independentsforkerry.org

A year after the 2008 presidential election, calls for new voter identification laws were heard in many states. Led by a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, proponents claim that such a law is needed because there is “rampant voter fraud.”

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a heavily conservative nonprofit organization funded by billionaires such as the Scaife family (Allegheny Foundation and the Scaife Family Foundation), the Coors family (Castle Rock Foundation), Charles Koch (Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation), the Bradley family (The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation) and the Olin family (John M. Olin Foundation) and corporations such as Altria, AT&T, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Koch Industries, Kraft, PhRMA, Wal-Mart, Peabody Energy, and State Farm. Such corporations represent just a fraction of ALEC’s approximately three hundred corporate partners. ALEC writes legislative bills that Republican governors and legislators introduce as their own in state legislatures.

ALEC’s public safety and elections task force drafted the Voter ID Act in the summer of 2009, which would require “proof of identity” to vote. Those without a valid photo ID must fill out a provisional ballot that is only counted if the voter produces an ID at the county elections office. It also suggests that ID cards be made available free of charge to eligible voters without a valid driver’s license.

PBS: Millions of voting age citizens don’t have a U.S. Passport or photo ID issued by a department of motor vehicles office in any of the 50 states. The hurdles to vote by first obtaining a photo ID issued by state’s department of motor vehicles can be daunting and costly for those who do not otherwise need or have a state DMV issued photo ID.

The new voter photo ID laws being pushed by ALEC in all 50 states arguably represent the most serious efforts to exclude Americans from voting since the Jim Crow wave of anti-black voter suppression laws that Southern states enforced from the 1870s until the 1960s.

The Daily Planet – Minneapolis, MN

ALEC is a Republican-favored organization that is promoting “its right-wing agenda” in all 50 states, says Color of Change.org, a national activist group that has launched a national campaign calling for corporations and others to stop financially supporting the organization. The MSR tried contacting ALEC’s Washington offices for comment, but no one answered the phone and there was not an answering system available to leave messages.

Since 2009, 33 states have introduced some form of photo ID bill, and 14 states have passed laws that now require voters to present a federal- or state-issued photo ID with an expiration date at the polls. Opponents, who include most Democrats as well as local and nationally based organizations that advocate for Blacks and other people of color, say the legislation is “a thinly veiled attempt to depress [voter] turnout.”

“There have been no problems [of voter fraud in Minnesota],” says State Representative Bobby Joe Champion (DFL-Minneapolis), who told the MSR last week that there are more pressing issues that need addressing.

“Public policy and legislation should be about solving a problem or a challenge,” Champion says. The current same-day voter registration “encourages people to come out and vote. If a person doesn’t have something [to verify their address], their neighbor can vouch for them,” says the lawmaker.

State Representative Rena Moran (DFL-St. Paul) says, “We have a system that is working and very inclusive, and also represents that voting is a right. We have a group here trying to take that right [and] make it a privilege.”

The Republican-majority Minnesota Legislature did pass a photo ID bill last year, but it was vetoed by Gov. Mark Dayton. An attempt is now underway in this year’s session to introduce a bill that would amend the state constitution to require all Minnesotans to show either a driver’s license or a state-issued photo ID at the polls.

If successful, this legislation would end same-day voter registration and absentee voting.

This amendment is not publicly driven but politically driven, says State Senator Jeff Hayden (DFL-Minneapolis). “All you need is a simple majority in the Senate and the House to put it on the ballot,” he explains, adding that going this route “sets up a dangerous precedent like they have in other states. It really mucks up the ballot.”

U.S. Representative Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) joined several Minnesotans at the State Capitol on February 6 to speak out against the proposed amendment. He cited statistics from the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office showing that over 700,000 Minnesotans — including seniors, college students, people with disabilities, people of color, and new Americans — would be affected by a new photo ID amendment.

Ellison later told the MSR that because statewide elections in both 2008 and 2010 were decided by, respectively, a few hundred and a few thousand votes, “Photo ID could unfairly tip the scales in future elections.”

Read the full article @ The Daily Planet

More:

• ALEC: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests In State Legislatures
• Project Seeks to Help Students Overcome Barriers to Voting
• Why Millions of American Voters Have No Government Issued Photo ID
  
• Texas Voter Photo ID FAQ

Democratic Blog News

A group of U.S. senators on Tuesday asked the Government Accountability Office to study what they called an “alarming number” of new state laws that will make it “significantly harder” for millions of eligible voters to cast ballots this November. Sens. Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Richard Durbin and Bill Nelson sent a letter asking the non-partisan research arm of Congress for the review of new laws in at least 14 states.

