I went to a field hearing on voting rights yesterday in Cleveland. The issue in Ohio right now is early voting. Here’s the background. Republicans passed a law with additional restrictions and barriers to voting in 2011. Ohio already has a voter ID law, these are brand new (and quite creative) barriers. Democrats, unions, and civil rights groups collected enough signatures to put that law up to a “citizen veto” which has the effect of putting the law on hold in Ohio. Success! But wait: Republicans now are attempting to repeal their own law, making the ballet issue we worked so hard on null and void, and replace it with another law restricting voter access to the polls. So that’s where we are.
This is immediately prior to hearing, the two gentlemen seated at the center of this photo are the GOP witnesses and I was sitting where a juror would sit when I took the picture:
Senators Durbin and Brown held the hearing, and I listened to five witnesses, three on the access side and two on the restrictions side. Both Democrats and Republicans are given an opportunity to provide written testimony and witnesses. Republicans sent only two witnesses for their side.
The AA ministers and local civil rights leaders were seated in the jury box tiered above and beside the counsel tables where the witnesses sat. That pleased me to no end, because advocates for restricting voter access are so rarely on defense and they’re never, ever faced with the actual people these laws harm. I’d wager it’s a lot easier to promote arbitrary and ridiculous voting restrictions from the plush confines and safe distance of the Fox News studio or the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal than it is selling that nonsense while local community leaders in Cleveland are sitting 12 feet away, looking at you. Explain to that 70 year old minister up there why you believe the members of his church are committing felony voter fraud on the Sunday before an election without a shred of proof. You go ahead. I’ll watch.
The Honorable Marcia L. Fudge
United States Representative
State of OhioCarrie L. Davis
Executive Director
League of Women Voters of Ohio/Education Fund
Columbus, OHGregory T. Moore
Campaign Director
Fair Elections Ohio
Cleveland, OHDaniel Tokaji
Professor of Law
The Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law
Columbus, OH
And here’s their two:
David Arrendondo
Director of International Student Services
Lorain County Community CollegeDale Fellows
Republican State Central Committeeman
Lake County Republican Party, Executive Committee Member
Mr. Arrendondo went first on their side, and I smiled when he started with “voting is a privilege” because that’s crazy making to voting rights advocates. Voting is a right, not a privilege, and invoking the now-standard misleading and inaccurate conservative “privilege” frame takes those of us on the access side to full adrenaline red alert. The law professor sat straight up in his chair when he heard “privilege” probably just dying to rebut on that. I sympathize. Anyway. My feeling on that first GOP witness was that he’s unreachable. No facts on voting will ever get through. He made a passionate case for Sunday voting (which is what they do in Mexico, he said) until Durbin reminded him that he was there to oppose Sunday voting in the US, because that’s the issue: early voting on Sunday. He’s FOR Sunday voting in Mexico and AGAINST Sunday voting in the US. Okay. Next witness.
Dale Fellows, the second Republican, was different. He started out with what I thought was a solid attempt to defend changing the law on early voting, but as the hearing went on, and he responded to the questions of Durbin and Brown he seemed less and less interested in defending the broader national Republican position on voting rights. He said there were parts of the new law that he didn’t agree with, and he looked toward the jury box when he stated his own personal commitment to voting rights. I’m wondering if his approach was different for two reasons: first, he was once on a county board of elections, so has a real working knowledge of voting process on the ground, and, second, it is harder to accuse people of fraud when they are sitting in front of you.
On the first, the practical working knowledge part, county boards of election members are NOT usually rabid partisans, in my experience. The joke is that the the best result for a county board of elections member is LANDSLIDE! (for either side) because that means there’s no contentious dispute and recount. But I also wonder if he seemed more sympathetic to our position because sitting in a room in Cleveland faced with ordinary local people who are on the other side really is different than promoting the voter fraud stuff seated around a pundit table on television or writing some editorial page screed about “voter fraud”. The people seated in the jury box are real people, they’re respected local leaders in Cleveland, and they are dead serious about what they believe is an attempt by Republicans to disenfranchise their communities. It’s personal.
