National: Texas case puts voter ID laws to test | The Washington Post Voter ID laws face a high-profile test this week as the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC hears arguments about Texas’ controversial new regulations. The case pits Texas against Attorney General Eric Holder, who has earned the ire of Republicans across the country…
Voter ID laws face a high-profile test this week as the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC hears arguments about Texas’ controversial new regulations. The case pits Texas against Attorney General Eric Holder, who has earned the ire of Republicans across the country for challenging new voting restrictions. Republicans say the Justice Department should be more concerned about fraud; the DOJ counters that these laws suppress minority turnout. Gov. Rick Perry (R) signed Texas’ voter ID law in May 2011. The state already required an ID to vote; the new law requires a photo ID. Those who don’t have a valid photo ID can apply for a new “election identification certificate.” As a state with a history of voter discrimination, Texas must get preclearance from the Department of Justice for changes in election law. The DOJ blocked Texas’ law under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, declaring that it would disproportionately affect Hispanic voters.
In my recent post about the new PA voter ID law, I noted that a very, very significant number of registered voters – up to 18% of all registered voters in Philadelphia (home to half of the state’s African-American population) – may not currently possess an identification card that will allow them to vote in November. Supporters of these laws argue that requiring people to get an ID is a small price to pay in order to prevent voter fraud. It seems worth figuring out what the actual supplemental cost of voting is for those who currently lack required ID. I therefore present may totally back-of-the-envelope calculation of the poll-tax assessed by PA’s voter ID law. I use the working assumption that time is worth 7.25/hour. This is a fiction if the preparation time does not actually displace paid labor, but does allow us to monetize the cost of voting to be allocated to ID acquisition. I assume that photocopies cost .15 per page and that all mailings can be done for .45 first class postage. I also assume that this is all occuring in Philadelphia County, where there is public transportation to help you get to one of the five DMV locations in the county. In other counties, a person without a driver may have to spend even more to get cab service. Of course, some people will be able to get a ride – but given gas prices (and the cost of parking in cities), it seems unlikely that the effective cost of such travel will be less than the SEPTA public transit fare of $2 each way. More elaborate details on my calculations appear at the bottom of the post. And yes: I recognize that some people miss work, school or other activities in order to vote. I assume, however, that this cost is borne by all voters.
At first glance, it seems appropriate to require voters to show photo ID cards. But stop and think: What sort of person is unlikely to have a driver license or similar card? Answer: the poor, young blacks, the aged, Hispanics, teens — all groups who tend to vote Democratic. That’s why Republican legislators across America are waging an all-out drive to clamp restrictions on voting. They claim they’re doing it to stop “vote fraud,” but that’s a smoke screen. In reality, the new laws amount to vote fraud themselves because they’re designed to block left-leaning people from the polls. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University estimates that 5 million Americans could be prevented from voting this year because of GOP-passed state laws requiring picture IDs, halting election-day registration, curbing early and absentee balloting, etc.
Dan Hensley, an outside attorney hired to investigate Anchorage’s troubled April election delivered hisreport to the Anchorage City Assembly last week. The report highlights management issues in the municipal clerk’s office – including the clerk’s “hands off” style that led to inattention to election preparations by the deputy clerk – but Hensley found that the biggest problem contributing to the widespread ballot shortages on April 3 was the deputy clerk’s failure to anticipate voter turnout. In particular, he found that the combination of a mayoral election year and a controversial gay rights initiative should have alerted the deputy to the strong likelihood of a turnout above the levels experienced in 2010 and 2011. Moreover, he learned that other members of the staff had alerted the deputy to higher rates of absentee ballot requests – a key indicator of turnout – which she failed to take into account.
