If you’ve renewed your driver’s license, you’ve probably encountered this 1993 law:
After years of deliberate neglect, the Justice Department is finally beginning to enforce the federal law requiring states to provide voter registration at welfare and food stamp offices. The effort not only promises to bring hundreds of thousands of hard-to-reach voters into the electorate, but it could also reduce the impact of advocacy organizations whose role in registering voters caused such a furor in 2008.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, better known as the motor-voter law, is well-known for making it possible to register to vote at state motor vehicle offices. However, the law also required states to allow registration at offices that administer food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, disability assistance and child health programs. States were enthusiastic about the motor-vehicle section of the law, and millions of new voters got on the rolls while getting a driver’s license. But registration at public assistance offices proved far less popular.
In part, that was because of additional paperwork at those offices, but in many states, Republican officials did not want to provide easy entry to the voting rolls for low-income people whom they considered more likely to vote Democratic. The Bush administration devoted its attention to seeking out tiny examples of voter fraud and purging people from the rolls in swing states.
The DOJ is going to enforce every section of the law, instead of just the popular sections.
There’s the standard major-media gratuitous slam on A.C.O.R.N., who “caused such a furor” in 2008. The way I remember it, Republican operatives carefully planned and executed a hit on A.C.O.R.N. beginning in 2008 and major media, including the NYTimes, went along with it like sheep, but whatever.
But the best reason to applaud the Justice Department’s new posture is that it will bring more voters into public life. When advocacy groups sued Ohio and Missouri to force their public assistance offices into complying, huge groups of new voters surged onto the rolls — more than 100,000 in Ohio, and more than 200,000 in Missouri. Nationwide enforcement by the Justice Department could add millions more. The more people who have access to the ballot, the better the country will be.
That’s a coy use of “advocacy groups” by the NYTimes. Who were these noble “advocacy groups” who sued to enforce the federal law that state Republican election officials and the Bush DOJ simply decided not to follow?
Both complaints were brought by A.C.O.R.N.
In the complaints, A.C.O.R.N submits that they were allocating scarce resources registering voters outside welfare offices. They were doing that because they could not persuade state election officials to follow the law, inside welfare offices. They finally sued, and won.
Drive By Wisdom
Liberalism: giving control of elections to those who live off the state.
Even your liberal IMF says the US is bankrupt now.
Zifnab
If this doesn’t prove Obama was conspiring with ACORN, nothing will. :-p
@Drive By Wisdom:
Fix’d!
Makewi
Every section but the bits about military absentee balloting that is.
bmcchgo
You mean I get a voter card with my gubmint cheese? Suck it Republicans!
Chyron HR
@Drive By Wisdom:
Indie Tarheel
Totally OT, but it looks like Alito didn’t want to get his hands dirty.
Omnes Omnibus
@Makewi: Link?
cleek
mm… so much pie in this thread!
Woodrowfan
Here in Virginia we had a terrible problem with voters who registered at the DMV never getting onto the voter rolls.
Kay
@Makewi:
Give me your link and I’ll take the waiver process apart for you, because you have to undertsand that to level the accusation you made.
I have to know which Fox News story you’re looking at, or we’re going to waste a lot of time.
I like election law. Happy to break it down for you. It’s mind-numbingly specific.
Woodrowfan
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s another RW lie/smear.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/admin_responds_to_cornynfoxj_christian_adams_milit.php
Makewi
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s the MOVE act. I’ll let you find out about it on your own.
maus
It’s liberal BIAS to mention ACORN in a positive light. No, really.
Kay
@Makewi:
Incidentally, the former Ohio Secretary of State didn’t claim a waiver, and he didn’t claim it wasn’t his job to administer lawful elections.
He responded to ACORN’S query on why he wasn’t complying with federal law with a letter where his deputy wrote “Ohio has historically high voter registration rates”.
Which is hysterical.
“We have ENOUGH VOTERS, damnit!”
It’s in the complaint.
demo woman
@Makewi: Your ignorance is showing. Change the channel from Fox TV and do some independent research.
Makewi
@Kay:
It’s too complicated and besides only very smart people would understand it does seem to be the sort of typical response to this sort of thing from the left.
middlewest
Joe My God has the live feed from San Francisco city hall right now. The stay ruling should be any minute now.
Bulworth
Since corporate “citizens” can now give unlimited amounts of money to candidates and parties, helping to ensure access to the political system for the poor seems the least we can do.
