Voters saved by a court. Again.
South Carolina’s law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls was blocked by federal judges in Washington for the Nov. 6 election, the fourth time this year a court has rejected similar legislation.
A special panel of three federal judges in Washington today ruled that South Carolina’s measure requiring that federal or state-issued photo ID be presented at polling stations put an unreasonable burden on minority voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The judges said the law may be used in elections held after this year.
“Given the short time left before the 2012 elections, and given the numerous steps necessary to properly implement the law — particularly the new “reasonable impediment” provision — and ensure that the law would not have discriminatory retrogressive effects on African-American voters in 2012, we do not grant pre-clearance for the 2012 elections,” U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh said in the ruling.
South Carolina is the fourth state, following Texas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, to have a voter-ID law passed by a Republican-dominated legislature stopped in court.
South Carolina isn’t gong to decide the presidential election, but it’s my view that it’s important to advocate on behalf of those voters who would be disenfranchised everywhere and always.
I think there’s a bigger story behind the voter suppression laws, and it’s the really stunning incompetence and indifference to the ordinary good-government role of administering elections. Republicans in these states did nothing to address the problems that arose as a result of their new laws. Nothing. They passed the laws and then immediately abandoned the whole project. It’s frightening that the legislative branch failed to do their job and then the executive branch failed to do their job and the resulting mess was dumped on courts.
Maude
Also Montana has had the money limits held up. I read a bit of it and again the court set things to rights.
lamh35
hey Kay,
I don’t remembered if you’ve posted yet, but I’d love to hear what the “boots on the ground” are saying now that some time as past since last week. I figured volunteers are least likely to panic since they see the fruits of their efforts as they work.
Did things change with the tides or were the seas relatively calm compared to the blogosphere and punditry.
The Republic of Stupidity
Cue up pre-recorded tape of red-faced, chubby, balding, oddly sexless middle-aged white males shrieking about activist judges, ACORN, and birth certificates, all whilst ignoring the basic fact that the kind of ‘voter fraud’ they’re so worried about is almost non-existent…
Excuse me… I forgot to add ‘Chicago-style politics’ to that list of items they’ll be soiling themselves over…
Elizabelle
It’s frightening to have to leave voting protection to the courts, because they can be corrupted too.
What gets me is the big “meh” from the general public. And most silence from the the broadcast media.
While primetime TV is all amateur singing and dance contests.
Pitiful.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: Most people just trust that elections will be run smoothly and other public service will simply be provided. It never enters their minds that work by skilled people is absolutely necessary and that it all costs money.
karl
But if a legislature had addressed the difficulties imposed by such a law wouldn’t that have defeated its purpose? Doing nothing after passage seems the perfectly logical thing to do.
cervantes
I see Sully’s been re-demoted from the blog roll to the mockery roll. He had what, three weeks in the good graces?
Steve
Judge Brett Kavanaugh is super-smart and I respect him, but he’s a total Bushie and a Federalist Society product. If they can’t get one of these laws past a judge like that, they’re not likely to have much luck elsewhere.
japa21
For the right, protecting the “integrity” of the election is all focused on non-existent voter fraud at the polls. Try to talk about the actual voting processing and counting the votes and paper trails, and all of a sudden silence.
Just Some Fuckhead
You coulda ended the sentence right there.
Chris
South Carolina may not, but PA and WI sure as hell matter.
Kay
@lamh35:
I’ll just tell you, because I have to work this afternoon. I went out Saturday to both field offices to see what they had to say (because at this point I know and like these people).
I was the most worried, which is unusual. They were fine.
Since then I haven’t been back because this was Early Vote week and I’m the voter protection coordinator, so I was busy with that. I saw a lawyer I know well yesterday at the courthouse, though, she’s a brand new voter protection volunteer, she’s not even “a Democrat” -it’s her first volunteer gig -and she was horrified at the “liberal media” freakout. In any event, she’s a very good lawyer, and she just adopted a newborn (she’s a tad.. busy) so we’re really lucky to have her.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s possible that those assumptions, that things will run smoothly and that public service will continue to be provided, are what enables so many to still vote Republican. It just never enters their minds that a political party would do its damnedest to ensure that things don’t run at all and that public services are an evil to be scourged.