The study is needed “to ensure that all citizens have the opportunity to exercise their constitutional right to vote and are not unreasonably hindered or burdened in that process,” the letter said.

Some of the new restrictions, the senators added, are tantamount to poll taxes.

New state identification laws, by one estimate, will have a direct impact on 21 million American citizens who do not have a government-issued photo ID. The majority of those people are young would-be voters, the elderly, African Americans, Hispanics, and those earning ,000 per year or less.

Other new state measures require proof of citizenship in order to register, prevent students from using college ID cards to register, place extreme burdens on third-party registration efforts, and eliminate or cut back early voting opportunities.

“State actions that suppress the right to vote must not be tolerated,” the senators said. “We must make it easier, not harder, for poor and working people to vote and to participate in the political process.”

The senators also asked the GAO to examine data on any prosecutions or convictions for voter impersonation fraud during the past decade in states that enacted new restrictions on voting, since the threat of such fraud has been used as a justification for many of the new laws.

“It is critical that we have an accurate picture of these recent state laws, individual access to voting, and actual instances of voter impersonation fraud,” the letter said.

Read the senators’ letter »

Watch the video of Senator Bernie Sanders talking with Rachel Maddow about resisting the Republican effort to discourage and/or disallow voter participation in elections even as Republicans are the ones who seem to have the problem with conducting honest elections:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Democratic Blog News

It is starting to looking like Texas may be intentionally setting up the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) to reject the state’s new voter photo identification law, by ignoring the USDOJ’s September request for information about Texas’ minority voters. The USDOJ said it needs that minority voter information to determine whether their new voter photo ID law would be discriminatory.

On November 16, USDOJ Civil Rights Division Voting Section Chief T. Christian Herren Jr. sent a letter to the Texas Secretary of State’s office reminding the state that it had not yet sent the minority voter information that the USDOJ requested in September. As of today, December 5th, Texas has still not sent the minority information the USDOJ requested in September.

If Texas does not send the requested minority voter information, the USDOJ likely will turndown Texas’ request to preclear its new voter photo ID law. Texas will then appeal the USDOJ’s decision to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the DOJ’s decision very well could be over turned.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled 6-3 in its 2008 Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita decision (findlaw) that Indiana’s 2005 strict voter photo ID law is constitutional. Texas’ voter photo ID law is nearly identical to Indiana’s voter photo ID law.

After hearing arguments of voter disenfranchisement, which were nearly identical to arguments that opponents of Texas’ 2011 photo ID law have made to the USDOJ over the last three months, Justices Stevens, Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas and Alito said in their 2008 majority opinion that those arguments do not provide concrete proof that Indiana’s photo ID law constitutes either a burden to voting or an intentional discriminatory barrier to voting. The majority opinion further said that states have a “valid interest in protecting ‘the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.’” (AP story)

Whether Texas voter photo ID law, passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature and signed by Gov. Perry last spring, goes into effect on January 1, 2012 depends on whether the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) gives its preclearance to implement the law, as required under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. If the SCOTUS were to overturn a DOJ decision to not preclear the Texas law, it could significantly weaken the DOJ’s leverage in future cases covered by Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The Secretary of State filed its original request for preclearance in July, but the USDOJ determined in September that it needed more information. Specifically the USDOJ requested the racial breakdown and counties of residence of the estimated 605,576 registered voters who do not have a state-issued license or photo ID, and how many of them have Spanish surnames. It requested the same information for registered voters who do have valid IDs.

The Texas Secretary of State (TXSOS) had initially told the DOJ that 605,576 registered Texas voters do not appear to have a Texas driver’s license or personal ID card. The SOS report indicates that in 27 of Texas’ 254 counties, at least 10 percent of the registered voters might be unable to cast ballots. In Presidio County in Southwest Texas as many as 25.9% of registered voters might not have the required photo ID, which will block as many as 1,313 out of the 5,066 registered voters in that county from casting ballots in any election.

Last month, the Brennan Center for Justice issued a report on its research that shows as many as 11% of eligible voters nationwide do not hold a government issue photo ID. With 18.8 million voting age citizens in Texas, as counted by the 2010 U.S. census, as many as 2.1 million (11 percent) registered and unregistered voting age citizens in Texas possibly do not hold a Texas driver’s license, personal ID card or other government issued photo ID document.