Kay
@maus:
I don’t know what to think about the editorial, honestly. It’s bizarre.
Is it a half-assed mea culpa? Is this an admission that they are ashamed of their role in that clown show? It’s a little late, dontcha think?
joe from Lowell
Makewi, you know you have no case, and you’re embarrassed to even state the accusations behind this bullshit smear.
Go crawl back under your rock, you liar.
Bulworth
I feel enlightened already.
beltane
@cleek: Judging by the speedy response of the wingnut brigade, I take it that this story is causing them a great deal of suffering and anguish. I giggle at their butthurt.
joe from Lowell
@Makewi:
Response to what? You want even tell us what the charges are.
This is because you are embarrassed of them. They are such bullshit, you won’t even repeat them here.
I guess between Breitbart getting slapped silly for a solid week, and the ACORN pimp-n-ho charges being utterly refuted, you’re a little skittish about jumping on the bandwagon of yet another bogus non-scandal.
I don’t blame you. You’ve got nothing. I wouldn’t want to make my self look like an idiot by repeating the nonsensical charges about military ballots, either.
Kay
@Makewi:
Oh, stop it and give me your link. I need the rule, and I’m not doing all your work for you. You leveled the accusation, and I know this latest horseshit is based on waivers of new federal law that 12 states requested.
Waivers are complicated, Makewi. I have to look all this crap up.
Comrade Kevin
@Makewi:
Shorter: I’ve been caught talking out of my ass.
MikeJ
@Makewi: She didn’t say it was too complicated, she said it was very specific. Which actually makes things easier in the law.
Just tell us which section concerns you and we can continue to laugh at you lack of reading skills.
MikeJ
@Comrade Kevin: Now now Be fair. I think you’ve misunderstood it. It was accusing Kay of saying it was too complicated, when in fact Kay said the opposite.
Makewi
My mother should’ve aborted me.
Ailuridae
@Makewi:
I can only imagine your understanding of election law is comparable to your understanding of, say, risk pooling.
I hesitate to blame Kain but his addition to the front page has coincided with a ton of conservatrollfail.
Kay
@Makewi:
Okey doke. I looked. I went to the military voter website. The Move Act was made law in 2009. It institutes a 45 day round trip (max) for military ballots.
Because 12 states had already scheduled 2010 primaries that would make that deadline impossible to meet, they applied for waivers.
Sentient Puddle
@Ailuridae: Er…Makewi and Drive By Wisdom aren’t new, as are many others. I can think of only one conservatroll that started around the time Erik was front paged.
FormerSwingVoter
Maybe someone could explain something to me. Why is it that poor people voting for their own interests is morally horrifying, but rich people voting for their own interests is noble and courageous?
Bulworth
So what’s the complaint or “controversy”? Since our conservatrolls can’t be bothered to tell us…
The Moar You Know
@Sentient Puddle: Seconded. MakeWee’s particular brand of failtrolling has been around this place for quite some time.
Drive By Wisdom does exactly that – show up, pukes out his talking points and leaves. Very efficient.
Zuzu's Petals
Granted that as an out-of-state Obama volunteer in 2008, I had a limited view of things. But it still seemed to me that Ohio had really pulled its act together since Blackwell’s debacle in 2004.
Maybe it was lawsuits, maybe it was the new (Dem) Sec of State, but the registration-to-voting process looked much, much more inclusive. The early voting also seemed to make a huge difference.
Kay
@Makewi:
This is amusing. West Virginia had an early primary and couldn’t comply with the Move Act. They did a “work around” where they sent the ballots electronically, rather than going the waiver route.
No more making fun of West Virginia. They’re modern!
FormerSwingVoter
@Bulworth:
I guess the Obama administration is trying to sabotage the bill that Obama signed into law? Or something? Because the man in the radio said so?
It’d be helpful if conservatives would actually provide evidence of their accusations, so we could tell what to debunk.
JD
thank God that even registered most of the welfair crowd still won’t show up to vote anyway so I doubt this will do much except lower the % of registered voters that actually show up and vote. You should need to prove you have a clue before they let you vote . . . having the welfaire masses voting themself money won’t do anything but speed up the end. . .
Zuzu's Petals
@Makewi:
Yeah, I’ll bet you WILL.
/snortle
Bulworth
Or that “Obama disenfranchising military voters” was the only information the man in the radio or the spokesmodels on Faux handed out.
