A really great piece on how we got to where we are on voting rights:
Pat McCrory, the Republican presiding over the dismantling of the state’s relatively reasoned approach to race and the law, declared Friday that he was eager to sign the state’s restrictive new voting law, the most suppressive of its era, even though he had not read a key part of it. “I don’t know enough, I’m sorry,” the governor told a reporter who asked about a provision in the pending measure that will preclude pre-registration for those under 18 (because, after all, if there is anything this nation needs to do when it comes to encouraging civic participation it is to make it harder for eager young people to vote).
In his confessed ignorance of the details of a discriminatory voting law in a Southern state,
McCrory is no outlier. His incurious approach to such vital legislation is yet another form of the willful ignorance that has animated much of the national debate over voting rights over the past half decade or so. There has been the legal and historical ignorance of the purposes of the 15th Amendment and their continuing application to the modern-day ruses designed to suppress minority votes. There has been widespread practical ignorance of the differences (constitutional and otherwise) between being required to show photo identification to purchase allergy medicine and being required to show photo identification to exercise a constitutionally protected right to vote. And of course there is the granddaddy of them all when it comes to modern-day voter suppression — the factually ignorant and quite persistent myth that “voter fraud” in anything more than a negligible problem in any of the states where lawmakers have invoked such “fraud” to make it measurably harder for poor and elderly and ill and young citizens to vote.
How can a state justify such drastic voting restrictions based upon so little evidence of voter fraud? Because the United States Supreme Court said so, in 2008, in a case styled Crawford v. Marion County. Today, Crawford seems one part ignorant, one part naĂŻve: yes, the justices said by a vote of 6-3, let’s unleash partisan state lawmakers to restrict voting access without requiring them to justify those restrictions on any discernible evidence. What could possibly go wrong? Perhaps Justice Stevens is mortified about what state officials, in North Carolina and elsewhere, have done with the “good faith” leeway he gave them in Crawford. He sure ought to be.
There is yet one more form of ignorance on voting rights that’s worth mentioning hereâa hybrid of all the rest — and it’s brought to us by Ross Douthat, the columnist for The New York Times, who told his readers last week that the voting data behind North Carolina’s suppression measures support the Supreme Court’s dubious rationale in Shelby County because the new state law “has an impact on white Republicans as well as black Democrats … mostly affects the already-nonvoting … only matters in whisker-tight elections, and … probably [can] be mitigated through an effective voter turnout operation.”
In this iteration of the constitutional universe, unacknowledged until now in the text of the 15th Amendment or Voting Rights Act, a justification without any justification, the state’s ability to deprive a citizen of her most fundamental right depends upon how close an election is likely to be, how motivated the voter is to cast a ballot, how broadly the voting restrictions cut across racial lines, and how capable her party is in overcoming the partisan restrictions upon her ability to vote.
Iâm one of the people who believe the voting restrictions will backfire, both politically and as a practical matter, particularly in North Carolina where yesterdayâs Moral Monday protest was the largest yet. Still, itâs pretty amazing to see how quickly the basic idea of a right to vote has been diminished, where we now talk openly about âmaking upâ for any wrongfully disenfranchised voters with a better turnout effort. From a right to a matter of campaign tactics, in about a decade.
cleek
when you elect Republicans, you will be shit upon.
it’s really pretty simple.
though i’m sure this will seem fuzzy and complicated and boring and … zzzz…. come next November, when people will find it just too inconvenient to get off their asses and vote these douchbags out.
PeakVT
Perhaps Justice Stevens is mortified about what state officials, in North Carolina and elsewhere, have done with the âgood faithâ leeway he gave them in Crawford. He sure ought to be.
I can’t see why anyone would credit Republicans with “good faith” in 2008. Did he sleep through the entire Bush administration?
feebog
I don’t think ignorance plays any large part in the decision making in North Carolina, Texas and other states that have restricted voting rights. These assholes know exactly what they are doing. They know they are on the wrong end of a demographic shift that spells doom for their party. Instead of trying to change their positions to appeal to a broader range of voters, it’s much easier to simply disenfranchise those voters. It may work in the short term. Long term, they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
Kay
@PeakVT:
The opinion is embarrassing. They sound like people who go from that court to their homes, and never encounter anyone outside that narrow sphere. I was ashamed when I read it. Just complete cluelessness. I think any municipal court judge in the country would have a more realistic idea about who has ID, and the barriers to getting it.
gene108
One of the least discussed legacies of the 2000 Presidential election and the voter purges, etc. that happened in Florida that helped Bush, Jr. get into the White House.
