

which allows you to roll over a state to see what voter-suppressing laws are on the books there. If you click on this link you'll be whisked to the interactive version of this map,which allows you to roll over a state to see what voter-suppressing laws are on the books there.

In other War on Voting news

In South Carolina, a three-judge federal tribunal heard final arguments in the case involving the state's voter-ID law, one that is not so strict as Pennsylvania's but that has nevertheless brought a challenge based on discriminatory impact on the same demographics as those hurt by Pennsylvania's law.

The judges were tough in their questioning of attorneys for the state. There were moments when they expressed open frustration over official changes in the way the law would be implemented. But they also asked plaintiffs' attorneys in the case why they weren't helping authorities' efforts to reduce potential impacts of the law on African Americans.

Unlike in Pennsylvania, the case is in federal court because South Carolina is one of 16 states or parts of states that fall under provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Because of past discrimination under so-called Jim Crow laws that kept black Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote, the U.S. Department of Justice must pre-clear all major voting-procedure changes in those jurisdictions before they can go into effect. The DOJ refused to clear the South Carolina law.

James Rosen reported:



The law’s foes say it would affect black South Carolinians disproportionately because 71,000 registered African Americans lack any of the five IDs — a relatively bigger share than white voters who are without them. Opponents also contend those black voters would have more trouble obtaining acceptable photo IDs because they are poor and live predominantly in counties that have little or no public transportation. Garrard Beeney, an attorney for civil rights groups and potentially disenfranchised voters who oppose the law, ridiculed testimony by Marci Andino, the executive director of the State Election Commission, as contradictory. He said the state’s thousands of precinct volunteers would be left to interpret whether someone could vote without proper ID by claiming a “reasonable impediment” to getting one, as permitted by one of the law’s key clauses.

The state's lawyers conceded that the only way the law could be implemented this year given the short time to prepare before the election is because it contains that “reasonable impediment” provision. Voters who can't obtain a photo ID in time because of something outside their control would be allowed to cast a ballot.

Ryan J. Reilly reported attorney H. Christopher Bartolomucci as saying that good reason would not be that they just didn't "feel like" getting an ID. The provision is the “only reason this would work for 2012,” Bartolomucci said.



“That’s a personal choice. That’s not a reasonable impediment. That’s not an obstacle,” Bartolomucci said of the “I didn’t feel like it” excuse, adding that “Mars is made of green cheese” wouldn’t count either. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, however, said she wasn’t buying the metaphor. “That doesn’t help,” she told Bartolomucci of the Mars comparison.

The panel is expected to issue its opinion early in October.

• New Hampshire judge overturns required voter statement:

A Republican law passed over the Democratic governor's veto in New Hampshire last year to keep students from voting in their college towns took a hit Monday when a state judge ordered the secretary of state to issue new voter registration forms that don't include a statement everyone must sign when they register. The statement:



“In declaring New Hampshire as my domicile, I am subject to the laws of the state of New Hampshire which apply to all residents, including laws requiring a driver to register a motor vehicle and apply for a New Hampshire’s driver’s license within 60 days of becoming a resident.” New Hampshire’s Governor, John Lynch, argued that this language conflates maintaining a “domicile” and being a “resident,” both of which bring different obligations and privileges. This confusion could discourage otherwise eligible voters, especially students, from voting in the upcoming election.

The judge obviously agreed.

• Voter ID laws take aim at college-student voters:

Ever since 18-year-olds gained the right to vote in 1971, college towns have done everything they can to keep them from casting ballots where they attend school, arguing that they are transients and the college towns are not their real homes (despite the fact they live there for four or more years, well within the norm for non-college students). It is also argued tendentiously that students have no interests that coincide with other residents. Whether it's police behavior, affordable housing, provision of public transportation, bike paths or other programs, this is bogus. But it doesn't stop authorities from trying to squelch the student vote.



In Tennessee, a new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls explicitly excludes student IDs. In Wisconsin, college students are newly disallowed from using university-provided housing lists or corroboration from other students to verify their residence. Florida's reduction in early voting days is expected to reduce the number of young and first-time voters there.