Zuzu's Petals
@JD:
And you can only hope to God they don’t impose literacy tests.
bemused
@The Moar You Know:
At least Makewi doesn’t poop and run. Makewi sticks around to get pummeled over and over again. It’s probably not helpful to feed his/her mas-o-chism issues but it is entertaining.
Pangloss
They didn’t even have enough balls to print the name of the organization (ACORN!) that they smeared and destroyed.
ThatPirateGuy
@Makewi:
Well, now that you know you ruined her life why don’t you give her a call to apologize. It is the least you could do.
Kay
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Jennifer Brunner was wonderful as S of S. She came from a common pleas court and her husband has a private election law practice.
I got the poll worker instructions she distributed for November and they’re a thing of beauty.
Clear, easy to read and tabbed.
Sadly, for me, she wanted to be a US Senator, so ran in a primary and lost.
NonyNony
@Zuzu’s Petals:
It was Brunner.
The next time a Republican gets the Sec of State office it’ll revert back to where it was. Because that was all Brunner having a mission of being more inclusive and Brunner having a mission of being a competent government administrator. The next Republican that gets in will have the same mission that Blackwell did – be less inclusive and do everything you can to keep the office from running competently. That’s how they’ve run the state for the last couple of decades and it shows.
(Brunner had her own problems, but I’m still incredibly pissed that she decided not to run for Sec. of State as an incumbent and instead went off to run for Senator. Because we’ve got a redistricting coming up and the two most important positions in this state when that happens are the Sec. of State and the Governor. If the GOP get their hands on one of those it’ll mean even more GOP fucking over of the state for another decade.)
Socraticsilence
@Drive By Wisdom:
Wait, wait, wait- when did the IMF- an IMO which quite literally defines the Washington Consensus, and has for nearly 4 decades served as the laboratory for the Friedmanites become a liberal organization.
Erikthered
@Makewi:
Nice punt, genius.
soonergrunt
WHY IS ANYONE GIVING THE FEMALE VERSION OF BRICK OVEN BILL (makewi) ANYTHING OTHER THAN A SWIFT KICK IN THE HEAD?!? Srsly? I thought we had dispensed with any idea that this sorry fuckwit was capable of, to say nothing of interested in adult conversation? Makewi is the female lesser Breitbart, only not quite as feminine or sexually conflicted as the real one.
sent via crappy non-android moble device.
Lurking Canadian
Because rich people are
whitersmarterwhiterbetterwiser than poor people. Duh.SATSQ.
NonyNony
@Socraticsilence:
If you’re a Bircher the IMF has always been a liberal organization. Like the Council on Foreign Relations and the Tri-lateral Commission.
middlewest
The order is out! The stay on Prop 8 repeal is lifted as of August 18! People are gettin married!
Zuzu's Petals
@Kay:
Of course he/she doesn’t mention (okay, doesn’t know) that it’s actually the Department of Defense that approves the waivers, in consultation with the DOJ.
DOJ letter to Cornyn.
Mike in NC
If ACORN stood for American Conservatives Organizing Republican Negroes, they’d sing a different tune.
Pangloss
@NonyNony: And Eisenhower was a communist attempting to chemically destroy America via flouride.
Zuzu's Petals
@middlewest:
Woo hoo and Yee haw!
Origuy
With all of the constitutional revisionism that the right has been fussing about, has anyone brought up the 24th Amendment? Reinstituting the poll tax would be right up their alley, except they would want to call it something other than a tax.
trollhattan
Given the panicky, hand-waivey response to this rather mild action, I wonder how wingnuts would respond to adopting the Australian system of mandating people vote? Cripes, poor folks crawling out of the woodwork to disenfranchise The Heartland(tm)!
El Cid
This is unjust Federal repression of Confederate rights.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Yep, that appears to be the case, but that won’t stop Makewi from spouting BS. In addition, I would not think that military votes would necessarily benefit Republicans (no link, my supposition).
Midnight Marauder
@Zuzu’s Petals:
When I confronted my wingnut friend about how gross Tom Tancredo was for saying President Obama wouldn’t have been elected if we still had literacy/civics tests, his fiancee responded by sending me an article “proving” Tancredo wasn’t a racist because he got the idea from a black guy.
I kid you not.