The lack of public push back pretty much showed that voter disenfranchisement can be an effective campaign tactic and it has only expanded in the past 13 years.
mclaren
Citizens have no rights unless they show themselves willing to take to the streets and form gigantic mobs that force the people in power to cower behind barricades made of busses and manned by national guardsmen.
Get a million people on the streets in Washington D.C. protesting this shit, and it will stop. Until then, expect more repression. Bullies don’t stop until they get smacked hard in the face.
dedc79
The Douthat column referenced above was one of the most insidiously dishonest that he’s written so far. And yes, I know, that’s a very high bar.
West of the Cascades
In 2010, a lot of people inclined to vote for the Democratic Party complained that they hadn’t received the magic ponies President Obama promised, and sat out the mid-term elections. Others actively encouraged this “protest,” despite how critical the decennial elections are because they determine the make-up of state legislatures draw federal and state legislative districts. Similar “protests” in 2000 allowed George W. Bush to eventually appoint Justice Roberts, the author of the execrable Shelby County decision.
It’s sadly ironic that the failure to turn out to exercise the right to vote three years ago has allowed Republicans to put Democrats in a position where we have to increase turnout to compensate for disenfranchisement of voters. But given that there are nearly 18 months between Shelby County and the 2014 mid-terms, there seems to be time to work even under restrictive laws to (1) get potential voters who need IDs those IDs and (2) encourage them to then exercise their right to vote out the thugs who tried to cut off their right to vote.
Does anyone know of any concrete efforts planned in states like North Carolina to help voters who don’t have the proper ID to get those before the next election? Things like helping them collect the paperwork required (I assume there is some system for getting around the absence of a birth certificate for people born at home), contribute to paying costs, driving people to the appropriate office, etc.?
I sure hope that some or all of these Voter ID laws get struck down in court, but it would seem that a concerted effort to help people get IDs if they are not could only help increase the number of voters turning out to vote Democratic in 2014.
Linda Featheringill
@mclaren:
Sometimes making a noise will help. In Germany in the 1930s, public criticism cause the ruling Nazis to change several policies. I realize they learned to hide their shit better but even they were sensitive to disapproval.
Of course, it depends on who is making the noise. Nothing you and I say on this blog is likely to change anything.
West of the Cascades
@Kay: It always struck me as odd that Justice Stevens wrote that opinion. Could it be that Justice Stevens wrote Crawford to try to keep the door open to as-applied challenges to voter ID laws … whereas there might have been five votes to write an even more onerous opinion that might have made as-applied challenges even harder?
Violet
Has anyone seen any national coverage of the Moral Monday protests in NC? The Wisconsin protests were covered on the national news. I haven’t seen the NC protests covered and, not being a NC resident, I probably wouldn’t even know about them if I depended on TV for my news
Chris
@feebog:
Pretty much. I’d add, once again, that the belief that voting should be restricted to “the right people” is very widespread and accepted among conservatives.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@mclaren: Horseshit. Public protests have never changed anything in this country, merely reaffirmed what the dumbass citizenry wanted in the first place.
Civil rights? Country was already going there. Vietnam? Country was already going there.
Every other protest movement? Their participants and causes are long lost to history.
Litlebritdifrnt
Commenters everywhere have been saying “well what is so wrong about getting an ID, you need one to cash a check” etc., etc., including at my local paper. What these morons don’t seem to comprehend is that in order to get an ID you need a birth certificate, and at our local Register of Deeds in order to get a copy of your birth certificate you need a FUCKING PICTURE ID! It is the classic catch 22 which many low income people simply do not know how to get around. In addition to that you have to a) somehow get yourself down town to the ROD because you probably don’t have a car, b) come up with the funds to purchase a copy of your birth certificate c) somehow get yourself to the DMV (see a) d) come up with the funds to pay for your picture ID. These are four hurdles that no one should have to jump in order to exercise their basic right to vote.