Plans by Republicans to craft their own alternative to an open primary initiative blew apart late Friday as some party members balked. Matthew Benson, press aide to Gov. Jan Brewer, said his boss believes there is a key weakness in the proposal submitted Thursday to go on the November ballot: It would allow candidates to run for office without disclosing their party affiliation. Benson said letting people hide their true party affiliation would allow candidates to “game” the system. He said that could give a leg up to Democrats in heavily Republican areas like Mesa — and vice versa in Tucson — as many voters cast their ballots based largely on a candidate’s party. So Brewer was prepared to call a special session for this week to offer an alternative to the initiative, one that kept the essence of the “open primary” but with the disclosure requirement. But Sen. Frank Antenori, R-Tucson, said that was not the deal sought by many fellow GOP lawmakers. So they refused to go along, leaving the Brewer-preferred modification without the votes.
Gov. John Lynch let become law without his signature Friday a key change in the new requirement that voters will be asked for a photo ID at the polls this fall. The change means that those casting ballots who don’t have an ID will have to sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury that they are who they claim to be and that they live in the voting district. Legislative leaders passed this second bill, HB 1354, after Lynch had vetoed an earlier voter ID bill, SB 289, because that bill would have required those without an ID to answer many more questions on a different affidavit including about their past immigration status. Two weeks ago, the Republican-led Legislature passed the original voter ID law over Lynch’s veto.
Alarmed by the shifting vote tallies that have turned Charlie Rangel’s apparent reelection into a court battle, legislative leaders say they want to fix the way city votes are counted. The operation needs to be totally computerized, rather than having a bungle-prone process that requires the city Board of Elections to count paper ballots by hand, said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan). “That should definitely be something they do — just collect all the flash drives (from the voting machines) and bring them to [BOE] headquarters,” Silver said. “I don’t think you’ll change the outcomes as a result, but you’ll certainly know the results faster.”
Two activist organizations today announced that they have sued three state agencies, saying they have failed to do their duty to offer voter registration forms to public assistance applicants. The Pittsburgh-based Black Political Empowerment Project and the Philadelphia-based group Pennsylvania Communities Organizing for Change filed the lawsuit in the Eastern District of U.S. District Court Thursday, according to a press release. The complaint names the secretaries of the Department of State, Department of Public Welfare and Department of Health as defendants, and seeks to force them to comply with the National Voter Registration Act.
The Associated Press reports Monday that new voter identification laws could block thousands of Americans from voting this fall. As part of its investigation, the AP examined voting in the 2008 general election in Indiana and Georgia, where it found more than 1,200 votes were thrown out. But the state that could be worst affected in 2012, a voters rights group tells Whispers, is the swing state of Pennsylvania. Last week, Pennsylvania officials released new data that estimated 750,000 voters who don’t have photo IDs could be impacted by new voter identification laws. Marcia F. Johnson-Blanco, co-director of the Voting Rights Project, said that number makes sense. And she notes that the groups most affected by the law will be Pennsylvania’s minorities and elderly–voters that most often for Democrats.
The Racine County Sheriff’s Office has finished its investigation into several June 5 recall election complaints. “All the reports have been turned over to the district attorney,” Racine County Sheriff’s Lt. Steven Sikora said Monday. The sheriff’s office also on Monday turned over its investigation into allegations that a Raymond town supervisor ripped up nomination papers pertaining to a separate Raymond recall, Sikora said. Sikora couldn’t say if the sheriff’s office is recommending charges for any election related complaints. “It’s now in the DA’s hands,” Sikora said. Following the June 5 recall elections, in which former state Sen. John Lehman, D-Racine, defeated state Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, multiple allegations of irregularities at the polls have come up.
Texas and the Justice Department began their federal court fight on Monday in a trial over Texas’ new voter ID law, which requires all voters to show a government-issued photo ID in order to vote. Back in March, the Justice Department blocked the law on the grounds that they felt it might discriminate against minority voters. As a result, Texas fired back with a lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder. At issue is a 2011 law passed by Texas’ GOP-dominated Legislature that requires voters to show photo identification when they head to the polls. The state argued Monday that the law represents the will of the people and does not run afoul of the Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965 to ensure minorities’ right to vote. The opening statements from both sides of the argument have set the stage for a legal battle over the federal Voting Rights Act.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) thinks that the electronic voting hides too many risks, said Mladen Chervenyakov, Chairperson of the BSP National Council, speaking at a press conference on Monday, organised to present socialists’ ideas for amendments to the Elections Code, FOCUS News Agency reporter informs. In Chervenyakov’s words, the Bulgarians are good hackers, adding that there were too high concerns that the online voting could be manipulated.
