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“”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

May 7, 2012 Posted by | Democracy, Election 2012 | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Re-investing Resources”: ALEC Gives In, But There’s No Reason To Celebrate

After weeks of pressure, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) appears to be backing away from long-term efforts at creating barriers to voting (voter-ID laws) and pushing “Stand Your Ground” legislation. The latter allows those who feel threatened in public places to use force; Florida’s version is currently at the center of the Trayvon Martin case. Giving in to public pressure, ALEC announced Tuesday that it was disbanding its Public Safety and Elections task force, which promoted such legislation and helped see it proliferate. The organization is now “reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy.” ALEC’s spokesperson did not respond to interview requests nor did Public Safety Task Force Chair Jerry Madden, a Texas state representative.

ALEC, which proudly calls itself “the nation’s largest, non-partisan, individual public-private membership association of state legislators,” has operated as a largely secret arena in which corporate sponsors and conservative legislators share ideas. The group offers model legislation to its members, which has in the past simply been introduced in legislatures unchanged. While the group says its goals are job growth and economic development, it has actively promoted voter-ID legislation to make it harder to vote as well as anti-union measures and those to limit lawsuits. The group also pushes for law taxes and decreased regulation.

As controversy grew around the slaying of Trayvon Martin and Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws, ALEC found itself on the ropes. The Martin shooting sparked widespread public outcry. Civil-rights group Color of Change helped lead public campaigns against ALEC and its affiliated companies for its support of such laws. In the face of growing grassroots pressure over the last few weeks, major ALEC corporate members like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have dropped membership, as have McDonald’s, Kraft Food, Mars and others. Just Monday, a New York Times editorial slammed ALEC for its role in promoting Stand Your Ground legislation.

In the statement announcing the end of the Public Safety and Elections task force, the organization shifted its focus to “free-market, limited government, pro-growth policies.”

But this hardly constitutes a victory. ALEC still has a variety of task forces: There’s the Civil Justice Task Force, Education Task Force, and Health and Human Safety Task Force, all of which seem a bit removed from the group’s ostensible goals. The Civil Justice Task Force’s efforts appear largely focused on tort reform, as evidenced by the latest initiative “Expanding the Law Under New Restatement of Torts” and its latest publication, “The State Legislator’s Guide: Tort Reform Boot Camp.”

Then there’s the disturbing impact on health care and education. As The Nation showed in its “ALEC Exposed” series, the group has lobbied all out against health-care reform, while its education task force, headed partially by an executive for the for-profit online education company Connections Academy, has pushed hard for vouchers and increased privatization in American public schools. Its latest publication, a report card on education, begins with by comparing the battle over education reform to the World War II, with teacher unions being—you guessed it—Germany and Japan.

In the end, the Public Safety and Elections task force has already had its success. Voter-ID laws have proliferated around the country, making voting harder for poor and minority Americans. And according to the Times, Stand Your Ground is already law in 24 states.

Color of Change and its boycott isn’t likely to stop the pressure any time soon. In a statement responding to the news, executive director Rashad Robinson didn’t mince words: “To simply say they are stopping non-economic work does not provide justice to the millions of Americas [sic] whose lives are impacted by these dangerous and discriminatory laws courtesy of ALEC and its corporate backers.

 

By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, April 17, 2012

April 18, 2012 Posted by | Corporations, State Legislatures | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“A Matter Of Basic Values”: Burden Of Proof In The Battle Over Voting Rights

One of the most predictable characteristics of the battle over voting rights in this country, which now largely centers on Republican efforts in a number of states to institute various photo ID requirements, is a very different take on the burden of proof. Again and again, progressives point to the signal lack of evidence of any “voter fraud” problem anywhere. In Texas, the state that has filed suit to strike down the entire preclearance procedure of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because the Justice Department refused to preclear its new photo ID law, there have been during the last two election cycles a grand total of four allegations made to the Attorney General’s office of people ineligible to vote impersonating qualified voters. As Think Progress’ Josh Israel notes, these are pretty damning statistics:

Though [Gov. Rick] Perry has claimed Texas has endured “multiple cases” of voter fraud, even of the paltry 20 election law violation allegations the state’s attorney general handled in the 2008 and 2010 elections, most related to mail-in ballot or campaign finance violations, electioneering too close to a polling place, and a voter blocked by an election worker.

It is unclear how many Texans attempt to illegally check out library books while impersonating neighbors or dead people, each year. But in a state of more than 25 million people, the odds of being even accused of voter impersonation in the Lone Star State are less than one in 6,250,000.

Conservatives typically ignore these numbers and instead of answering “why” new and burdensome voting requirements need to be instituted, ask “why not,” comparing proposed voting hurdles to the identification often demanded for various legal or commercial transactions, or more indirectly, asking why honest people would object to verification of their identities? Others rely on public opinion polls to “prove” the reasonableness of voter ID laws, a particularly shaky argument for conservatives who in other contexts believe unnecessary regulations and mandates are intolerable regardless of public support for their purposes.