Secondly as I have stated before, decreasing the early voting days is not going to decrease the possibility of voter fraud, it is going to INCREASE the possibility of voter fraud because it will put a massive amount of pressure on poll workers on election day.
McCrory make Caribou Barbie look competent by comparison.
gene108
@West of the Cascades:
You are painting with a broad brush.
In NC, there was/is a protest vote against the good old boy corruption in the state Democratic Party.
I think 2010 was the perfect storm of a bad economy leading to a “throw the bums out” mindset, along with historically lower turn out in mid-terms versus record turn out in 2008, and the post-CU money targeting state and local elections.
I think like the 2000 voter disenfranchisement in Florida proved to be a winning political tactic that has morphed into various restrictions on voting, the drive to register and get people engaged will turn into a long-term political strategy that will have benefits down the road.
IowaOldLady
They’re very good at making it sound like they’re just asking for common sense. If you’re not paying attention, having to show some form of ID sounds easy. It’s only when you look at the restrictions on acceptable ID and couple that with cutting things like early voting and Sunday voting, that the problems become obvious.
Not that disenfranchisement is ever “common sense,” but you can see how the uninvolved public accepts the argument until it hits home to them or someone they know.
gene108
@IowaOldLady:
I think a lot of people go along with it, because it will help the conservative candidates they support win. They know full and well that this is going to hurt “those” people more than it does anyone they know.
aimai
One of the things no one is talking about–and its the scariest thing of all–is that along with voter disenfranchisement they are passing laws that effectively bar third party groups like the league of women voters or volunteers from helping register people to vote. People keep talking about turnout but turnout doesn’t happen magically. If outsiders are too afraid of being sued, or are prevented from coming in and registering people to vote, then states with low voter turnout and voter suppression are really able to isolate their voting population from outside help.
ET
People like that are incurious because they don’t feel there is a problem – except for all “those” people who aren’t “good” citizens.
raven
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Right, the anti-vietnam protests started in in earnest in 1967. Already going there huh? Bullshit.
catclub
@West of the Cascades: “a lot of people inclined to vote for the Democratic Party complained that they hadnât received the magic ponies President Obama promised, and sat out the mid-term elections.”
I thought the evidence was that reliable democrats were still reliable democrats, but undecided,
meh, voters, sat out.
The Obama administration had not realized that campaign mode has to run every single year.
They seem to be better, saying that their organization will be mobilized for 2014 and 2016.
They clearly seemed to shut down in 2009. I remember hearing about them discouraging other outside organizing campaigns [this is how unfounded rumors start, but whatever].
raven
RIP Eileen Brennan
Kay
@West of the Cascades:
Good question. I don’t know. What I’ve read is that it was premature, that they should have waited until they could show harm. I don’t really believe that anymore, though, after the VRA. I honestly feel there’s a cluelessness about this -an inability to imagine not having ID. It’s not even “ID” all by itself. There’s three parts to voting; citizenship, identity and address. They just wouldn’t grapple with the details, the stuff that actually happens, like address mismatches and name changes and license suspensions, and how poor people (and young people) move so often.
catclub
@aimai: They tried to kill outside voter registration drives in Florida, and it seems to have spurred backlash. Here’s hoping it does again.
Belafon
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Actually, you’re wrong on that one. The protests in the South changed a number of things, and were what brought national television cameras to the south. Without the protests, we would not have ended up with the CRA or the VRA.
Short Bus Bully
VERY optimistic to think that this will backfire. People are not aware that voting is a RIGHT based on citizenship. Until that ENTITLEMENT (yeah, I said it) is restored in the common mindset, it’s an uphill fight.
Also, lack of awareness that not having ID is fairly common as well. “What’s wrong with having to show your driver’s license? I do it every time I use my credit card!”
Americans are not aware of life at the margins of society, and that YES, they still get a vote too.
Zifnab25
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I don’t know what you mean by “already going there”. Protests are more than just angry people in the streets. They are mock GOTV drives. They are fine raising events. And they are massive networking meeting.