A decade ago, just 14 states asked voters to present an ID before casting a ballot, and in most cases this was a request, not a requirement. But nearly 1,000 voter-ID bills have been introduced in all but four states in the past 11 years. Thirty-three states have passed some version of these, and, depending on how court cases turn out, at least 30 will have one in place for this year's election.

Minnesotans will decide at the polls in November whether to go in 2013 from "having no voter-ID requirement to adopting one of the strictest in the nation." The Supreme Court ruled in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008) that a strict voter-ID law imposed by Indiana was constitutional, so that presents no impediment as long as the law is carefully drawn.

Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed a voter-ID law passed by the GOP-controlled legislature in 2011. But Republicans brought the issue back as a proposed amendment to the state constitution. If it passes, the legislature will draft implementation rules in 2013. Rick Hasen, a UC-Irvine law professor who runs the Election Law Blog said:



"I expect that if the voter ID law passes, that there's going to be additional follow-on litigation and more battles to come over precisely what's going to be done and how it's going to be implemented. It's going to be the beginning, rather than the end of the battle."

• Democrats exploit Pennsylvania voter-ID law loophole:

Democrat-controlled Montgomery and Allegheny counties are running a kind of voter-ID mutiny by issuing poll-ready identification cards through county-run nursing homes and colleges. Even though that the Republican-dominated state legislature sought to make the new voter-ID law as restrictive as possible, Republicans have not opposed it. Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, a key force in enacting the law last March, said: "I am not against the principle of other entities having the ability to issue cards, as long as we have uniform standards and safeguards in place."

In the sixth change of the Pennsylvania voter-ID law since it was enacted, authorities announced Tuesday that citizens can now obtain the proper without having to make two trips to PennDOT, as had been the case. Previously, they first had to try to get a traditional non-driver's ID from PennDOT, the state's department of transportation that issues both driver's licenses and non-driver's IDs. If they couldn't, then they could apply for an ID of last resort. To vote in November, a Pennsylvania resident must have one of those two forms of ID, a military ID, a passport or a student ID with an expiration date.

One problem that had arisen was that ID-seekers had to get PennDOT clerks to verify the individual's identity and confirm that s/he was registered to vote before issuing a photo ID. The secretary of state's office had required that citizens seeking a non-driver's voter ID must first prove they couldn't get a driver's license. This has meant phone calls back and forth with many busy and dropped lines, forcing applicants sometimes to wait for hours or come back another day after the required documentation was verified.

Now, they will be permitted to obtain a department of state identity card simply by providing their name, date of birth and social security number and address. Proof of address is not required. PennDOT officials will verify their registration as applicants wait.

• Voters in Virginia still confused over what makes for a valid ID.

• Voting’s Outcasts: Why one in five blacks in Kentucky can’t cast a ballot:

One in 13 African Americans—totaling 5.85 million people—didn't have the right to vote in 2010, according to a study by The Sentencing Project, because they were current or former felons. Three-fourths of them were at the time out on probation, parole or had already completed their full sentence, including post-incarceration supervision. This eight percent of the black population, as compared with two percent of non-African Americans, had lost the right to vote.



Kentucky is one state that makes it nearly impossible for former felons to vote, and a grassroots group there has been challenging this form of disenfranchisement. If the numbers nationwide are dismal, it’s even worse in Kentucky, where nearly a quarter million people have lost their right to cast a ballot. Meet Meta Mendel-Reyes. She’s on the Steering Committee of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a statewide, grassroots social justice organization that seeks to restore the right of former felons to vote. She explains that former felons who have already served their time are subjected to an onerous process to attempt to get their voting rights restored—but even that process doesn’t guarantee they’ll be able to cast a ballot.

• Worcester County, Massachusetts, officials deny voter suppression claims:

Some witnesses claimed that polling station officials asked to see the identity cards of some Spanish-speaking voters during the September primary elections. The city's Board of Election Commissioners chose not to investigate, which has spurred some citizens to criticize it.

