practice or procedure. But Section 2 cases are difficult. “In order to bring a Section 2 case, you’d have to show two things. One, that there’s a significant racial disparity and two, that the burden of getting an ID is significant enough for us to care about,” Samuel Bagenstos, former deputy assistant attorney general, told Talking Points Memo. That means the DOJ will have a harder time winning a case against a voter-ID state before the November elections. Instead, the department may have to wait until the election is over and voters can testify to the discrimination. The DOJ may have to spend the 2012 election collecting evidence of discrimination—cold comfort for those whose votes are suppressed, particularly when their votes could change the outcome of a close presidential election.
Civic groups can also sue states for violating their constitutions. The ACLU has already brought suit against the Pennsylvania law on those grounds. In Wisconsin, a court found the voter-ID law violated the state constitution, and has granted a permanent injunction, though that decision is being appealed. These lawsuits require funding from civic groups that can afford and endure lengthy legal fights, of course, and the constitutional protections vary state to state.
The Voting Rights Act was passed at a time when certain states adamantly and openly refused non-white citizens the right to vote. These new laws are less obvious and more insidious, and have been implemented in states without voter-supression histories of Texas, South Carolina, and Georgia. But regardless of a state’s history, the result of voter-ID laws is still the same: Many, particularly those who are poor and not white, will lose their right to vote.
With a whole new form of voter supression spreading, it’s imperative that we look at new ways to safeguard that right. Norman Ornstein, among others, has called for an expanded Voting Rights Act. At the very least, the Department of Justice should have broader authority to examine discriminatory laws and at least hold up implementation as officials examine the potential impact. States like Pennsylvania should not be able to take away minority rights so easily, and with so little scrutiny. Unfortunately, as so many states move to make it harder for poor and nonwhite citizens to vote, the momentum is on the other side, with states and counties pushing to knock down Section 5 entirely and take away the procedural protections we do have in place, incomplete though they are.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, July 23, 2012
“From Silly Season To Plain Crazy”: Mitt Romney’s Encouragement Of Anti-Obama Nuttiness
On an official Mitt Romney campaign conference call this week, former New Hampshire governor John Sununu tested the latest effort to paint the commander in chief as disloyal to his country.
“I wish this president would learn how to be an American,” the Romney surrogate said.
Sununu, challenged, later apologized for the words — but not the sentiment. And that’s not good enough.
It’s not good enough because Sununu, like other prominent Republicans, is winking at those conservatives who continue to make the claim, often race-based, that President Obama is something un-American, something “other” than the rest of us. On Thursday, two days after Sununu’s attack, Romney himself said that Obama lacks “an understanding of what it is that makes America such a unique nation.”
Sununu and Romney are legitimizing people such as Cliff Kincaid. Also on Thursday, Kincaid convened his annual conference at the National Press Club for conspiracy-minded conservatives, this one about Obama and “Radical Islam.”
On the program, Obama’s photo was alongside Vladimir Lenin’s and those of radical Muslim clerics. Kincaid got right to the point: Obama was actually sired by the late author Frank Marshall Davis, identified by Kincaid as a communist pornographer.
There is, Kincaid said, a “distinct possibility that Davis was Obama’s real father.” The host further informed the assembly that Davis was “Obama’s sex teacher” and that “Obama was under the tutelage of a pedophile.” Kincaid asked “what Frank Marshall Davis may have done to a young Barack Obama” and “what other terrible secrets are out there.” For more on this, Kincaid brought in a filmmaker to discuss his work on Obama and Davis, “Dreams from My Real Father.”
The next speaker, blogger Trevor Loudon, provided the additional information that Davis was a “possible Soviet spy” and that there are “a whole host of other communists and Marxists around Obama,” including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, with “a communist-front record as long as your arm.” Loudon figures that Obama is making it possible for Russia and China to attack the United States and that “Latin American states would be invited in for looting rights.”