On October 5 the state responded by saying it did not have the requested information because it does not collect race data on voter registration applications. So instead, it submitted a spreadsheet list of all the Hispanic surnames in Texas, as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau. The spreadsheet shows how many voters did not provide an ID when they registered to vote, how many voters did not provide an ID, but whose records matched an ID record in the Department of Public Safety database — meaning they have been issued an ID — and those who did not provide an ID and could not be matched with a DPS record.

The Texas Democratic Party followed up with its own letter and spreadsheet to the USDOJ showing that in at least 46 Texas counties, over half the voters who do not have one of the required photo ID’s are Hispanic. The Texas Democratic Party and various organizations staunchly opposed SB14 on the grounds it will disenfranchise elderly and minority voters.

Though the state subsequently said it would use DPS data to compile a breakdown of Hispanic, it had yet to submit the information to the USDOJ by mid-November. On November 16, USDOJ Civil Rights Division Voting Section Chief T. Christian Herren Jr. sent a letter to the Secretary of State’s office reminding the state that it provided “incomplete” information that does not enable USDOJ Civil Rights officials to determine whether their proposed voter ID law would be discriminatory. “Although you did not indicate a date when this information would be available, you noted that the state will provide the results of its analysis as expeditiously as possible,” the letter states.

Essentially, the USDOJ’s letter restarts the clock on when the Department has to make a decision about whether the law complies with the Voting Rights Act. The USDOJ has 60 days from November 16, if the Texas does not send the requested information, or 60 days from the date when Texas does send the requested information to OK or deny Texas’ preclearance request. As of December 2nd the Texas Secretary of State’s office apparently had not yet sent the requested information to the USDOJ.

Either way, it is now looking very doubtful that the state will be able to enforce the voter photo ID law in time for the March 6, 2012 primary election. At best, if Texas does not send the requested information, the USDOJ will likely deny Texas’ preclearance request on January 16, 2012. Or, if Texas does send the requested information some after today, the USDOJ would like not give its decision until after date when Texas’ 254 county election officials start election worker training for the primary election.

Regardless of whether the DOJ approves or denies Texas’ preclearance request, the matter will likely be appealed through the courts by the losing side — which means Texas taxpayers will pick up the tab for the ensuing courtroom showdowns on top of all the state’s redistricting litigation costs.

The pre-clearance rule, included in Section 5 of the VRA, which has been reviewed by the Supreme Court as recently as two years ago, mandates that certain state, county and municipal jurisdictions with a history of racial problems must obtain a review and pre-clearance by the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) on any proposed changes in voting laws. The main reason for the DOJ pre-clearance requirement is to insure that any proposed changes would not “deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group,” as guaranteed by the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965. In the wake of violence and civil rights protests, the Johnson Administration drafted the VRA to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments, aiming to eliminate various Jim Crow election law strategies to prevent blacks and other minorities from voting. Congress amended Section 2 of the law during the Reagan administration in 1982. On July 27, 2006 President George W. Bush signed a bill extending the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years.

States that must request pre-clearance from the federal DOJ for any change to election laws or districts. More about the Voting Rights Act:

• Voting Rights Act text
• Voting Rights Act history
• Frequently Asked Questions

Before the VRA, many states had poll taxes, literacy tests and a whole array of so called “Jim Crow” schemes and gimmicks encoded in legal statutes to make sure that whites of a certain status were the only ones “qualified” to vote. Arizona was one of these.

The VRA not only forbids state laws that are intended to specifically target minority voters — it also forbids state laws that have a greater impact on minority voters than on others. Because voter ID laws disproportionately affect minority communities, it is difficult to see how many of the voter ID laws already passed or under consideration in GOP-controlled states could survive scrutiny under this law.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 established federal Department of Justice oversight of election laws passed by certain southern states with a history of discrimination.

Democratic Blog News

Update Wednesday Jan. 26, 2010 @ 11:58pm
As expected, the Texas Senate approved the controversial voter ID bill late Wednesday by a party line vote of 19 to 11. Democrats proposed about three-dozen changes to the bill that would have made it easier or cheaper to obtain identification or that would have allowed non-photo identification for use in voting, but most failed. The one change that did pass will allow Texans to present a concealed-handgun license photo ID to vote. Next, the measure will move to the Republican-dominated House, where it is also expected to pass easily later in this session.

