independentsforkerry.org

“I really have no idea what he is talking about,” Republican Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Sheila Reiner told the Colorado Independent.

Reiner was referring to allegations made again recently by Secretary of State Scott Gessler that non-citizens are registered to vote in the state. Reiner said she has asked Gessler in the past to share what he knows so that she and the other clerks in the state can address any potential problem. She said that, in roughly the year that has passed since he first brought up the issue, details from Gessler’s office have not materialized.

“I asked for the lists when I first heard about this. I haven’t gotten any information. I just don’t know,” she said.

Gessler shared more detailed information on the topic last month at an Arapahoe County Republican Men’s Club fundraiser. He said that 150 or so non-citizen residents of the state who had been erroneously registered to vote contacted him before he had even become secretary of state and asked to be removed from the registration rolls. He said that in 2011, his first year in office, 400-some erroneously registered non-citizens had asked to be removed from the rolls, the climbing number, he said, clearly indicates a wider and more serious problem.

This week, Gessler told KLZ talk radio listeners not only that non-citizens were being registered to vote in the state but that they were also casting votes.

“We’re continuing to do the analysis on the issue… of non-citizens being on the voting rolls here in Colorado and some of them voting,” he said. “We did a study last year and we’re going to do some more analysis and come up with more evidence to show people that there, in fact, are problems here in Colorado.”

At the end of last month, the Colorado Independent asked the secretary of state’s office to elaborate on his concerns and findings for the record but received no response.

The Independent then filed an open records request (pdf) with the office asking for any communication conducted between non-citizens registered to vote and the secretary’s office and/or conducted between the secretary’s office and county clerks on the subject of non-citizens asking to be removed from the voter rolls.

Secretary of State spokesman Rich Coolidge responded to say his office “is not the custodian” of such records. “You’ll need to submit your request directly to the county clerk and recorders, who register and cancel voter records,” he wrote in an email.

Voter rights watchdog group Colorado Common Cause subsequently submitted a similar records request and told the Independent that Coolidge had asked for an extension on the three-day statutory delivery period.

County clerks and staff contacted by the Independent so far in some of the state’s most populous counties, including Adams, Boulder, Denver and Pueblo, have said that they, like Reiner in Mesa County, have no knowledge of any non-citizens ever being registered to vote nor have they knowingly received any requests to be removed from the voter rolls from non-citizen residents of the state.

The Colorado Independent today submitted another open records request asking for any related “work product” created or commissioned by the secretary’s office, including any database searches seeking information concerning non-citizens being registered to vote in Colorado.

A standard form

“There’s nothing on the form like that,” Adams County Clerk Karen Long told the Colorado Independent, referring to the state’s standard “Withdrawal of Colorado Voter Registration (pdf)” form, the one available online that anyone seeking to remove their name from the rolls must submit to their county clerk. (Click on the image to the right for an enlarged version.)

“[The form] doesn’t ask anywhere for the reason you want to be removed,” Long said. “It asks for your name and ID or social security number and then you have to affirm it–you have to sign it and affirm it’s what you want and it’s accurate. That’s it. The only time we would know why someone wants to be removed is if they tell us, voluntarily. Maybe they’re moving out of state,” Long said.

Reiner said people sometimes come into her office upset about politics in general and want to be removed from the rolls.

Joan Fitz-Gerald, the highly respected former Jefferson County clerk, state senate president and now president of nonprofit watchdog AmericaVotes, said occasionally people asked her to remove them from the rolls because they were looking to avoid jury duty.

Boulder Clerk Spokesman Brad Turner didn’t hesitate to let on he was baffled.

“I don’t know how [Gessler] would know whether non-citizens were asking to be removed from the lists. That information just isn’t here, as far as I can tell.”

‘No need for a bill’

Gessler pushed hard last year at the state legislature for the “Proof of Citizenship” bill sponsored by Rep. Chris Holbert, R-Parker, and Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch. The bill came in response to a study Gessler conducted based on database search and comparisons that he said suggested thousands of non-citizens could be voting in Colorado.

The bill, HB 1252, would have granted the secretary power to “periodically check” voter registration records against a collection of databases “maintained by federal and state agencies.” If the secretary suspected any registered voter “may not be a citizen,” he could suspend that voter’s registration, giving him or her 90 days to (re)submit documents proving their right to vote.