Villago Delenda Est
Driving a car is a privilege.
Voting is a right.
Arrendondo must be Italian for “fucktard”.
Cacti
Voting is a privilege.
Carrying a concealed handgun is an inviolable right.
The above attitude is why we can’t have nice things.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Voting is a right for Republicans, and a privilege for Democrats.
See? It all makes sense now!
Villago Delenda Est
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Well, yeah, I guess it does, in a “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” sort of way.
sharl
Excellent post, Kay!
Do you know if there will be video of this? I’m thinking a skilled video editor could make some nice online spots that would help rally those whose franchise is being threatened. Some good candidate campaign videos could come out of it too.
Kay
@sharl:
I don’t know, but our witnesses were great. They stuck to “we won’t go backward on voting rights”. The Republican position is impossible to defend honorably, IMO, once it’s taken apart by someone who knows what they’re talking about.
rikyrah
I can’t tell you enough how much I appreciate these on the ground reports that you continue to give us, and how informative I find them.
I always try and share them, kay…to spread the word.
kerFuFFler
This flagrant attempt to get around the will of the people to restrict their voting RIGHTS brings to my mind a word I haven’t thought of in a long time: turpitude, “an act of baseness, vileness or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes to his fellowmen, or to society in general, contrary to the accepted and customary rule of right and duty between man and man.” Really, it’s such a great word because it sounds as vile as its meaning.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
Not a problem. Rethuglicans are honorless curs.
Kay
@kerFuFFler:
You can’t see them in the picture, but “labor leaders” ( I don’t know more specifics than that) were seated on the right. It’s an interesting alliance, and it came to be (partly) because Republicans put the voting restrictions on in time for the ballot referendum on Issue Two (the union busting law in Ohio).
So we can thank the Koch brothers for this effective, working partnership. Kumbaya :)
Linda Featheringill
Excellent report, Kay!
Besides, Ohio early voting is verrrrry nice and I would had to lose it.
Kay
@Linda Featheringill:
I love it, just as a voter. Start using the term “banking your vote” with people. They seem to get that immediately.
BGinCHI
Great post. Thanks Kay.
Napoleon
Kay,
Did you spell Lorain that way or did you copy that from something?
sharl
@sharl: Maybe something like this:
Just have someone with actual media skill come up with something, and it just might help, come Election Day.
Hill Dweller
The fact is Republicans are radicals. That should be repeated often.
The efforts in Ohio is part of the largest voter suppression effort since Jim Crow.
Also too, the wingers have shut down the confirmation process in the Senate. Judicial vacancies have actually increased by 60% since Obama took office. By comparison, judicial vacancies decreased by 60% at this point in both Clinton’s and Bush’s term. They’ve blocked any attempt to address the economy. They’ve blocked any attempt to fill the vacancies on the Fed’s board of governors.
The Republicans are nihilists. It’s party over country for those clowns.
Napoleon
Kay, do you have any idea of how they came to use David Arrendondo? They must have went out of their way to try and come up with a Hispanic.
Linda Featheringill
@Napoleon:
He’s right, Kay. One R, one N, and no E.
Redshift
It’s kind of interesting that they showed up to defend it. Sometimes the strategy is to ignore it and hope the press will report it as a “partisan” event.
OT: I glanced at the WaPo headlines this morning, and there’s a front-page news story about how the “anti-incumbent” vote in Europe may mean trouble here for Obama, and also because it may cause “trouble” for the world economy.
They really are grasping at straws. To take that view, you’d have to ignore that:
– it was an anti-austerity vote
– Republicans are the party of austerity here
– stopping austerity will be *good* for Europe’s and the world economy, and
– there are a lot of Republican incumbents, too.