Aside from the obvious fact that people in both parties understand these requirements would have a disproportionate impact on people more likely to vote Democratic, this kind of dispute often misses the rather obvious point that many conservatives do not view participation in elections as a fundamental right of citizenship. Occasionally they even admit it, but more often that conviction is simply reflected in how the question of “voter fraud versus voting rights” is framed. Anyone viewing the right to vote as fundamental is most unlikely to support burdens placed upon it without a compelling case to show the burden is necessary. “It wouldn’t hurt you” arguments or comparisons to other transactions that do not involve the exercise of fundamental rights are irrelevant.

No wonder a growing number of conservatives favor repeal of the Voting Rights Act altogether. The reasoning is closely parallel to the now-common-place argument on the Right that the discrimination against people of color is largely a thing of the past, and that exceptional government efforts to fight such discrimination amount to a racist effort to discriminate against white people. If that’s the case, then “why not” make access to the ballot just like any other public service, many of which are conditional on compliance with all sorts of rules?

So while the debate over voting in this country often sounds like a competition of people with competing views of the facts, it’s really not: it’s a matter of basic values, and of the burden of proof borne by those who support or oppose a right to vote.

 

By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 26, 2012

March 27, 2012 Posted by | Civil Rights, Election 2012 | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Let My People Vote”: David Axelrod To Republicans On Election Engineering

Barack Obama’s former right-hand man accused Republicans of passing laws to shut out Democrats from voting in the next presidential election. “There’s no doubt that Republican legislatures and governors across this country have made an attempt to try to win the elections in 2012 and 2011 by passing laws that are restrictive, that are meant to discourage participation, particularly by key constituencies that have voted Democratic in the past,” said David Axelrod, former White House official and current senior advisor to the Obama campaign.

The comments were made in an online Q&A following the premiere of “The Road We Traveled,” a 17-minute film directed by David Guggenheim and produced by the Obama campaign. Questions were submitted over Twitter, and the topics ranged from how the president will handle Iran to whether Axelrod ever got in arguments with fellow senior advisor David Plouffe. The final question posed to Axelrod was about the string of laws Republican state legislatures have passed over the past year that will restrict access to the ballot in the name of combating voter fraud.

“The bottom line is we’re going to have to fight this in every state,” he said, “with every set of rules through organization, through commitment on the part of the campaign but also on individuals to find out exactly what the rules are in their state.” Axelrod and fellow Obama staffer Mitch Stewart then touted GottaRegister, a website started by the Democratic National Committee that helps voters register and navigate their local voting laws.

Seven states have passed strict voter ID laws since the 2010 midterm elections, though some of those have been held up after objections from the Department of Justice.

Immediately after taking power, newly elected Republican majorities in state legislatures rushed to combat voter fraud, a constant fear among the conservative base. But research has shown that these laws—and other restrictive voting measures such as repealing same-day registration or cutbacks on early voting—will make it incredibly difficult for certain groups of citizens to cast a ballot: senior citizens, racial minorities, the poor, and the young.

Republicans claim that it is just a coincidence that these groups targeted by the bill happen to vote consistently for Democrats. But Axelrod didn’t mince words about Republicans’ intentions. “We’re going to thwart this cynical attempt to depress voter turnout,” he said in the video. “The difference between our party and their party is we’d be comfortable if every single American who was qualified to vote did vote. We think that’d be a great thing for this country.”

 

By: Patrick Caldwell, The American Prospect, March 16, 2012

March 17, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012, Voters | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Deceitful And Strange Bedfellows: After Months Of Rancor, Two Governors Alter Tones

After Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican in his first months in office, announced early this year that he wanted to cut collective bargaining rights for public workers, relations between political parties in his newly red State Capitol fell into a long, deep frost.

But after six months of bruising partisan fights, Mr. Walker seemed to issue an utterly different message this month. He said he wanted to meet with Democrats and to find shared agenda items — an invitation that has been met with polite acceptance and deep skepticism.

“My thought is, you start out with small things, you build trust, you move forward, you keep working on things and you try and pick as many things that are things that people can clearly work together on,” Mr. Walker, who may face a recall election next year, said in an interview.

In the months after a flurry of Republican wins of governors’ offices and state legislatures in 2010, perhaps nowhere was the partisan rancor more pronounced than in the nation’s middle — places like Wisconsin and Ohio, where fights over labor unions exploded. But now, at least in those states, there are signs that the same Republicans see a need to show, at least publicly, a desire to play well with others.

In both states, critics dismiss the moves as desperate attempts to shore up sinking popularity ratings or disingenuous, tardy strategies to appear agreeable after already ramming through their agendas.

“It’s all P.R. — none of it is substantive,” Mark Miller, the Democrats’ minority leader in the Wisconsin State Senate, said earlier this month, before Mr. Walker held what some described as a “cordial” meeting with the Democratic leaders last week.