The bill failed to pass but, as the Colorado Independent reported in January, Gessler waved off Holbert and Harvey this year, saying there was “no need for a bill,” according to a Holbert staffer, because he felt he could address the issue outside the halls of the capitol with means available to him through his office.

Trimming voter rolls based on database searches like the ones described in the “Proof of Citizenship” bill– searches centered on comparing ID numbers listed in the state’s voter registration database, known as SCORE, and ID numbers listed in databases that include state or federal immigration information– is a prospect that alarms voting-rights watchdogs and at least some of the state’s county clerks, who openly doubted the accuracy of such an approach.

Clerks said that conducting those kind of database searches would give Gessler numbers of likely “suspects” but no confirmation that the people he thinks he is dealing with are actually the ones tied to the information on his lists. They added that he wouldn’t know whether people’s citizenship status had changed or to what extent human error had fouled up his searches.

That kind of skepticism has been the reaction among government watchdogs since Gessler first began talking about non-citizen voters.

Estelle Rogers, director of advocacy for Project Vote, looked closely at the six-page report Gessler produced last March that started the conversation in the state. In the report, Gessler said his office, working mainly from the Department of Revenue driver’s license database, was “nearly certain” that 106 immigrants were improperly registered to vote in Colorado. The report concluded that perhaps as many as 11,805 people were improperly registered to vote in the state and that 4,000 of them had voted in the 2010 elections.

Rogers told the Colorado Independent that such claims should come with more detailed supporting material that could be independently reviewed.

“The secretary says he is ‘certain’ that 106 people on Colorado’s voter roll of 3.7 million are ‘improperly registered.’ That’s about 0.0028648648649 percent of the voter roll,” she wrote in an email. “Obviously such an error rate is to be expected whenever human beings are copying data from one list to another. Before the secretary of state jumps to the conclusion that these are 106 cases of voter fraud, he should have a lot more evidence than mere suspicion. Non-citizen voting is a fashionable political theme these days, but it has no basis in reality. And the right to vote is too important to confuse with sloganeering.”

Fitz-Gerald echoed those sentiments.

“Clerks know that you never do anything without documentation. There are very specific processes outlined by law when you’re dealing with voter registration. There has to be a paper trail.”

She said that accuracy and accountability is everything when it comes to removing voters from the registration lists.

“You have to be sure that somebody isn’t removing someone else’s name. It can be very basic. Neighbors could be fighting.”

Fitz-Gerald pointed as a cautionary tale to the error-ridden “scrub lists” controversial Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris used in 2000 to purge voter rolls there of alleged felons. Roughly 173,000 names made it onto Harris’s list but many of the names were tied to people with only misdemeanor convictions, others merely shared the same name with a felon.

Florida tried to rectify the problem as the errors came to light but evidence from Election Day polling places suggest thousands of legally registered voters may have been turned away as a result of the purge.

‘This matters’

“If I’m a clerk in Colorado, I wanna know who are these people [Gessler] is talking about. I wanna know what he’s doing. I’d be camping out in his office,” said Fitz-Gerald. “This matters. This is important.”

A high-profile conservative politics election and campaign finance attorney for years before he took office, Gessler has drawn heat for pushing election rules changes that he says are necessary to prevent voter fraud and that critics contend would make it more difficult for many legally registered Coloradans to cast votes. In addition to seeking the power to independently purge the voter rolls of suspected noncitizens, Gessler sued to prevent clerks from mailing ballots to inactive voters.

His efforts reflect moves Republicans have made nationwide since the GOP “wave election” of 2010 to stiffen voting requirements, efforts watchdogs and Democrats characterize as attempted vote suppression of left-leaning constituencies, including young people and members of minority groups.

Given that context, Fitz-Gerald says you would expect Gessler to be taking greater pains to justify his proposals.

“He’s not just a partisan attorney anymore,” she said. “He’s in a much different role. He’s an officeholder responsible to all voters– Republican, unaffiliated and Democratic. If something is wrong with the voter registration system, it is his responsibility not just to call it out at party dinners but to fix the problem and to work with the clerks to do that. It has to be a collaborative effort to keep the system solid.

