A Wisconsin judge agreed on Thursday to hear a challenge to the state’s new voter ID law, passed last year by lawmakers concerned about ballot-box fraud but which critics say suppresses voting by the elderly and poor. The decision clears the way for arguments to be heard on March 9 in the suit, which attempts to overturn the law on the grounds it violates the state constitution.
The thousands who flocked to the South Carolina State House Monday to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy received a message that the fight for civil rights and voting equality is not relegated to history books. NAACP leaders said that the state’s new voter I.D. law, which requires all voters to show certain government-issued photo I.D., goes against King’s principles of equality because the state’s registered minority voters are 20 percent more likely to be without the right I.D. and thus unable to cast ballots. NAACP president Benjamin Jealous said the law, and ones like it in other states, are the “greatest attack on voting rights since segregation.”
Gov. Mark Dayton rejected a Republican-backed bill last spring that would have required Minnesotans to show photo identification to vote. In his veto letter, Dayton noted that the measure would have forced local governments to spend money and that it did not have broad bipartisan support. But voter ID supporters insist the measure is needed to prevent election fraud. That’s why they’ve introduced legislation that would bypass Dayton and allow voters to make the change through a constitutional amendment. Governors cannot veto constitutional amendments.
The first in a series of measures aimed at tightening Virginia’s election laws began moving toward passage in the House of Delegates today. Del. Mark Cole’s bill, , provides that voters who are unable to present an approved form of identification at the polls would have to vote a provisional ballot – a ballot that would not be counted unless and until the voter’s identity is verified. The measure was approved 4-2 along party lines by a House subcommittee over the opposition of several interest groups that called it an attempt to suppress voter turnout, especially among minority and low-income Virginians.
A Wisconsin judge will hear a legal challenge this week to the state’s new controversial voter photo identification law. Lawyers for The League of Women Voters, which says the measure violates the state constitution by disenfranchising eligible voters, present oral arguments against the law in a Dane County Circuit Court on Thursday.
South Carolina’s controversial voter ID law will be in the spotlight today as U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder addresses a crowd of marchers honoring the life and work of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the State House.
The state, since 2000, has commemorated the life of the civil rights leader with an NAACP-led march to the State House. This year’s King Day at the Dome, beginning with an 8:30 a.m. prayer service at Zion Baptist Church, also will feature NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous. South Carolina’s passage, and the U.S. Justice Department’s subsequent rejection of, a controversial voter ID law last year has sparked a rancorous political fight and put the state on a collision course with Washington over state and federal powers.The courts may ultimately resolve the standoff.
In 1965, with the help and oversight of Martin Luther King, Jr., congress passed, and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed, the Voting Rights Act. It was put into place to stop states from imposing “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure…to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” And now there’s a series of bills all over the country—including Pennsylvania—that would require ID at voting booths, which many say hurts the legacy of the VRA and King. They say it unfairly targets poor and minority voters who, more often than others, don’t have photo ID. There have been almost no instances of voter fraud in Pennsylvania.
Lawmakers in Nashville are in a rush to fix the Voter ID law before the March primary election. According to WSMV in Nashville, there is apparently a glitch in the bill. Last season state lawmakers passed one of the toughest Voter ID laws in the country. Tennessee allows those who are 60 and up to have driver’s licenses without a photo, however you have to be 65 to get an absentee ballot without stringent rules. Now, people from Tennessee citizens action have started a petition to repeal the law.
Attorney General Eric Holder plans to deliver a speech on voting rights on Monday at a Martin Luther King holiday rally in South Carolina, a state where just weeks ago his Justice Department blocked a new voter identification law. Holder plans to attend a rally sponsored by the civil rights group National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at the state capitol building in Columbia, S.C., according to a statement from the NAACP.
“Ninety-nine percent of people will need a photo ID to vote this year,” elections specialist David Buerger told Dodge County Democratic Party members Wednesday night. That likely was not news to the roughly 20 active Democrats assembled at the Dodge County Administration Building to hear Buerger, who works for the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, discuss fine points of the state’s new, voter photo identification law. What may have been news, however, was Buerger’s briefing on the 1 percent of voters who will not need a picture ID to cast a ballot. For every rule, it seems, there is an exception or two.
Nebraska’s proposed voter ID bill, LB 239, has been removed from the legislature’s agenda, according to Associated Press reports Thursday evening.
The bill would have required voters to present a valid, current photo ID, or qualify for one of several exceptions, before receiving a ballot on election day. It had been introduced last session by State Sen. Charlie Janssen of Fremont and carried over to the session that began this month. The bill was one of dozens around the country that have recently been introduced or enacted, mostly by Republican controlled state legislatures.
