2012

On Wednesday, in the heat of another pitched American battle over voting rights, one that is playing out in courthouses and state capitals all across the nation, the Senate Judiciary Committee met yet again to remind us of how tenuous the right to vote still is in this country. Perhaps the stakes aren't as high in 2012 as they were in 1965. Perhaps the new generation of "ruses and devices and tests" employed to suppress the vote will be rejected by the courts. Or perhaps not. It's simply too soon to know. But it's not too soon to worry. And it is certainly not too soon to begin to see disheartening patterns.

The hearing was called "The Citizens United Court and the Continuing Importance of the Voting Rights Act" and, as the title suggests, it was an attempt by the Democratic leadership on the Committee to connect together on Capitol Hill two legal trends of recent vintage, each beginning in 2010. The "Citizens United Court" part of the presentation focused on the United States Supreme Court and the five-member conservative majority which dramatically increased the role of corporate power in American elections (and gutted campaign finance regulations) when it gave the world the Citizens United ruling in January 2010.

The "Continuing Importance of the Voting Rights Act" portion of the Committee program focused on the relentless conservative offensive against voting rights this election cycle -- the restrictive voter identification laws, the renewed bans on early voting hours, the restrictions on voter registration efforts, all of which are designed to make it harder for millions of Americans, millions of Americans who have voted fairly and accurately for years, to do so again this year. Voter fraud is the battle cry of these ALEC-infused efforts and there are, indeed, plenty of allegations about it. So far, however, there has been precious little proof.

TWO SHIPS IN THE NIGHT

So what do these two themes have in common? Nothing-- and that's the point. On the one hand the conservative Court reached out (in Citizens United) to make it easier for corporate interests, and special interests, to play a role in elections and the result this cycle has been dismaying and obvious. In the name of hoary first amendment principles, granted for the first time to corporations, the richest and most powerful interests in America have been given even more power to influence the outcome of elections. Anyone with a television or a computer or a mailbox, anyone living in a swing state, knows this is so.

On the other hand, while corporate power over elections has increased, GOP lawmakers have enacted a new generation of state voter laws to make it harder for individuals to play a role in elections. And not all individuals, mind you, but those American citizens, those registered voters, who are most likely to have the fewest resources or the best access to the machinery of politics. These voter laws aren't about requiring voters to prove who they are when they vote-- voters already have to do that. They are about further dividing elections into "haves" and "have nots" by requiring people who can't afford cars, for example, to get certain kinds of ID.