Although the kicker comes at the very end of the article, when he reveals just how much shit he’s gotten for his racist nonsense this time:
Steaming Pile
@Makewi: Describe those bits to me. I bet you’re making shit up.
I was in the military for quite a few years. Each unit has a voting assistance officer whose job it is to make sure everybody has an opportunity to request an absentee ballot. There is a standard form you fill out that gets sent to the board of elections in your home state. Several weeks before the election or primary, you get a ballot in the mail, with specific instruction on how to fill it out. Fill it out according to the instructions, put it in the provided envelope, and hand it to your unit mail clerk (not your CO), who will take it to the base post office with the other mail. You’re done.
Now, if the military is included somehow in the motor voter law in some way that renders this arrangement somehow insufficient, I’d love to see it for myself.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, The Move Act applies to all overseas ballots, not specifically military ballots.
Overseas ballots ( non-military) traditionally benefit liberals, so the claim doesn’t make much sense.
The specificity of language required to get elections right is daunting. I went berserk here locally when the local paper printed mail-in ballot instructions that included “sign the ballot”. A signed ballot (could be) a spoiled ballot in Ohio. They meant “sign the inner envelope”. We don’t identify the voter on the ballot here in ‘Merica.
trollhattan
@Kay:
Let’s not overlook the presumption at work here: military voters all be Republican. Methinks not.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Good point with respect to all overseas ballots, thereby making Makewi’s BS make even less sense.
Anne Laurie
@FormerSwingVoter:
Because we’ve moved onward from the primitive Roman “Money has no stink” to the modern Robber Baron “Nothing smells as good, or disinfects as well, as money.”
Bobby Thomson
This is unquestionably good news, from a policy standpoint, a human rights standpoint, and a political standpoint.
Question, though. The article says that the Bush DOJ failed to enforce the welfare office provisions, and I have no trouble believing that. What happened from 1993-2001? If all we were dealing with was an eight year backlog, I wouldn’t expect the voter roll increase to be that substantial.
Anne Laurie
@Pangloss:
The Media Village, like the politicians they so avidly court, hold true to the ancient tribal belief that using the NAME of the powerful unseen forces will call you to their attention, which can only be dangerous. Just as the Celts referred to the Fairy Folk as “People of Peace” and medieval peasants called their Devil “Old Scratch”, the NYTimes prefers to mealy-mouth ACORN as some vague disembodied ‘advocacy group’… and the various astroturfed Tea Party (Republican) groups as ‘disaffected voters’.
Joel
@Drive By Wisdom: All that gibberish that you spit, you best had kill it…
Your style is like dying in my sleep, I don’t feel it.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Zuzu’s Petals: I know. Imagine if everyone who spelled welfare as “welfair” or “welfaire” was disallowed from voting. I’m getting a huge “voting is a privilege, not a right vibe from the right” which is just disgusting. I’d rather have the poor vote for a social safety net than the rich vote to continue to blatantly line their pockets while decimating the middle class.
Makewi
AMBIGUOUS! UNCLEAR! VERY, VERY DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND.
kay
@Makewi:
The states submitted an application for a waiver because their primary date made it impossible to comply with the new 45 day turnaround, so they’re relying on (i).
Which is what I wrote after a 30 second search, Makewi.
Now, check the primary dates for any race in the 12 states, along with the date the 2009 law went into effect, and see if they’re telling the truth. 45 day turnaround. If they ballots went out, they can’t comply.
kay
@Makewi:
You gave me the rule, so thanks. But now you need the facts in each state that applied for a waiver, if you’re going to determine if the waiver process was justified, and make the accusation.
You also have to know if the DOJ approved the waiver, or whether the application was submitted and denied.
I’m perfectly sincere about this. Part of the problem is we have 50 state laws regarding elections, and then a federal overlay, and that’s just the rules. It’s date-specific. It’s fact-specific. It doesn’t lend itself to 30 seconds on FOX News, if you genuinely want to know what happened.
I read both ACORN complaints before I posted this, and ACORN prevailed. It isn’t a bare allegation. They won.
Makewi
I haven’t said anything about ACORN. Not a thing.
How long of a search would it take you to find out about the DOJ’s statements during the NASS 2010 winter meeting?
I suppose you don’t find it interesting at all that the DOJ didn’t bother to update their website for close to 300 days to account for the new rules.
Midnight Marauder
@Makewi:
So basically, you have no point any more.
Nice work, Kay.