According to Wissam Sghaier, a member of the Libyan High National Elections Commission (HNEC), the final results of Libya’s General National Congress (GNC) elections in will begin to trickle in today. Given that the elections took place in 13 constituent districts across Libya, today’s results will be partial, and will not include all regions of the country.
Jubilant Libyans chose a new parliament Saturday in their first nationwide vote in decades, but violence and protests in the restive east underscored the challenges ahead as the oil-rich North African nation struggles to restore stability after last year’s ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Women ululated, while men distributed sweets and the elderly with canes or wheelchairs struggled to get to polling centers in a show of joy over the most visible step toward democracy since the eccentric ruler was killed by rebel forces in late October after months of bitter civil war. “Look at the lines. Everyone came of his and her own free will. I knew this day would come and Gadhafi would not be there forever,” said Riyadh al-Alagy, a 50-year-old civil servant in Tripoli. “He left us a nation with a distorted mind, a police state with no institutions. We want to start from zero.”
The media rewrites history every day, and in so doing, it often impedes our understanding of the present. Mexico’s presidential election of a week ago is a case in point. Press reports tell us that Felipe Calderón, the outgoing president from the PAN (National Action party), “won the 2006 election by a narrow margin”. But this is not quite true, and without knowing what actually happened in 2006, it is perhaps more difficult to understand the widespread skepticism of the Mexican people toward the results of the current election. The official results show Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) candidate Enrique Peña Nieto winning 38.2% of the vote, to 31.6% for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and 25.4% for Josefina Vázquez Mota of the PAN. It does not help that the current election has been marred by widespread reports of vote-buying. From the Washington Post: “‘It was neither a clean nor fair election,’ said Eduardo Huchim of the Civic Alliance, a Mexican watchdog group funded by the United Nations Development Program. “‘This was bribery on a vast scale,’ said Huchim, a former [Federal Electoral Institute] official. ‘It was perhaps the biggest operation of vote-buying and coercion in the country’s history.'”
National: Texas to test 1965 voting rights law in U.S. court | Reuters The Voting Rights Act – a cherished safeguard for minority voters since 1965 – has been under siege for two years and this week faces one of its toughest test on an apparent path to the U.S. Supreme Court. Twenty-five hours of argument,…
The Voting Rights Act – a cherished safeguard for minority voters since 1965 – has been under siege for two years and this week faces one of its toughest test on an apparent path to the U.S. Supreme Court. Twenty-five hours of argument, starting on Monday and spread over five days, will help the judges of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decide whether Texas can require voters to present a photo identification at the polls. Formulated at a time of racial turmoil, the Voting Rights Act passed 77-19 in the U.S. Senate and 333-85 in the House of Representatives. The votes transcended party lines to protect black voters of all political ideals. Ever since, it has served as the U.S. government’s chief check on the fairness of election rules imposed by local governments. While it passed with bipartisan support more than 45 years ago, a shift in political preferences along racial lines has turned the landmark piece of civil rights era legislation into a highly charged political issue. In the 1960s, Democrats held a monopoly of voters in the Southern states. But since then, most white Southern voters have shifted allegiances to the Republican Party, while black and Hispanic voters moved further toward the left.
Thousands of votes could be in jeopardy this November as more states with larger populations look to have tough voter ID rules in place that, opponents say, could reject more legitimate voters than fraudulent ones. As more states put in place strict voter ID rules, an AP review of temporary ballots from Indiana and Georgia, which first adopted the most stringent standards, found that more than 1,200 such votes were tossed during the 2008 general election. During sparsely attended primaries this year in Georgia, Indiana and Tennessee, the states implementing the toughest laws, hundreds more ballots were blocked. The numbers suggest legitimate votes rejected by the laws are far more numerous than are the cases of fraud that advocates of the rules say they are trying to prevent.