A protest demonstrates a popular opinion in the most visible means possible. It galvanizes otherwise idle individuals into action.
You get protests when the path a culture is going down becomes obstructed. When we are cruising down the highway towards progress at a comfortable clip, no one mother’s to leave the house except to celebrate.
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: Democratic turnout in 2010 was normal for a midterm election. Republican turnout was unusually high; it was the Tea Party’s year.
The problem wasn’t progressives having a tantrum, it was that too many Democrats only vote in presidential elections.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Those aren’t mutually exclusive problems.
Belafon
For anyone who argues that we don’t have a national voter ID, I caught on the news yesterday that a number of DMVs could not issues licenses because their computers weren’t working. Turns out that the federal server that collects this information – so that someone in New York recognizes your driver’s license as valid – was down.
IowaOldLady
Aren’t old people (ie, reliable R voters) likely to be affected by the ID requirement? They may not have current driver licenses or passports or whatever, and digging out birth certificates and marriage certificates is a chore they haven’t done in a while.
Kay
@Zifnab25:
They are registering voters at Moral Mondays. The name itself is meaningful to voting rights people, because one of the things they took away was “souls to the polls” which is (early) voting after church on Sunday.
gelfling545
@Litlebritdifrnt: After my daughter had been injured by a car & moved in with me for a while her license expired & the renewal notice went to her old address & thence who knows where & she wasn’t able to drive anyway so it just got forgotten. When she finally went to get a new license the DMV would not let her use her expired license as proof of ID. She had to get a birth certificate. At City Hall, she had to show ID & they allowed her to use her expired license for that so effectively, she DID use the expired license to get her new license. It just was a lot more trouble.
Ted & Hellen
Kay, I think you make this all too complicated by focusing on the details.
How we got here is that the evil, vicious, hateful, retrograde Republican Right NEVER stops plotting and acting to further its goals.
At the same time, a predominantly oblivious, lazy, passive Democratic Party rarely plots or acts effectively to oppose the Republicans or further the interests of its constituency.
So here we are.
gene108
@Kay:
Saw a Facebook post that someone I know went to a protest for the Zimmerman verdict and they were registering voters there. I think the connection that protesting is not enough has sunk in. Getting people active in electing people to support your agenda also matters.
IowaOldLady
Starting next year, our drivers license renewal requirements get crazy. I have a passport, which makes it easier, but by itself neither that nor my expired license is enough ID. I need my passport, my current license, my social security card (which says “not to be used for identification ” right on it), and my voter registration (as proof of residency, though it’s possible my license would meet that requirement too). This is to renew my license.
Just Some Fuckhead
@gene108: I thought everyone was automatically registered to vote upon receipt of their Obamacare card.
aimai
@IowaOldLady: No, because the ID laws don’t apply to people who habitually vote absentee because they are elderly. If you vote absentee you don’t have to show any ID.
IowaOldLady
@aimai: Oh true, I forgot that. Coincidence? I think not.
Belafon
@Belafon: Remove the word “voter”. I meant to just say “national ID”.
gene108
@gelfling545:
A lot of the DMV ID requirements were set up as a means to make sure (a) would be terrorists could not get a driver’s license and (b) illegals could not get a driver’s license and (c) if an immigrant was here legally, but then their visa lapsed they could not get by with a driver’s license that was valid beyond the visa date*.
These ID requirements just happen to dovetail nicely with the push to make voting harder.
*In the old days a valid DL and SS card could be used for an I-9 verification by an employer. Despite not having a valid visa, you could still work because your DL was valid and your SS card does not have an expiry date. Using your old license to renew means someone could hang around the U.S. for a long time despite not having a valid visa.
gogol's wife
@raven:
Too bad. She was sweet and funny.
Just Some Fuckhead
@gogol’s wife:
Fuck that shit. I will never forgive her for the way she treated Private Benjamin.
Botsplainer
Meh. These are just black people, old people, poor people, and hispanic people problems and thus unimportant.