Update Tuesday Jan. 25, 2010 @ 11:45pm
Keying off Gov. Rick Perry’s declaration of the issue as a legislative emergency, the Senate put voter identification legislation on a fast track Monday and turned itself into a committee of the whole Monday so it could consider and vote on the bill (SB14) as soon as public comment and debate ends. An initial vote on the measure — now being cited by supporters and opponents as the toughest voter ID law in the country — followed party lines late Tuesday: 20 Republicans in favor, 12 Democrats against. SB14 is considered to be tougher than voter photo ID laws on the books in eight other states, including Georgia and Indiana. A second and final approval vote is expected late Wednesday after a 24-hour delay required by Senate rules. Twenty-six amendments have been filed and will be considered after the second vote on the bill.

Over on the House side of the capital building Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, chairman of the Texas Conservative Coalition, offered an amendment to House rules on Tuesday that would allow the House to also consider the voter photo ID bill directly on the floor as a committee of the whole without taking public testimony.

Rep. Burt Solomon, R-Carrollton, who drafted the House rules resolution, told his colleagues that the House has met as a “committee of the whole” only to deal with impeachment proceedings in the 1970s and 1920s, and even those matters first passed through standing House committees. Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, then questioned the lack of public testimony if the House takes up voter identification without public hearings.

Christian’s proposal to amend House rules to immediately send voter photo ID legislation to the House floor was voted down 130-13. Eighty-eight Republicans and 42 Democrats voted against Christian, while all those voting with him were Republicans.

However, there is little doubt that House Republicans will continue to push the bill through the regular legislative process before the end of this session.

Original Post Sunday Jan. 23, 2010 @ 8:50am
Last Thursday, Texas Governor Rick Perry added Voter Government Issued Photo Identification legislation to his list of controversial items he has declared as emergencies for the 82nd Texas Legislature to consider.

The idea behind this legislation is that to combat in person voting voter impersonation fraud voters must present Government Issued Photo Identification to election clerks.

Any voter who does not have a photo ID, or who election clerks consider does not look like his or her ID photo will not be allowed to vote a regular ballot. Those voters will only be allowed to cast a provisional ballot. Those voters who do vote a provisional ballot must then present their Government Issued Photo Identification to the County Election office by the sixth day after the election or their provisional ballot will not be counted.

By Gov. Perry declaring voter photo identification an emergency the Senate is allowed to take up the legislative measure for immediate consideration. Usually, a bill will go before a committee, which then takes testimony on the issue, followed by debate and then a committee vote before it advances to the full Senate. An emergency measure can go straight to floor debate in the Senate. The voter photo ID measure is schedule to go to the Senate floor for debate and an up or down vote on Monday January 24th.

During Texas House Elections Committee debate on the voter photo ID requirement issue in the 2009 legislative session Republican proponents of the ID law admitted there is no evidence of voter impersonation “fraud” in Texas. “We can’t prove there is voter ID fraud. . . We may have a big voter impersonation problem we don’t know about. I think we do,” said Skipper Wallace, the Republican Party chairman of Lampasas County.

The senate bill as written, as of last Thursday, would require voters in elections after next January to present a driver’s license, valid military identification or a citizenship certificate with a photo. Voters who do not have such identification would only be allowed to cast provisional ballots and they must then present identification to the county elections office by the sixth day after the election.

Passage of a government issued photo voter ID requirement is the GOP’s legislative priority for the 2011 Texas Legislative session, according to state Rep. Todd Smith, R-Euless, the chairman of the House Elections Committee, which met last June to hear invited testimony on what, if any, evidence has been found that would warrant Texas to require voters to present a photo ID before casting a ballot.

There have been 267 requests referred to the Texas Attorney General’s office to investigate voter fraud in Texas since 2002, according Jay Dyer, special assistant to Attorney General Greg Abbott, in testimony before the committee last June. Of those 267 referrals, only 35 have were deemed to have merit to proceed to prosecution.

The Texas Attorney General’s office has not able to identify a case of in person voting ID impersonation fraud. Six years ago Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott tapped a .4 million federal crime-fighting grant to establish a special voter fraud investigation unit in his office as he pledged to root out what he called an epidemic of voter fraud in Texas. Mr. Abbott found and prosecuted only 26 cases of election fraud – all against Democrats, and almost all involving vote by mail (VBM) ballots, a review by The Dallas Morning News showed.

David Simcox, the former executive director of a conservative Washington-based think tank, Center for Immigration Studies, that favors less immigration, has said an estimated 1.8 million to 2.7 million non-citizen immigrants in the U.S. may be illegally registered to vote, thereby potentially influencing the outcome of the upcoming presidential and congressional elections.