When Edward and Mary Weidenbener went to vote in Indiana’s primary in May, they didn’t realize that state law required them to bring government photo IDs such as a driver’s license or passport. The husband and wife, both approaching 90 years old, had to use a temporary ballot that would be verified later, even though they knew the people working the polling site that day. Unaware that Indiana law obligated them to follow up with the county election board, the Weidenbeners ultimately had their votes rejected — news to them until informed recently by an Associated Press reporter. Edward Weidenbener, a World War II veteran who had voted for Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential contest, said he was surprised by the rules and the consequences. “A lot of people don’t have a photo ID. They’ll be automatically disenfranchised,” he said.
As most legislative work around the country came to a standstill over the July 4th holiday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder made headlines last week when he broke with the Republican Party to veto a law that would have tightened Michigan’s current “voter ID” law, just a few months ahead of Election Day. The move is an indication that despite the intense anxiety about the wave of voter ID laws, which place new restrictions on voters before they can cast a ballot, the legislation is facing tough challenges even before being enacted. Opponents have found a variety of means to mute the impact of such legislation. Republicans backing the laws, which have passed in 11 states in the past two years alone, insist that the measures are meant to curb voter fraud and are commonsense requirements that shouldn’t prove to be too onerous for any legitimately eligible voter. But Democrats see a more sinister design in the measures — as part of a broader GOP effort to rig elections in its favor by suppressing constituencies that tend to vote Democratic: minorities, low-income voters, students, and even women. That impression was fueled recently when Republican Mike Turzai, majority leader of the Pennsylvania House, highlighted the partisan impact of the state’s new voting restrictions. “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done,” Turzai said to applause at a Republican State Committee meeting.
It was a tiny election in the scheme of things. Only 2,544 votes were cast on a quiet May day in 2009. But over three years later, the ballots in the 2009 mayoral race remain at issue, their photographic images locked up in a court fight which may cost taxpayers well over $200,000 if the winner takes all. What has this squabble over ballot inspection proven so far? In the short run, we proved to ourselves that instant runoff voting produced enough of a stink that we booted it. The procedure, run here by a Maryland firm, was supposed to simulate a runoff if no one won a majority. When we learned that there were multiple ways for guessing how people would vote, we decided that an actual runoff beat one run by a computer program. But that race had another by-product. It produced a court battle that seemed rooted in a clash of egos.
The much-debated voter ID amendment is a potential minefield for Minnesota’s top elections official. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s opposition to the proposed changes in election law has been well-known for years. Yet now that the Legislature has put the issue on the ballot for voters, his office must be sure that the referendum is carried out fairly and impartially. Some supporters of the amendment contend that Ritchie already has failed that test. The Minnesota Majority, a citizen’s group, says it is considering filing a complaint against the secretary with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. Amendment supporters raise legitimate questions. Ritchie and his staff are the go-to government officials for information on voting practices, and now a major elections change is on a ballot they must administer. Despite the Star Tribune Editorial Board’s opposition to the amendment, it is the board’s hope that Ritchie’s office will strive to remain as neutral as possible between now and the election.
Town and city clerks should have an easier time complying with the state’s new Voter ID law after Gov. John Lynch let Senate Bill 1354 become law Friday without his signature. The new law requires voters to present a valid photo ID to vote at the polls or be photographed and sign an affidavit saying they are who they say they are. The bill lets election officials use an existing form called a challenged voter affidavit instead of a new form to be called a qualified voter affidavit in an earlier version of the law. “The challenged form is something we’re familiar with; we’ve been using it a long time,” Nashua City Clerk Paul Bergeron said Friday. “I think it’s just a small way of helping to simply the implementation of the new process,” he said.
