“Voting Rights Are Precious”: A Crack In The GOP’s Support For Voter-ID Laws
There’s little question what the political calculus behind voter-ID laws is. Advocates argue that the laws, which require government photo identification to vote, are necessary to prevent voter fraud—despite there being virtually no evidence that such fraud is a problem. In practice, the laws will disproportionately have an impact on poor people and those of color, two Democratic-leaning groups that are less likely to have such IDs. Predictably, Republicans have been pushing for these laws, while Democrats generally oppose them.
That is, until earlier this week, when Michigan Governor Rick Snyder shot down his own party and vetoed a state voter-ID law. He also vetoed laws that would have made it harder to conduct voter-registration drives and to confirm U.S. citizenship for voters. All three—pushed by Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and sponsored by Republican lawmakers—would likely have dampened turnout, particularly among disadvantaged communities.
During hearings on the measure, protesters stormed the Capitol. “This is a naked assault on that sacred right to vote and to not have unnecessary obstacles placed in their path,” said one Democratic state representative.
The governor’s press release, titled “Snyder signs most of election reform legislation,” shows he wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to make his announcement and in both cases cited “confusion” as the key reason for knocking down the measures.
But in a letter to lawmakers, Snyder expanded his point. “Voting rights are precious,” he wrote, “and we need to work especially hard to make it possible for people to vote.”
As the latest results from Wisconsin’s recall election showed, high turnout does not necessarily help Democrats. Snyder, and others of a more moderate ilk, may recognize that there’s no reason Republican candidates shouldn’t be reaching out to new voting populations. Keeping voter turnout down is hardly a long-term strategy, and as the Prospect‘s Jamelle Bouie recently noted, there’s a lot of room for Republicans to grow in popularity among nonwhites.
Right now, Snyder stands alone. Last week, New Hampshire’s Republican-dominated state legislature overturned a veto from Democratic Governor John Lynch on similar legislation. Several state voter-ID laws are stuck in the courts. But the news from Michigan may help spur others who have wavered on the issue.
The fundamental right to vote should not be a partisan issue, and Snyder’s decision may have a welcome ripple effect on others in the GOP who see the troubling implications of these laws.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, July 5, 2012
“”Disenfranchising Our Fellow Citizens”: A Sad Day For Our Democracy
Partisan politics aside, it’s disgraceful that we’ve empowered lawmakers to disenfranchise our fellow citizens.
Thanks to a sluggish economy, and restrictive voter identification laws from Republican lawmakers, voter registration is down for the first time in years. In particular, registration among African Americans and Latinos has taken a plunge:
Together, the number of registered blacks and Hispanics across the country declined by 2 million from 2008 to late 2010, when the Census Bureau collected the data through its Current Population Survey.
The figure among blacks is down 7 percent, to just over 16 million. Among whites, it dropped 6 percent to 104 million.
Among Latinos, the decline has altered a trend line of steady growth. Given that 12 million Latinos were registered to vote in 2008, some analysts had projected the number would grow to 13 million in 2010 and 14 million this election cycle. Instead, it fell in 2010 to 11 million.
I would hold off on declaring doom for President Obama’s reelection effort. The Obama campaign has spent millions of dollars on building field offices, registering voters, and navigating the new laws. My hunch is that, at the end of the day, these restrictions won’t have as much as affect as we think on the Obama campaign’s ability to mobilize minority voters.
Of course, the horse race is the least important aspect of this development; what should worry everyone is the degree to which the Republican Party has normalized the idea that there ought to be voter restrictions. Remember, voter fraud is virtually nonexistent; between 2002 and 2007, the Justice Department failed to prosecute a single person for impersonating another voter. But rather than confront the reality of voter security, proponents of voter ID push faulty analogies; we check ID for cigarettes and ‘R’-rated movies, why should we leave it at the door when for voting?
The easy (and correct) answer is that voting is a right of citizenship, and restrictions—even if they sound reasonable—do nothing but limit the voices that have input in our democracy. Indeed, as the Washington Post shows, the actual effect of voter ID laws is to make voting rights contingent on race and income. If you’re poor, a minority, or both, it is now harder for you to vote than if you were better off and white.
Americans love to call theirs the greatest democracy in the world, but as long as we actively work to disenfranchise our fellow citizens, there’s no way that we have a claim on “great,” much less good.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, May 4, 2012
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