Two weeks after Texas’ voter ID law was scheduled to go into effect, the measure is back in the U.S. Department of Justice’s hands. The Texas secretary of state’s office on Thursday submitted its latest batch of data in hopes of satisfying the federal government’s request for proof that the law, SB 14 by state Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, will not disenfranchise minority or lower-income voters. The law, passed during the 82nd Texas Legislature, would require voters to furnish a state-issued ID before casting a ballot.
Of all the domestic policy differences between the Bush and Obama administrations, just about the sharpest and most telling may be their opposite responses to the drive by Republican-dominated states to require voters to present photo identification at the polls. The Bush administration thought photo ID was a dandy idea. The Obama administration recognizes it for what it is: a cynical effort to insure that fewer young people and members of minority groups (read, likely Democratic voters) are able to cast a ballot.
Since 1965, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Acthas been a key tool used by civil rights and election reform advocates to protect the franchise in the South. By requiring states and counties to “pre-clear” major election changes with the Department of Justice, the measure has allowed groups to challenge a variety of state laws that threatened to disproportionately hurt African-American and other historically disadvantaged voters. But Section 5 has come under increasing scrutiny from conservative lawmakers and the Supreme Court itself. Three years ago, in alawsuit brought by a Texas sewer district, the court came close to striking down Section 5 on the grounds that it represented an unconstitutional over-reach by Congress over states’ rights.
If voting legislation in 2011 centered largely on hindering access to the ballot box, 2012 will hopefully be defined as the year that voting rights began fighting back. Last year, a rash of anti-voting legislation popped up in states around the country, from Florida to Texas to Wisconsin. New laws banning anyone without photo IDs from voting (commonly known as “voter ID”) grabbed the headlines, in part because of their potential to disenfranchise over 3 million citizens in the 2012 election, but lesser-known legislation emerged as well.
State senators in Harrisburg will soon consider House Bill 934, which would require citizens to provide one of a very short list of government-issued photo IDs in order to vote. It sounds simple, but it is not. If it became law, this bill would create one of the most extreme restrictions on voting in the country — and would threaten to needlessly disenfranchise a massive number of Pennsylvania citizens. Many Americans don’t have driver’s licenses or the other photo IDs that would meet H.B. 934’s narrow standards. Survey research indicates that 11 percent of voting-age citizens don’t have the limited forms of government-issued photo ID that would be accepted under H.B. 934 — even though these taxpayers and voters could prove their identity with other types of documents.
A study finds that more than 75 percent of non-white voters in Mississippi voted against a measure to require photo identification before someone may vote. Initiative 27, a state constitutional amendment, passed in November with approval from 62 percent of nearly 870,000 voters. But there was a wide split between black and white voters, according to an analysis released by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, a Washington, D.C., group.
State Sen. Charlie Janssen of Fremont, Neb., has found himself yet again in the middle of a passionate legislative battle. Last year, it was over an immigration bill, one of the most controversial of that legislative session. This time around, political conflict is brewing over his voter ID bill, a requirement that Nebraska voters present official identification, most often a photo ID such as a driver’s license, before they mark the ballot.
The New Hampshire Attorney General has launched a comprehensive review of state voting procedures, after people obtained ballots of dead voters during the presidential primary on Tuesday. No fraudulent votes were actually cast. But in nine instances, clerks readily handed over ballots after a would-be voter implied he was the city resident, recently deceased, still listed on the voter checklist, according to a video posted on the Internet. After receiving the ballot, the person departed without voting.
The Obama administration’s recent decision to block a new voter ID law in South Carolina is fueling one of the biggest partisan debates of the day: Do stronger state voter ID laws really curtail the minority franchise? States have been on a tear of late to enact tighter controls on voting, including in South Carolina. Last year, 34 approved or considered tougher voting regulations, in a bid to ensure that voters who show up at the polls on Election Day are who they say they are.
As lawmakers prepare to a debate a measure to require voters to show some sort of identification before casting ballots, Fremont Sen. Charlie Janssen says he has amended the bill to make it less onerous to opponents. “This is much ado about nothing,” Janssen said before dozens of opponents gathered Wednesday in the Rotunda to assail the measure. And they begged to differ with his “much ado” characterization.
Three of South Carolina’s top political leaders announced Tuesday their plans to file a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice’s decision to block the state’s controversial voter ID law. Attorney General Alan Wilson said he will file a lawsuit within the next two weeks against the Justice Department in Washington D.C. district court. It’s necessary, Wilson said, to protect the integrity of South Carolina elections.
Advocates for seniors are holding education seminars for senior citizens to help educate them about Wisconsin’s new voter ID law, but some are concerned that effort may not be enough. “Every opportunity we get to get the word out, we’re doing that,” said Sue Edman of the Milwaukee Election Commission. Edman heads a panel for seniors trying to educate them about Wisconsin’s new voter ID law.