"I think there's a lot of [critics] saying things that I would never say if I didn't have proof," said Chris Pinto of the Republican City Committee. "It's very irresponsible what these folks are doing."

Native Vote Action Week was organized by the National Congress of American Indians working with grassroots organizers throughout Indian Country to raise awareness about why civic engagement matters and increase Native voter participation. Earlier this year, NCAI President Jefferson Keeler said it was a "civic emergency" that there are an estimated one million Indians not registered to vote. During this week, the organization and its allies seek to register as many as possible with more than 130 registration drives, rallies and events hosted by tribal communities, Native Vote organizers and others will be reaching out to more than 35,000 people in American Indian and Alaska Native communities during the week.

• Voter ID laws provoke black women to work for higher turnout than in 2008:

Deidra Reese doesn't wait for people to come to her to find out if they are registered. She goes to them. And this year's multi-pronged effort by Ohio officials to suppress the vote in areas where African Americans make up a large portion of the population has made her and other black women more determined than in 2008, when they were the demographic group with the highest percentage turnout.



“We are not going to give back one single inch. We have fought too long and too hard,” said Reese, 45, coordinator of the Columbus-based Ohio Unity Coalition, an affiliate of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. Reese is part of a cadre of black women engaged in a revived wave of voting rights advocacy four years after the historic election of the nation’s first black president. [...] “We’ve forgotten our mothers went to three jobs, picked us up from school, put the macaroni and cheese on the table, got up and got somebody registered to vote,” said actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, one of several women who participated in a strategy session [last] week during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual legislative conference in the nation’s capital. Ralph is married to Pennsylvania state Sen. Vincent Hughes.

Bill Clinton is warning that even though President Barack Obama's lead in the polls may fall prey to the Republican Party's voter suppression efforts that focus on traditionally Democratic voters like African-American church members. One problem, he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview that aired on Sunday, is that in all but four counties in the battleground state of Florida early voting hours have been reduced and do not include the Sunday right before the election.



The former president added that the tactic was “an arrow aimed straight at the heart of the African-American church, who pull up the church busses on the Sunday before the election and take elderly people who have no cars or people that are disabled to the polls so they can vote.”

They call it Themis, after the Greek god of divine order. It's the billionaire Koch brothers' voter-mobilization effort. Four years in the making, as Lee Fang reports, it's as sophisticated as what an entire national political party would roll out. And it's already been tested in one state:



In 2009, the Koch network created a model called the Wisconsin Prosperity Project to move the state to the far right. After witnessing the Democrats’ stunning 2008 ground game, the operatives in Wisconsin were determined to out-organize liberals. They hired Tea Party organizers, invested heavily in front groups (like the MacIver Center), ran constant advertising and coordinated with employers to hold propaganda meetings with workers. Tea Party bus tours in the state, fully financed by [Americans for Prosperity], were “designed” to help elect Republicans. And in 2010, Wisconsin turned harder to the right than almost any other state in the nation during the midterm elections. At least from the Koch perspective, the investments worked. (The Koch theory of change was also reinforced by the savvy Scott Walker recall campaign, in which Koch operatives bused seventy-five canvassers to the state to out-perform the unions.)

As reported Tuesday at Daily Kos, various new voter laws requiring IDs and proof of citizenship, plus voter-roll purges, may combine to keep Latino participation at the polls low.

• Gov. Jerry Brown's signature makes California a same-day registration state:



“Voting—the sacred right of every citizen—should be simple and convenient,” said Governor Brown. “While other states try to restrict voters with new laws that burden the process, California allows voters to register online—and even on Election Day.”

In spite of the fact that same-day voter registration laws help reduce the time, energy and expense of the voter registration drives that accompany every election season, and make practical sense as well, the voter suppressors are targeting them, too. Eleven states now offer same-day registration. Despite critics' stated concerns that such laws would generate widespread fraud, it hasn't happened.

•••

• GOP voter ID laws efficiently disfranchise college voters.

• The worst thing that has happened to our Democratic election system.

• Republicans look for voter fraud, find little.

• Congressional Black Caucus rolls out "For the People" voter protection initiative