Your comment opened my eyes. Thank you.
meander
“I think there’s a bigger story behind the voter suppression laws, and it’s the really stunning incompetence and indifference to the ordinary good-government role of administering elections.”
That’s a feature, not a bug for the GOP. Screw up the government intentionally, and then complain that government is the problem, thereby leading to more distrust of the government and more votes for the GOP.
amk
Excellent news, Kay.
Things are breaking our way. Time to ignore the corrupt cable clowns and pundtwits and GOTV.
bondirotta
The 7 day Gallup Likely Voters tracking survey shows today a 48-48 tie. This means that Obama was up on Tuesday by 3-4 points. By Saturday, the tracking survey will have dropped last week’s Thursday and Friday – which were Romney’s two best days.
This abortion debacle is coming at the best possible time; it should clip the debate narrative and shift media to the dissembler narrative.
By Sunday, Sullivan will be off the fainting coach again.
slag
I don’t know much about the psychology around how these things work, but did they do this just to try to scare people away from the polls, and so, mission accomplished? Is that how it goes? Or does it seem that they did this thinking that voters would just sit down and take it, and so no fight was prepared for?
piratedan
they just wanna stop “those” people from voting, i.e. “those” people referring to anyone who votes Democratic, is a minority, is a woman, isn’t heterosexual….
don’t care about the Constitution, we just can’t be out of power tyvm and we’ll use what power we have to ensure that we stay in charge.
tamied
I had a conversation with a young Pennsylvania voter who said she was going to get an id to vote but a lot of her friends weren’t bothering to do that. I told her the law had been struck down for this election and to tell all her friends. Saw her again today and she looked it up on Google and verified I was right.
This is the president of her college’s Young Democrats group and she didn’t know.
Emma
Republicans in these states did nothing to address the problems that arose as a result of their new laws. Nothing. They passed the laws and then immediately abandoned the whole project. It’s frightening that the legislative branch failed to do their job and then the executive branch failed to do their job and the resulting mess was dumped on courts.
You don’t get it. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature. That’s exactly what they intended to do. They knew most of the laws wouldn’t pass review but they wanted to feed red meat to the base.
catclub
@slag: see tamied @ 19
The first story has greater impact than then revision.
Joey Maloney
@Kay: So where do things stand on that last early voting weekend if your SoS continues to try to run out the clock with his appeal to SCOTUS. How badly can he fuck things up at this point by just refusing to do his job?
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus:
So true.
You get what you pay for. Or stand up for.
slag
@catclub: Yeah. Not surprised. Frustrating as all hell. I’d like to think this kind of thing would incite the rebellious spirit in the folks it’s aimed at, and therefore, actually serve as a motivating tool for democracy enthusiasts. But then, I’d also like to think Santa was real.
danielx
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
(Edit – and here I thought I was the only one for whom that line leaped to mind.)
You sound offended by this, and you shouldn’t. It is no surprise that laws would be passed limiting access to the vote, and even less surprising that Republicans would put no effort into making it easier for folks to comply with those laws by obtaining new ID and so forth. Why should they? The intent of the laws was to limit access to the vote for minorities and the poor. Lacking intervention by the courts, said laws would do precisely what they were intended to do.
Another Halocene Human
Relevant: Hans von Spakovsky’s Backpfeifengesicht.
kay
@Joey Maloney:
I am on a phone so can’t explain it adequately. S o S just issued a call for input from bds of elections. It’s complicated.
Both the Sherrod Brown campaign and OFA are really engaged. They’ll get the best outcome possible.
scav
I’m pretty sure Kay has a strong idea what’s going on, I just assume she’s nicer, more polite, or more professional & diplomatic than many of us feel the need to be.
Ruckus
@bondirotta:
By Sunday, Sullivan will be off the fainting coach again.
I call no way. Fucker lives on that couch.
Unless you really meant coach in which case it would be: Fucker lives in that coach.
Kay
@Joey Maloney:
It really is more complicated than that. He has some discretion regarding “directives” (an administrative order). He can ask the bds of elections if they can put the decision in place in a timely manner, for example, which is what he’s doing. Bds of elections vote on issues like that.
It goes law, directive, then individual county compliance with directive.