What REALLY matters is whether some white guys (both progressive and conservative), are able to communicate with each other over the internet without the government being able to access their plans to either a) monkeywrench environmentally destructive building developments (the progressives) or b) to blow up government buildings in order to usher in the white nationalist christian paradise that everybody has been craving (conservatives).
catclub
@Just Some Fuckhead: That! is why Ted Cruz is willing to shut the government down to defund it.
flukebucket
I can remember when registering to vote was considered a wonderful and almost sacred thing. Now we have a political party trying the very best to keep folks from doing it. I will never understand why anybody making less than half a million dollars a year would vote for a god damn Republican. And the only reason a person making over half a million dollars a year would vote for one of the bastards is because one is as greedy and lacking in compassion as the other.
daverave
In all seriousness, everything I’ve read lately makes the point that there are a lot more poor whites, who more often than not seem to vote against their best interests; i.e., vote Republican, than there are poor minorities, which are more likely to vote Democratic. Ergo, if poor whites, particularly seniors, will have an equally difficult time with registration, why is this not a massive shoot-yerself-in-da-foot exercise for the Republican party? Is it because of gerrymandering? Somebody help me out here…
catclub
@daverave: Poor white folks in Mississippi are somewhat more likely to vote GOP than poor white people in Connecticut, but they are MUCH more likely to vote democratic than richer white people in Mississippi. It is not really that hard. In this case killing the poor vote is not a mixed message.
Botsplainer
@daverave:
Those poor whites will still be allowed to vote without interference from poll watchers. Those gerrymandered precincts have effects beyond demographic representation – they reflect imbalances regarding voting itself.
boatboy_srq
@gene108: @West of the Cascades: This is my argument to the Firebaggers. They seem to think that the sausage-making that is politics can’t be accomplished unless we start with organic free-range grass-fed hormone-free antibiotics-free AGCC-neutral USDA Prime beef, and they conveniently forget that the other side is pushing a mash of GM-manipulated mystery beast and sawdust.
When your choices are between a) the at least marginally competent and b) the b@tsh#t crazy, there’s really not a choice; wishing for the magically unique one-horned sparklepony won’t make one spontaneously appear and run in the election, and “sitting out” the election as a “protest” equates to a vote for the other guys.
@gene108: FL 2000 wasn’t disenfranchisement by voter-registration-obstruction, it was disenfranchisement by halting the recount. If you want to blame 2000 on anything to do with FL, look no further than Diebold (who made the voting equipment that caused so much trouble) and SCOTUS (for insisting that the recount stop before it was finished so they could decide on FL’s behalf). Dems may not be as motivated in off-elections, and Dem machinery may be greasy, but the GOTea has made voter mobilisation into an art form and the GOTea machinery is a lot messier (and the mess is a lot easier to see if you only know where to look). WotC may be using a broad brush, but it sure suits the canvas.
sparrow
@Chris: Like all authoritarians, they don’t really believe in democracy. Their way is “right” and we have the “freedom” to agree or get run over.
Kay
@daverave:
Part of it is rural versus urban. Rural people drive. They have a license. People in urban areas don’t need a car, so they don’t drive. Republicans never limit absentee voting, although it one were to set out to commit election fraud, that’s where you’d succeed. GOP voters are older, and they’re more likely to vote absentee. Hence, no voter fraud in absentee balloting!
“Motor voter” is often held up as an example of bipartisan voting rights legislation. But it was horse-trading. Republicans got voter registration at the DMV and Democrats got voter registration at social services agencies.
Ever since, Republicans at the state level have worked really hard to forget to register people at social services agencies :)
mclaren
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The five day work week.
The eight hour workday.
Minimum wage.
Voting rights.
Vietnam.
SOPA.
Get back to me when you have a clue.
Lee
I keep telling my wingnut friends on FB and elsewhere that the excuses they are using to restrict voting rights are going to be used against them with gun rights.
That usually shuts them up pretty quick.
Steeplejack
@gene108:
A lot of the post-9/11 ID requirements are ridiculous. When I got my driver’s license in Virginia two years ago, I could not use my current, valid Virginia ID card as a “trump card” to meet the ID requirements, which I foolishly thought I could do, because I had to go through all the same hoops to get that (non-driving) ID card in the first place. Unbelievable.