Using population estimates from the Census Bureau and Texas county registration data, Mr. Simcox calculated in 2008 that Dallas, Harris, Starr and Presidio counties, as well as others, had higher numbers of registered voters than those who are eligible, which may indicate approximately 333,000 non-citizens are registered to vote and they likely vote for Democratic candidates.

Such claims are the reason Republicans have made Voter Photo Id for in person voting such a high legislative priority.

Elections administrators across Texas have said that there’s no proof that county officials are registering a significant number of non-citizens to vote.

“I don’t think we are, and I have no evidence that we have people over registered to vote,” said Dallas County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet when interviewed for a 2008 Dallas Morning News story. Steve Raborn, elections administrator for Tarrant County, said in the same 2008 Dallas Morning News story that a two-year investigation by his office of questionable voter registrations in 2004 and 2005 found only three non-citizens on the county voter rolls, and they were later removed.

Voter impersonation fraud is difficult to carry out in Texas or any state because statewide centralized voter-registration certification and databases were mandated in the 2002 Help America Vote Act. The federal HAVA law requires all election districts in a state or U.S. territory to consolidate their lists into a single database electronically accessible to every election office in the state or territory.

In Texas, each voter registration applicant must enter a driver’s license number or Social Security number on his or her registration application before submitting it to the county Election Registrar’s office. Every voter registration application is sent to the Texas Secretary of State (SOS) office, which verifies citizenship and true identity of the applicant by validating the driver’s license number or Social Security number entered on the application.

If the applicant’s citizenship status and true identity can not be validated by the SOS, then the application is rejected. If citizenship status and identity can be validated, then the applicant’s name and unique identifier is entered into a statewide TEAM electronic voter registration database maintained by the SOS.

Applicants are sent a voter registration card and officially added to his or her county of residence voter rolls only if the SOS’s office approves the application. When a registered voter dies or moves the voter’s registration status is automatically canceled or marked suspended in the county and SOS centralized databases.

Look in your purse or wallet – other than your Driver’s License, what current (unexpired) government-issued photo ID do you find? Do you find a U.S. passport? Maybe; a few people have passports. Some seniors may find a Veterans Identification or Armed Forces Identification Photo ID Card, but they do not have ‘issued’ and ‘expires’ dates. When the voter photo ID law was enacted in Indiana many older veterans, who had stopped driving and let their Driver’s License expire, tried to use their Veterans and Armed Forces Id Cards to vote in 2008. Those veterans who served our county were turned away because every government photo ID card they possessed were either expired or not dated.

If you don’t own a car, and therefore never bothered to get a Driver’s License, you likely do not have a current government-issued photo ID. And, if you can’t drive a car to a state bureau where you must submit your original birth certificate to prove citizenship, you can’t get a government-issued photo ID, and you will not be allowed to vote in any election under the new Texas Photo Voter Id law.

Look at your Driver’s License photo – does it really look like you? If your hair color has changed, you gained or lost weight, you grew or shaved off a mustache or otherwise changed your appearance since your Driver’s License photo was snapped, an election clerk might force you to vote a provisional ballot. And, if you find yourself being forced to cast a provisional ballot, you must make a special trip to the county elections office to offer additional proof of your identity, before your provisional ballot will be counted.

A Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law study (and many other studies) finds that as many as 11 percent of citizens, mostly the elderly, poor and minority American citizens, do not have a current, government-issued photo ID. (also read: Brennan Center for Justice – Voter ID a Misguided Effort) Another academic study of the 2004 presidential election conducted for the bipartisan Federal Election Assistance Commission found that states with Voter ID laws had an overall turnout reduction of 3%, a figure that reached 5.7% among African Americans and 10% among Hispanics.

“This is a racial issue, make no mistake about it,” said Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, in 2009. “This is about skimming enough minority votes so some people can’t get elected.” An estimated 25% of legal, registered voters in Texas are Hispanic and over the next 30 years 78% of Texas’ population growth is projected to be Hispanic.

The recently completed 2010 Census documented Texas’ population grew 20.6% over the last ten years, double the national growth rate, courtesy of the burgeoning Texas Hispanic and black populations. That 20% gain in population earned Texas four new seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The success of Texas Democratic voter registration drives among minority groups in 2008 threatens to tip the balance of power away from Republicans. As the tide of Democratic voters continues to grow across Texas, a government issue photo voter ID requirement for in-person voting would be an effective way for Republicans to hold back the tide.

Consequently, the use of baseless “voter id fraud” allegations to promote voter photo ID legislation is a more urgent 2011 legislative session priority for Republicans, than focusing the on the long list of real problems plaguing Texas families.

Democratic Blog of Collin County – News