“You’ve got to ask,” Loudon said, “how involved were the Soviets in promoting the career of Barack Obama, and are they getting a payoff today?” (The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the year Obama graduated from law school.)
This isn’t to dignify the nuttiness. But it’s worth noting this latest symptom of Obama Derangement Syndrome, because some of these same people birthed the birther movement nearly five years ago and because this is the sort of craziness that Romney and prominent Republicans are furthering.
Romney has often shared the stage with Donald Trump, the most visible birther. And Romney’s surrogate Sununu followed his original allegation with the charge that Obama “has no idea how the American system functions” in part because he spent “years in Indonesia.”
At lower levels, Republicans are even more brazen. Rep. Allen West (Fla.) alleges that, in the House, “there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party.” Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and four other House Republicans accused Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, of being part of a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy. Not to be outdone, Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., just came out with the fresh allegation that Obama’s long-form birth certificate is a forgery.
Such disloyalty allegations aren’t likely to stick to the man who vanquished Osama bin Laden and escalated drone strikes on terrorists. More likely, the charges will discredit the complaints from Romney that Obama is being unfair to him with his far tamer line of attack on Romney’s finances. Of greater concern, the disloyalty allegations from Republican officials will legitimize the sort of people who converged on the press club.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Kincaid declared, “what we have today in the White House is somebody who could not survive any reasonable background check but is president, with access to America’s secrets.”
Loudon alleged that Alice Palmer, an early Chicago mentor of Obama, was a “high-level Soviet operative.” He added that if Obama loses in November, “he would just lay waste to everything he can. . . . You could see some serious violence in the streets of America.”
There was little time to fret about this, because the next speaker, Larry Grathwohl, began his presentation, on “reds exploiting blacks,” about how Obama is a “revolutionary mole” and part of a communist-Muslim plot with ties to Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and the Weather Underground.
Surely Sununu and Romney don’t believe this. So why do they encourage it?
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, July 20, 2012
“A Hidden Man”: Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns Don’t Look Like “You People’s” Tax Returns
John McCain’s former top presidential campaign strategist said Sunday that Mitt Romney’s tax returns had nothing to do with the campaign’s pick of Sarah Palin as the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2008.
“Mitt Romney went through this process and what I can tell you is that he’s a person of decency with the highest ethical character and background,” Steve Schmidt said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There was nothing that was disqualifying. That pick in 2008 was not about any deficiency with Mitt Romney. It was a political decision that we made in a very bad political circumstance.”
Schmidt, who said he did not personally view Romney’s tax returns, said Romney is an “extremely wealthy man” and his tax returns “do not look anything like the average American.”
As a chorus of voices have called on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to release more of his tax returns, Romney has held firm. He told National Review in an interview that the Obama campaign’s hammering him on his taxes to distract voters from the tepid economic recovery and the president’s failure to put more Americans back to work.
However, New York Times columnist David Brooks told NBC’s David Gregory that Romney is a “hidden man” and that releasing his taxes won’t help that perception.
“I don’t care about the issue. Can you think about a president who was qualified or disqualified about taxes? What’s relevant is who the guy is,” Brooks said. “His family had gone across the west, poverty, building an empire, poverty, building an empire. He can’t talk about it because it involves Mormonism. He is a decent guy but he is not willing to talk about it. He’s a hidden man, so one of the turning points in this campaign is when he comes out and if he can come out. and I don’t know why they’re waiting so long.”
Democratic presidential strategist Bob Shrum agreed, saying Romney’s failure to release his tax returns makes him a “punching bag.”
“It does make him a hidden figure and a punching bag,” Shrum said. “…I tell you on this tax issue, Steve [Schmidt] and I have both been there. You sit down with the candidate and you say, ‘Look, we should release these tax returns.’ And either Romney or people in his campaign who have seen it said we’ll take worse damage if we release these returns than if we hold on to them. So I think he’s going to live with this issue all the way through.”