I could use the Virginia ID card as one piece of ID, but I still had to produce (again) a birth certificate and a few other documents. In Virginia, as in many other states, you have to (a) prove who you are, (b) prove that you are a U.S. citizen (or acceptable alien), (c) prove that you are a resident of the state and (d) confirm your current legal address. Various different documents accepted for each of those.
pseudonymous in nc
A late point to make: McCrony is a ceremonial governor right now. The GOP has veto-proof majorities in both chambers, and there’s no pocket veto, so unsigned bills become law. Oh, and Art Pope runs the executive branch.
He doesn’t give a shit.
aussie sheila
I return to one of my favourite memes-the US working class is f*cked because generally they either don’t, or can’t-vote. Your ruling class simply does not fear the ordinary working stiff and her/his vengeance.
Why not make ‘the right to cast an honestly counted ballot’ the liberal/progressive cause du jour for the next decade? I mean if you can do ‘gay marriage’ in less than a decade, how’s ’bout something as fundamental as the right to f*cking vote ferrcrissake.
I’m talking mass dems, civil disobedience the lot. I simply can’t believe how easily ordinary people and their most basic rights, get so easily shafted in the US.
One other thing-the next time some front for the US State Department casts negative judgement on some country full of brown people re their democratic deficit, I hope said country, indeeed the whole world, laughs uproariously, whistling duelling banjoes.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@pseudonymous in nc: Hence his cookie delivery to the protesters.
PeakVT
@aussie sheila: It’s not strictly a problem of the “working class” not voting, voluntary or otherwise. The “working class” is split along ethnic lines in this country, and tribal affiliation tends to trump class interests, both here and in other countries.
aussie sheila
@PeakVT:
There is no other advanced industrial country (OECD for a proxy) where the right to access a polling booth, or voting facility, in order to cast a properly counted ballot for electing public officials is so randomly and unequally distributed.
This is not because the US working class is split along ‘ethnic lines’-whatever that means. There are OECD counties with higher rate of ethnic differentiation than the US-where I live for one. It is more that the US progressive/liberal tradition just seems to accept as part of its mental furniture, that except where voting rights are restricted along blatantly racial lines, which the VRA was supposed to remedy (and did till it was gutted), rights to access polling booths and cast properly counted ballots, on days that allow working people to do so within about 15-45 minutes, are well, boring. Or something.
The ‘splits’ where they exist, along ethnic lines, would be easier to address, along with a raft of other policy issues beneficial to working people,(thus reducing potential for conflict) if they were allowed, to, you know, F*CKING VOTE.
It is simply scandalous and an indictment of a tradition which otherwise is often admirable.
aussie sheila
@PeakVT:
There is no other advanced industrial country (OECD for a proxy) where the right to access a polling booth, or voting facility, in order to cast a properly counted ballot for electing public officials is so randomly and unequally distributed.
This is not because the US working class is split along ‘ethnic lines’-whatever that means. There are OECD counties with higher rate of ethnic differentiation than the US-where I live for one. It is more that the US progressive/liberal tradition just seems to accept as part of its mental furniture, that except where voting rights are restricted along blatantly racial lines, which the VRA was supposed to remedy (and did till it was gutted), rights to access polling booths and cast properly counted ballots, on days that allow working people to do so within about 15-45 minutes, are well, boring. Or something.
The ‘splits’ where they exist, along ethnic lines, would be easier to address, along with a raft of other policy issues beneficial to working people,(thus reducing potential for conflict) if they were allowed, to, you know, F*CKING VOTE.
It is simply scandalous and an indictment of a tradition which otherwise is often admirable.
boatboy_srq
@Steeplejack: HEAR that. VA didn’t like my REAL-ID-verified FL DL either.
boatboy_srq
@pseudonymous in nc: All the more reason for him to keep a campaign promise: that execrable bill would still become law, but he could win a point or two from saying he vetoed it. Lose/lose for progressives, but something he could do to seem less the spineless, corporate-whore worm.
priscianusjr
“From a right to a matter of campaign tactics, in about a decade. ”
I take your point, but if enough voters turn out it’ll be back to a right. I mean, because of who they’ll vote for.