Whatever the true substance of the offers, the recent tones in Ohio and Wisconsin do appear to show one thing: With threats of recalls and bill repeals, with public dismay in recent months over the partisan stalemate in Washington on the debt ceiling, and with battleground-state presidential politics looming in 2012, governing with majorities has turned out in some states to be more complicated than it may have first appeared.

Across the nation, partisan relations in statehouses where Republicans made significant gains last fall have varied widely, and in many cases there are no signs of softening messages — or even the need for such a thing. But leaders in other states, including some that are expected to consider limits to unions in the months ahead, are closely watching what unfolds now in Ohio and Wisconsin, the states that became the unexpected battle zones for an earlier season of discontent.

In Columbus, Democrats and union leaders were enraged this year when Gov. John R. Kasich, another first-term Republican governor, and the Republicans who now control both chambers of the legislature pushed through — mostly along partisan lines— a law that would limit the rights of public workers to bargain collectively.

Republicans in Ohio advocated for the measure as the logical response to shrunken budgets in towns, cities and counties. But union leaders and Democrats — and a group calling itself We Are Ohio — spent months collecting more than 900,000 valid signatures (hundreds of thousands more than needed) to put the law to a vote in a statewide referendum in November. A campaign, which is expected to draw significant interest and spending from political groups in Ohio and nationwide, is likely to begin in earnest soon.

Last week, Mr. Kasich and Republican leaders sent a letter to the union organizers, calling for a meeting to discuss a compromise. The leaders said they still believed in the law they had passed, and a spokesman for Mr. Kasich would not say precisely what areas the Republicans were willing to give in on. “We are prepared to move forward immediately with legislative action to implement any agreement on changes we are able to reach together,” the letter read.

“We ought to get to the table and we ought to talk about it,” Mr. Kasich told reporters on Friday, meeting with them in a room full of empty seats and placards for the absent organizers, although the organizers said they had turned down the invitation. “Is it too late?” Mr. Kasich asked. “It’s never too late.”

Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Mr. Kasich, said the new invitation did not mark any shift in Mr. Kasich’s approach; the governor had sought to talk to labor groups during the legislative fight, Mr. Nichols said, and some representatives had engaged in private discussions over the issue again in June before the unions ended those talks, he said. “He, more than most, has a long history of working across party lines,” Mr. Nichols said.

But critics balked at the notion that any real talks had been offered before or that any true, concrete compromises — not just photo opportunities for a public fatigued by partisan rancor — were being offered now.

“If they’re honestly coming forward for a compromise, repeal the bill and then we’ll talk,” said Melissa Fazekas, a spokeswoman for We Are Ohio, explaining why representatives for the group had declined to meet with Mr. Kasich on Friday. “If they wanted to get along, they probably should have tried to during the legislative process instead of locking people out.”

In Wisconsin, partisan relations — and that state’s fight over limits to collective bargaining — have proved still uglier.

In the weeks after Mr. Walker proposed the limits in February, state lawmakers, newly dominated by Republicans in the Capitol, split in two. The minority Senate Democrats fled the state to try to block a vote on the measure. The Republicans issued the lawmaking equivalent of warrants against them, and at one point, threatened that the Democrats had to collect their paychecks in person — or not get them at all. And, as protesters screamed outside his closed office door, Mr. Walker firmly defended the bargaining cuts and said his administration was “certainly looking at all legal options” against the other party.

But after a summer of expensive, brutal recall election efforts against nine state senators — Democrats for having fled the state, and Republicans for having supported the bargaining cuts — Mr. Walker seemed to be sounding a different, softer note. He said he had called Democratic leaders in the Legislature even before the polls closed in some of this month’s recalls, which, in the end, maintained the Republican majorities in both legislative chambers, though by a slimmer margin of 17 to 16 in the Senate.

Democrats in the state had harsh theories about what was behind Mr. Walker’s sudden wish to get along. Some said he had already accomplished a stunningly partisan agenda, including the bargaining cuts, an austere budget, a voter identification law, a concealed-firearms provision and a redistricting map that favored Republicans, and was now hoping to appear to be reaching out. Others said he feared a different recall election effort — against him — next year, as well as creating a drag in the state on any Republican presidential ticket.

“This is totally phony — a totally unbelievable act of desperation,” said Graeme Zielinski, a spokesman for the state Democratic Party. “It will fade away and return soon enough to the scorched-earth method that has marked his career.”

Reflecting on the start of his term, Mr. Walker said that he wished he had spent more time “building a case” with the public for why collective bargaining cuts could shore up budgets, but that he remained a firm supporter of the cuts themselves — a fact that seems certain to complicate any effort for bipartisanship now.

“I’m not thinking that just because we snap our fingers that suddenly everybody’s going to run out and work together and it’s all going to work perfectly,” the governor said.

By: Monica Davey, The New York Times, August 21, 2011

August 22, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, GOP, Gov John Kasich, Gov Scott Walker, Government, Governors, Ideologues, Ideology, Labor, Lawmakers, Middle Class, Politics, Public, Public Employees, Public Opinion, Republicans, Right Wing, State Legislatures, States, Teaparty, Union Busting, Unions, Voters | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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