S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson on Tuesday said the state will file suit against the U.S. Department of Justice, which last month rejected the state’s new Voter ID law requiring all voters to show a valid state-approved photo ID in order to cast a ballot. Wilson said his office planned to file suit within the next 10 days in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, as Patch first reported last week.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Tuesday that federal officials are waging war with South Carolina over laws the people want, like new voter ID requirements that she and other leaders pledged to defend from challenges by the U.S. Justice Department. … The bill passed last year with broad support from Republicans, who said it would be a check on voting fraud. But Democrats said it would suppress voter turnout by making it tougher on people who lacked identification, including the poor, elderly and blacks.
Before we move on to the nightmare of democracy and secret, concealed “trust-me” vote-counting which will comprise the bulk of the “First-in-the-Nation” primary in New Hampshire, I’d like to offer a few final thoughts, for now, and for the record, on last Tuesday’s “First-in-the-Nation” GOP Caucuses of Iowa. What happened there ought to remain firmly in all of our memories as we move into what is likely to be a nightmare of democracy and secret, concealed “trust-me” vote-counting across almost the entirety of the nation in this important Presidential Election year.
I had planned to post this article (or one like it) on Friday, when I was suddenly side-tracked by the report from Ron Paul supporter Edward True that he had noticed a mis-reported tally on the Iowa GOP’s caucus results website. It was a small mis-report to be sure, but in a race that had previously been “called” for Mitt Romney by just 8 votes out of some 122,000 cast at 1,774 different caucus sites, the 20 vote error noticed by True and called to the attention of the media (and since confirmed by the Appanoose County GOP Chair) could prove to be decisive in the final certified total promised a week or so from now.
As the fight continues over a slew of new voting laws passed by Republicans across the country in 2011 — including requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls, a measure that could hurt Democrats in the 2012 presidential election — the media and political scrum over the issue alone has caused major confusion in some key primary states. In New Hampshire, various voting-rights groups are especially concerned that misinformation mightaffect voters in Tuesday’s primary races.
Debates aside over whether identification requirements to vote are ploys to disenfranchise the poor or to make voter fraud easier, there’s little chance that Colorado will institute a photo ID requirement until it cleans up its own system of issuing them, according to one local state lawmaker.
Rep. Keith Swerdfeger, R-Pueblo West, said that the complicated process of getting a state identification card has been a hurdle in passing legislation to require IDs. “I’m a believer in a state ID to vote but how do we streamline the process?” he asked.
He’s talked a few times with Jon Manley, assistant director of the Pueblo Department of Revenue office, about the problems and gotten an earful from constituents, too. The controversy over photo IDs has surfaced in a number of states.
The U.S. Department of Justice recently intervened to block a South Carolina law opponents charged was aimed at discouraging the poor and minorities to vote. In Wisconsin, charges flew from opponents of Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators facing a recent recall election that motor vehicle offices were either closed in Democratic areas or employees were told not to inform people that IDs could be obtained for free.
The argument goes that the poor, especially the elderly, will find it harder to obtain IDs if they have no way of getting to state offices or have to do a lot of paperwork.
Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said she hopes to complete her proposed streamlining of the state’s election system this spring, in time for this year’s primary and general elections. Johnson said the 12 bills in her “Secure and Fair Elections,” or SAFE Initiative will clean up obsolete voter lists, allow more voters to use absentee ballots, tighten up registration procedures and close loopholes in the state’s photo ID requirement for voters.
As the state’s chief elections official, Johnson also is hoping to win passage of new campaign finance laws that require advance registration to prevent political “stealth efforts” such as the fake “Tea Party” created in 2010.
She also is calling for improved training procedures for voter registration groups and tighter post-election audit procedures. Six of the bills have already been reported out of state Senate committees while another six will be heard in state House committees in coming weeks, Johnson said during a visit to Grand Rapids Thursday.
New Hampshire has had a proud tradition of hosting the first-in-the-nation Presidential Primary Election but this year’s election may be remembered more for voter confusion and a not-so-subtle attempt to deny the vote to targeted groups of New Hampshire voters.
There’s been a full scale war against voters going on in New Hampshire for the past year. America Votes and the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire have taken the lead in fighting back against every attempt to pass voter suppression legislation. So far, the current leadership of the New Hampshire Legislature has been unsuccessful when it comes to actually passing legislation but their obsessive efforts to suppress the vote are taking a toll on New Hampshire’s voters.
Bills that would have barred college students from the voting booth, ended same-day voter registration in New Hampshire and required already registered voters to show a photo ID to get a ballot on Election Day have all been defeated.