(The fact that it took one day to go from a major foreign news story to a front-page “how does this affect the US election” story doesn’t even surprise me any more.)
Napoleon
@Linda Featheringill:
They massacred the spelling of it. I was just curious if she got it from a senate website or something.
Brian R.
Maybe he meant “voting is for the privileged.”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
__
I guess they haven’t given much thought to what happens to a government whose entire basis of moral legitimacy is derived from consent of the governed, if you keep shrinking the circle of consent to include fewer and fewer people.
Villago Delenda Est
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
You had me here.
Kay
@Napoleon:
I c and p’ed it from the hearing website. I didn’t even look at it, honestly.
Kay
@Napoleon:
The other witness said they contacted him while he was on vacation three days prior and asked him to submit written testimony and attend, which is why his written testimony was 1. late, and 2. on the wrong topic.
So, no I don’t know where they got that witness, but it doesn’t look like they put a whole lot of effort into it.
Ming
thanks so much for this post, kay. so grateful.
dj spellchecka
@kay
was there any discussion of the photo id issue?
Kay
@dj spellchecka:
No, because they haven’t changed the photo ID requirements in Ohio. The early voting issue is stronger for Democrats, too, because it’s extremely difficult for conservatives to defend.
People like early voting, and tying early voting to “increased fraud” is really getting uncomfortably specific on who, exactly, they are accusing of fraud.
Religious leaders in Ohio do something called “souls to the polls” on the Sunday prior to the election, so a Republican opposing that is saying “certain church people leave church and go commit a felony”.
It’s good ground for us. It’s bullet proof.
gene108
Listening to a local call-in radio show on WHYY (Philadelphia NPR) about PA’s voter ID laws.
One lady called in and said she voted in April, but was told by a poll worker that because of the new law she couldn’t use her driver’s license as ID to vote in November, because she moved and the PA DMV doesn’t reissue a new license just because of an address change.
One of the guests said the poll worker’s wrong, because the PA law just requires proof of ID and not address to be presented.
I wonder at what point in time will white middle and upper class voters get impacted by these voter ID laws because of something minor like moving to a different precinct and if that’d be enough to trigger a backlash against these laws.
Ben Cisco
@Hill Dweller: From The Party Of Country “First” | My Ready Room
[…] They are all more than willing to destroy an entire country AND it’s future in order to… be placed in charge of it?! […]
Patricia Kayden
Stop putting Repubs in power in your states and then you won’t have to worry about voter ID laws. It’s obvious that the Repubs have figured out that to win they need to block the vote of minorities, college students, etc. I don’t see how you can stop them once they are in power from doing what they want. Good luck fighting them.
WaterGirl
This was a thing of beauty:
I actually laughed out loud, re-read it, and laughed again. This is the best they could do?
El Cid
There’s not really a contradiction.
Voting is both a right and a privilege.
Anyone who is Constitutionally qualified to vote has the right to vote, which necessarily implies the relevant government actions to make sure that such a person may vote.
And yet it is a privilege in that it must be voluntarily exercised by the voter, both in terms of voting via whatever mechanism is made available and in terms of voting (or refusing to vote) for or against whatever candidate or party or resolution or initiative he or she so chooses.
“Privilege” doesn’t mean the sneering, ‘I’ll give you candy if you’re good and oh yeah it’s my choice to decide what you get’ thing conservatives want it to mean.
julie
Kay, this statement is confusing: “Ohio already has a voter ID law.”
actually, 2 other forms of ID (e.g. rent, utility receipts) will be accepted in place of a state-issued photo ID in Ohio.
JoyfulA
@gene108: In PA, a driver who moves notifies PennDOT, which issues a new address card to carry until the next photo session is due.
Gretchen
@Patricia Kayden:
A voter in Indiana today said it looks like somebody is pouring big money into the smaller races – professional ads and so forth. If the Koch brothers can afford to buy all the elections, it’s more complicated than “just don’t vote them in”