“If he’s right there’s a problem, then it’s a state problem and it’s tied to the public trust. So take it to the clerks. Let’s get it worked out. You either want to solve the problem or you don’t. There are laws about how you go about these things and for good reason, too.”

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

The Colorado Independent

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

The voter registration deadline to participate in Tennessee’s March 6th Presidential Primary is TODAY.

If you want to be a voter next month on “Super Tuesday,” you must be registered.

Click here to register. Registration forms must be postmarked by today’s date.

Not sure if you’re registered? Click here to check your voter status and precinct location.

Also, for the first time ever, Tennesseans must show a government-issued photo ID to vote. While the Tennessee Democratic Party is opposed to this attack on voters, we are still working to help citizens prepare for it.

Volunteers throughout the state are organizing voter registration and education drives to push back against the voter ID law. You can help, too.

Click here to volunteer.

Every citizen of Tennessee who wants to be a voter should be able to vote — without having to jump through hoops created by politicians who want to rig elections. Extreme special interests coordinated efforts to pass voter ID laws all across the country to keep some people from voting.

More than 100,000 registered voters in Tennessee — senior citizens, the poor, students — still lack the government-issued photo ID that is now required to be a voter.

To fix this mess, we have to organize, educate and register new voters in every neighborhood across the state. And we can’t do it without your help.

So get registered and spread the word.

TNDP News

During 2011, this blog published many articles about the GOP’s push to pass legislation requiring one of a very limited selection of government-issued photo IDs (like a driver’s license, passport or gun permit) to vote.

The new laws require specific identification not carried by a disproportionate portion of certain demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic. These groups include Blacks, Hispanics, the poor, seniors, and the young.

Because such laws do have a disproportionate on certain demographic groups, the U.S. Department of Justice, last Friday, blocked South Carolina’s new voter photo ID law. It is widely thought the Justice Dept. will move to also block Texas’ new voter photo ID law in the coming weeks.

Two of our articles looked at the pending show down down between the U.S. Department of Justice and the conservative leaning justices on the Supreme Court of the United States overt the voter photo ID laws and possibly the 1965 Voting Rights Act, itself:

• Does Texas Want the USDOJ To Reject Its Voter Photo ID Law?
• DOJ v. SCOTUS On Texas’ Voter Photo ID Law

On Friday, Slate published an article that also looks at the pending USDOJ v. SCOTUS showdown:

On the Friday before Christmas Day, the Department of Justice formally objected to a new South Carolina law requiring voters to produce an approved form of photo ID in order to vote. That move already has drawn cheers from the left and jeers from the right. The DoJ said South Carolina could not show that its new law would not have an adverse impact on racial minorities, who are less likely to have acceptable forms of identification.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley denounced the DoJ decision blocking the law under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act: “It is outrageous, and we plan to look at every possible option to get this terrible, clearly political decision overturned so we can protect the integrity of our electoral process and our 10th Amendment rights.” The state’s attorney general vowed to fight the DoJ move in court, and thanks to an odd quirk in the law, the issue could get fast-tracked to the Supreme Court, which could well use it to strike down the Voting Rights Act provision as unconstitutional before the 2012 elections.

The current dispute has an eerie echo. More than 45 years ago in 1966, South Carolina also went to the Supreme Court to complain that Section 5 unconstitutionally intruded on its sovereignty. Under the 1965 Act, states with a history of racial discrimination like South Carolina could not make changes in its voting rules—from major changes like redistricting to changes as minor as moving a polling place across the street—without getting the permission of either the U.S. Department of Justice or a three-judge court in Washington, D.C. The state had to show the law was not enacted with the purpose, or effect, of making minority voters worse off than they already were.

… In its 1966 South Carolina v. Katzenbach decision, the Supreme Court said the law requiring “preclearance” of voting changes, while an extreme intrusion on states’ rights, was necessary because lesser measures—like federal government suits over each discriminatory voting practice—had not worked. … Today, Some conservatives argue that Section 5 is no longer constitutional, because the states subject to preclearance don’t present a special danger of racial discrimination.

… If South Carolina argues in court [in 2012] that it is unconstitutional to require it to submit its voter ID law for federal approval, and the three-judge court rejects that argument, it is hard to imagine the Supreme Court conservatives refusing to hear that case.

