Suppressing The Vote

The Nation: GOP Tries To Disenfranchise Voters

(The Nation)  This column was written by Katrina Vanden Heuvel.

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With Election Day around the corner, and concerns about another voting debacle of Florida 2000-proportions running high (especially given problems at primaries this year in Maryland, Ohio, Illinois and several other states), Republicans in Congress are on the job and doing everything they can to further disenfranchise voters.

Rather than taking the necessary steps to strengthen, expand and improve the democratic process, the GOP has launched a new effort to create modern-day Jim Crow exclusionary practices through new voter ID requirements.

The House recently passed a bill along party lines requiring voters to present a photo ID beginning in 2008. Starting in 2010, voters would need to pay for a government-issued proof of citizenship — a virtual poll tax. This shameful legislation was passed just months after the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act when President Bush declared "the right of ordinary men and women to determine their own political future."

"If the (House) Bill passed the Senate and became law, the electorate would likely become more middle-aged, whiter and richer — and, its sponsors are anticipating, more Republican," the New York Times wrote in a recent editorial

Demos, a national public policy organization, reports that the legislation would disproportionately impact people of color, individuals with disabilities, rural voters, people living on reservations, the homeless, and low-income people — all of whom studies show are less likely to carry a photo ID and more often have to change photo ID information.

Senate Democrats have asked that Majority Leader Bill Frist not bring the bill to the floor. In a letter to Frist, Senators Reid, Kennedy, Dodd and Obama wrote: "The burdensome and costly requirements of obtaining (citizenship) documents not only could prevent many eligible voters from participating, but … Worst of all, this bill recalls a dark era in our nation when individuals were required to pay a poll tax to cast their ballot and has been termed a 21st century poll tax." Frist's next move remains to be seen.

States, too, are getting into the voter suppression act. Georgia, Missouri and Indiana have passed similar ID requirements. The laws were overturned by the courts in Georgia and Missouri while in Indiana, the law was upheld by district court and is now under appeal. The right-wing pins hopes on appealing all the way to the Supreme Court where decisions by Scalia and the Supremes seem to fall in their "1 Man, 1 Vote — sort of" favor.

"This is the most sinister scheme I've ever seen," said former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, "and it's going on nationwide."

"Voter suppression doesn't happen with intimidation on Election Day," said Michael Waldman, executive director of The Brennan Center for Justice, "but rather through silent and sometimes secret government actions in the weeks leading up to an election."

If the Republicans are truly concerned about "the integrity of our voting process," as Rep. John Boehner claims, they should take a look at flawed voting machines that, according to the Washington Post, "scientists have shown they could manipulate … to report a vote total that differed from the actual total cast by voters."

Or they could address the fact that the Diebold machines tested in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, rendered a paper trail "nearly 10 percent of (which was) destroyed, blank, illegible, or otherwise compromised." Or they could explain why a Princeton professor was able to hack into a voting machine as an experiment. Or they could reform the administering of elections, so that partisan secretaries of state with lofty political ambitions such as Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell are no longer running the show. Or they could try to stop the purges of valid voters from the voter rolls …

The blueprint for what to do is out there. Robert Pastor, director of a commission on electoral reform organized by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, told the Washington Post, "The Carter-Baker commission identified 87 steps that need to be undertaken. Regrettably, almost none of them are being done right now. I would start by establishing statewide, nonpartisan election administration."

And Americans can start by voting Democrat this November, and then pressing a new Congress to give us common sense reforms that create a truly democratic, transparent and legitimate electoral system.

Just hope your vote is counted — correctly.

[jumkey]

Fartknocker2 equating the DNC with Stalin, Hitler and Bin Laden in a single non-sequitur paragraph pretty much sums up right-wing hostility to voting rights.

I spent some before the 2004 election registering primarily Latino voter in Yuma AZ for the local Democratic Party. We were vilified in the local press, accused or committing voting fraud by the Republicans and physically threatened by local conservatives - tactics the Right last used in the 60's to disenfranchise blacks. And with a Republican majority in Congress it is clear we can expect them to continue subvert the voting process at every opportunity.

[exusmcsgt]

jumkey-

And this from a party who places it's leader before 80 bazillion American flags every time a camera points his way while he has the audacity to lecture the world on democracy......

[drgoodwin12]

A lot of people here are missing the points addressed by the article.Voter ID cards may sound logical but what about the expense to us taxpayers?Second the computer voting machines have been proven to be faulty and offer no paper trail for the voter (like a receipt)Although the article is biased against the republican party,that does not mean that there are credible points here.There are a great many of our citizens who move frequently and cannot afford an additional burden of paying for an ID card.In the late seventies early eighties I moved so many times my W-2 got lost and I had to request new ones.Such were the economic times,today economy is dangerously close to the one of the early eighties where we had double digit inflation a unemployment rate of 12% in some areas it was 25%.If you look at the core rate of inflation and the drop in overall wages you begin to see the point.The current unemployment numbers do not reflect those who have given up or have fallen off the unemployment rolls so lets lowball and add 1.5% to the national average that places unemployment around 8%.The housing market balloon has busted.Shall I go on?

[hsmagst]

Given how much time has to pass before any such law would go into effect and given the fact the bill contains language that requires, if what I read is correct, the states to provide ID cards free of charge to those unable to pay for them, I really have to wonder what all the fuss is about. Most European countries require an identity card, which is used for most social services, Australia reguires one and you are fined if you don't vote but we plod along with no way to account for a persons legal right to vote or even their right to be in the US.....I say bring on the ID and I'll proudly carry it as an American citizen.

[meupset]

I AM 46 YEARS OF AGE AND HAVE CONSISTENTLY VOTED REPUBLICAN, HOWEVER, THE REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS CHANGED FOR THE WORST I'M AFRAID...CAN'T WAIT TILL NOV. THEN WE WILL SHOW OUR CONCERN!! TIMRR