The near-meltdown in the vote count for the New York Democratic primary featuring scandal-tarred congressman Charlie Rangel should serve as a warning siren about what could happen in this November’s national election. It’s not just voter fraud we have to worry about. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where the fraud ends and the incompetence begins. The Rangel fiasco reminds us that the United States has, as Walter Dean Burnham, the nation’s leading political scientist, put it, “the developed world’s sloppiest election systems.” And New York City is no unsophisticated backwater. The troubles in the Rangel race began on Election Night, June 26. The voting-machine totals put down on paper had the incumbent beating his challenger, state senator Adriano Espaillat, by a comfortable 2,300 votes in a Harlem district that is now equally divided between black and Hispanic populations. But after the voting-machine totals were sent to a computer, the Rangel lead melted to 802 votes; a partially completed recount has boosted his lead to 945 votes.
The Hamilton County Board of Elections voted 4-0 last week to finally end the 2010 race for Hamilton County Juvenile Judge that pitted Democrat Tracie Hunter against Republican John Williams. In May, Hunter prevailed by 74 votes during a lawsuit in federal court over counting provisional ballots. The Republican Party had the option of appealing, but the vote means that won’t happen. “We’ve had enough,” said Hamilton County Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou. “It’s time to put this thing behind us.” Triantafilou is on the board, which is comprised of two Republicans and two Democrats.
The decades-old legal battle between states’ rights and civil rights returns to a familiar venue – a federal courtroom – on Monday as lawyers for the state of Texas try to convince a panel of judges that the U.S. Justice Department has no legal authority to block the state from immediately implementing a voter ID law. Civil rights groups contend that Texas’ 2011 law requiring voters to provide identification with a photo issued by the state or the military discriminates against minority citizens and violates the federal Voting Rights Act. They say it harkens back to state laws designed to disenfranchise minorities, such as poll taxes and literacy tests. “The effort to suppress the vote is not a new thing,” said Leon W. Russell, vice chairman of the NAACP Board of Directors. “What we’ve seen in the last two years, though, is the most egregious effort to compound and collect every single method that anybody could think of that would discourage a person to vote and put it in a piece of legislation and inflict it on our community.”
Forget the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. After the historic setback for Texas and 25 other states that had challenged the constitutionality of the federal law critics call Obamacare, on Monday the legal team of state Attorney Greg Abbott is back in Washington for another big fight. This time in a lower federal court to defend the merits of a pending Texas law that, if upheld, would require voters across the state show government-issued photo identification before casting a ballot. Here we go again. Although thanks to the weeklong trial the public might have a better idea how serious voter fraud is in Texas — opponents of the voter ID law say it isn’t — the deep racial divide which highlighted last year’s session of the Texas Legislature might be in full display again when supporters and opponents of the legislation take the stand. This is not an exaggeration. It is hard to think of another way to describe the racial tensions this measure triggered when the Republican-dominated body passed it over the strong objections of the Democratic minority.
A Dartmouth electronic voting company is looking to increase its share of the national market, and has received a funding boost from the province. Nova Scotia Business Inc. announced Friday that it has submitted a venture capital investment of $800,000 to Intelivote Systems Inc., located in Burnside Park. Dean Smith, company president and founder, said Intelivote has signed up 15 of the 16 municipalities in Nova Scotia that will be offering telephone and Internet voting in municipal elections this fall., including Digby, Yarmouth, Kentville and Truro. Barcelona-based Scytl Secure Electronic Voting is handling the election in Halifax Regional Municipality.
An official of the U.S.-based Carter Center poll monitoring delegation said the group is pleased with the organization of Libya’s first election in over four decades. Alexander Bick, field director of the Carter Center’s mission in Tripoli, said the poll observer group is encouraged by the level of participation by Libyan voters in the just ended poll. “The High National Election Commission has really done a remarkable job…Many people were wondering, ‘Would Libya be able to hold elections on this very tight timeframe, just coming out of the conflict and with really no history of elections being practiced here,’” said Bick. “I can say with confidence that we’ve been very impressed with the performance of the electoral commission, by the organizational ability that they’ve shown, by their commitment to hold this election on time. The materials were largely delivered to all the polling places and even against quite challenging odds.”