By: Juana Summers, Politico, July 22, 2012
“Unforgivable Stupidity”: Rep Louie Gohmert Shows How Not To Respond To A Tragedy
In the wake of tragic gun violence, most politicians realize the decent, responsible thing to do is send sympathies to those affected while leaving politics out of it. Others aren’t as sensible.
After the Columbine massacre, for example, then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) blamed science textbooks for the murders: “Our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who are evolutionized [sic] out of some primordial soup.”
In 2007, after the Virginia Tech massacre, Newt Gingrich blamed liberals for supporting “situation ethics,” adding, “Yes, I think the fact is, if you look at the amount of violence we have in games that young people play at 7, 8, 10, 12, 15 years of age, if you look at the dehumanization, if you look at the fact that we refuse to say that we are, in fact, endowed by our creator, that our rights come from God, that if you kill somebody, you’re committing an act of evil.” Gingrich, explaining the VT tragedy, went on to condemn Halloween costumes and the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law.
And this morning, after the slayings in Aurora, Louie Gohmert weighed in with some stupidity of his own.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Friday that the shootings that took place in an Aurora, Colo. movie theater hours earlier were a result of “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs” and questioned why nobody else in the theater had a gun to take down the shooter.
During a radio interview on The Heritage Foundation’s “Istook Live!” show, Gohmert was asked why he believes such senseless acts of violence take place. Gohmert responded by talking about the weakening of Christian values in the country.
“Some of us happen to believe that when our founders talked about guarding our virtue and freedom, that that was important,” he said. “Whether it’s John Adams saying our Constitution was made only for moral and religious people … Ben Franklin, only a virtuous people are capable of freedom, as nations become corrupt and vicious they have more need of masters. We have been at war with the very pillars, the very foundation of this country.”
“You know what really gets me, as a Christian, is to see the ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and then some senseless crazy act of a derelict takes place.”
I see. So, in the mind of this strange Republican congressman, a madman killed 12 people because of … the separation of church and State? The First Amendment is to blame for a shooting spree in a movie theater?
If decency had any place in American politics, this would be an immediate career-ender for the ridiculous congressman from Texas. Some political missteps are simply unforgivable.
Update: Gohmert also wondered aloud why no one else in the theater was armed, complaining that the victims should have shot back.
By: Steve Beneb, The Maddow Blog, July 20, 2012
“Absentee Owner”: New Bain Questions To Dog Romney And They Are Not About Seamus
Though much of the nation’s attention has shifted to the tragic overnight violence in Aurora, Colorado, the political world will apparently move forward. Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney had already scheduled a campaign event in New Hampshire, and his staff alerted reporters this morning that their plans have not changed.
With that in mind, there are new questions about the candidate’s controversial private-sector background that deserve answers. The Boston Globe has this new report, for example, noting Romney’s ongoing ties to Bain Capital after his departure in February 1999.
Interviews with a half-dozen of Romney’s former partners and associates, as well as public records, show that he was not merely an absentee owner during this period. He signed dozens of company documents, including filings with regulators on a vast array of Bain’s investment entities. And he drove the complex negotiations over his own large severance package, a deal that was critical to the firm’s future without him, according to his former associates.
Indeed, by remaining CEO and sole shareholder, Romney held on to his leverage in the talks that resulted in his generous 10-year retirement package, according to former associates.
“The elephant in the room was not whether Mitt was involved in investment decisions but Mitt’s retention of control of the firm and therefore his ability to extract a huge economic benefit by delaying his giving up of that control,” said one former associate.
So, on the one hand, we see Mitt Romney telling voters, “I was in Utah full time. I had no responsibility for management at Bain Capital.” On the other hand, we see evidence that Romney was not in Utah full time and had quite a few responsibilities for management of Bain Capital.
In the meantime, David Corn has a new report on Bain, during Romney’s tenure, investing millions in a pair of companies that specialized in outsourcing high-tech manufacturing.
As for the still-hidden tax returns, the number of Republicans urging Romney to disclose more materials continues to grow.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 20, 2012
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