The short answer is there’s the broad decision, and then it comes down to wrangling, back and forth, where he can go to the limits of the administrative power he has, and voting rights advocates can (essentially) “lobby” (make a lot of noise) and if he goes too far outside of his administrative power, then it would shift to the court again.
Kay
@danielx:
You know that. I know that. But that isn’t who we’re trying to persuade. The fact that they refuse to deal with the problems the laws create is (another) indication of bad faith. If conservatives really wanted to IMPROVE US elections systems, they would put the laws in and then tweak them to work in the real world. They don’t. They only respond to obvious problems when they’re sued, and then they only change the law to meet the minimum to get it past a federal judge.
Judges shouldn’t be writing the nuts and bolts of election law. Judges shouldn’t be telling the state of Pennsylvania that the radical changes they made to their election system needs specific fixes. That’s the job of a legislature. There was nothing preventing amendments or changes to PA’s photo ID law. They knew it wasn’t working, and they did nothing, from March to when they were sued. What if advocates hadn’t sued? These cases are getting too close for comfort. A court is a last resort. They never should have got this far.
Hob
Y’all, when Kay writes this–
–telling her that she doesn’t get it, or shouldn’t be surprised or outraged, or whatever, because “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature” is a pretty pointless and condescending response. OF COURSE the Republicans did not have good intentions; I don’t believe Kay ever said they did. But it’s still literally true that they did not do their job– their actual literal job as defined by the office they ran for, not the one that the GOP prefers them to do– and that’s worth calling them out for.
The Crafty Trilobite
Actually, the Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania opined that the executive there was making a good faith effort, it just probably wasn’t going to work well enough because the executive had been so “ambitious” (judge-speak for “sneaky”) in its timing. That seems to be more or less accurate – you can find things the PA SOS coulda done better, but it put some real effort into making IDs available in the short time the legislature gave it. That’s basically what this South Carolina ruling said too – not that the executive wasn’t trying, but that the legislature left no time to implement before the election. And BTW, that’s where most of this is going to end up – we WILL have Voter ID laws, pointless though they are, we’ll just have time to get IDs before the next election. Another GOTV expense.
Although it will be amusing to see what happens the first time some big Republican donor finds out that his/her golf club card won’t work at the polling booth. Of course, he/she’ll no doubt find some way to blame it on Obama.
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (formerly Horrendo Slapp, Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I think that was the whole point. They don’t care about “good government” or helping legitimate voters get their votes counted. The whole thing worked the way they hoped it would, aside from one thing: they never wanted the courts to do anything to fix anything.
RaflW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sadly Katrina didn’t really teach the general public squat about how shitty Republicans are at actually doing the work of governing.
When I saw that Indiana’s SOS was appealing right to the Supreme Court, I found my self still sort of shocked that a person who’s sworn job it is to support elections could be so damn eager to make it harder for people to vote. What on gods dehyrating earth is so terrible about early voting on the last weekend before an election?
What possible, credible justification can a person who’s job it is to facilitate elections put forward that says early voting on the Saturday and Sunday before the big ol’ Tuesday damages the system, introduces risk, creates problems so big that its worth reducing voter turnout to do it? *In some select counties* no less?
It’s just gob-smacking. And yet it goes on, and only a small number of us notice.
Even the # of comments on Kays (excellent) posts kinda belies what a yawn it is to be stripping voting from poors, blacks, browns, olds and students. Really?!
Fuck, man. I’m pissed.
RaflW
@The Crafty Trilobite:
And this is why I know that libertarians are full of shit. Maybe one or two have fretted about photo ID. But by and large, I don’t believe any of them have put up a fuss AT ALL.
Not many years ago, Libertarians were up in arms that we’d all soon by carrying national identity cards. Voter ID may just be the slippery slope. It’s just absurd what blinders libertarians have. Or bullshit lack of convictions.
JoyfulA
A prominent South Carolina GOP bundler and host of fund-raisers for decades has said he’s voting for Obama this time, to my delight. I’ve been looking for SC polls, and the most current ones I could find were a year old. Anybody know where recent polls might be found? Or has the state just been written off as hopelessly R?
Running that blue coastal stripe through Virginia and North Carolina to turn another red state blue sure would be nice, but all I have to go on is one anecdote.