… Why did the Obama DoJ deny preclearance, knowing it could well set up this massive confrontation and potentially lead to the downfall of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act? There are both principled and political reasons.

First of all, it was the right thing to do. As the DoJ letter explains, South Carolina presented no evidence that its law was necessary to prevent voter fraud, and the evidence was uncontested that minority voters were less likely to have ID

Second, if the Court is going to strike down Section 5, it might be politically better for this to happen before the 2012 elections, so that Obama can run against a Supreme Court, and the possibility that a President Romney could appoint a young version of Justice Scalia to take a retiring Justice Kennedy’s seat on the court, solidifying the court’s conservative majority for a generation.

It’s a gamble, both legally and politically, and no one knows for sure how it will turn out. But South Carolina may fare much better before the Roberts court this spring than it did before the Warren court in 1966.

Read the full article @ Slate.

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

New tallies released by Pueblo County Clerk Bo Ortiz on Thursday put the percentage of “inactive voters” who returned ballots this year at 1,791 or nearly 11 percent of county voters. That’s a gain of nearly 5 percentage points from 2009 and well above the previous statewide 3 percent average.

“A press release issued October 31 by this office contained a mistake in the reporting of the Inactive Failed to Vote tabulations,” Ortiz wrote in a release. “The correct number of IFTV was 1791, which is 10.9 percent turnout, and still above the statewide average.”

In his October 31 release, Ortiz touted an exceptionally large percentage of inactive voters ballots cast. He said the figures suggested inactive voters were accounting for 28 percent of the vote.

“That was just human error. It just happened when we were pulling the extract[ed numbers ] into Excel,” Ortiz told the Colorado Independent, referring to the popular accounting software program.

Regardless of the mistake in the Pueblo Clerk’s office, tallies from the secretary of state’s office demonstrate that inactive voters played a major role in this week’s election, accounting for roughly 5.5 percent of the total votes cast in the state.

“I can say that mailing ballots to inactive voters is the right thing for Pueblo County,” Ortiz said. “We’re used to it here. People expect their ballots and I want to keep that consistent.”

Ortiz told the Independent weeks ago that he believes his main objective as clerk is to expand participation in elections, and today he said he was proud of the fact that, in effect, inactive voters in Pueblo County got to voice their concerns and opinions twice: when the candidates and their supporters knocked on their doors and when they returned their ballots to cast their votes.

The numbers of inactive voter ballots cast is a topic of special interest in Colorado this year because Secretary of State Scott Gessler, elected to office last November, attempted to prevent counties from mailing ballots to inactive voters, upending a practice that has been ongoing for roughly five years, as the state moves increasingly toward mail-in elections.

Inactive voters are legally registered voters who have, for whatever reason, failed to cast ballots in the previous general election. Inactive voters tend to be citizens who move often or have limited access to the internet, for example, and include mostly minority voters, youth and elderly voters and people with limited resources.

Ortiz and other county clerks battled against Gessler’s new interpretation of state election law when he brought it out. Ortiz argued that Gessler’s order would force him to violate the federal Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act, which obligates county clerks to send ballots to all eligible voters in the military, active and inactive.

Gessler was unmoved by the argument. He sued Denver County to stop Clerk Debra Johnson from mailing out ballots to inactive voters. The district court judge hearing the case, however, ruled against Gessler and denied his request for an injunction against the county. A ruling on Gessler’s interpretation of state law is expected in the spring.

Gessler defended his new rule by arguing that he was seeking to make state election processes uniform and to guard against fraud. He never provided any evidence of fraud related to inactive voter ballots. Many believed Gessler, a longtime Republican partisan campaign finance and election law attorney, was engaging in thinly veiled vote suppression.

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

The Colorado Independent

Share on Facebook

TN Democratic Party News

The following column appeared in the Sunday, October 23, 2011 edition of The Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Chip Forrester is the chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party and an executive committee member of the Democratic National Committee. He may be reached by email at chip@tndp.org.

New voter law will suppress legitimate voting | timesfreepress.com.

Share on Facebook

TN Democratic Party News

Chairman Chip Forrester talks about the new voter ID law and the GOP primary on This Week with Bob Mueller.

Link: This Week with Bob Mueller – WKRN.

Share on Facebook

TN Democratic Party News