When official exit poll data keep showing Democrats winning yet Democrats keep losing — You know something sinister is afoot.
FAULKNER: How does the party of "no" and the one percent, nakedly obstructionist and grossly unpopular, as you pointed out their congressional approval rating is in single digits with shrinking demographics to boot — How do they wind up rewarded rather than punished when the voters finally get the chance to weigh in?
SIMON: ...It is still verboten in public discourse in America [to discuss] the distinct possibility, in fact the probability, that in the darkness of cyberspace where these computers are recording and tallying our votes by the millions, there are electronic program manipulations taking place that alter the vote counts and with them alter the results of the elections and alter them in a distinct unidirectional pattern towards the right.
Listen To the Entire Interview:
Voting Machines: Computerized Election Theft Dr. Jonathan Simon explains how Republicans, working with companies that provide electronic voting machines, have been stealing elections whenever the vote is close.
Bonnie Faulkner of Guns & Butter (left) interviews Dr. Jonathan Simon.
The Republican's Clown Prince: Rick Perry - The governor and his
Texas Republicans are like criminals on steroids. (Photo by Ed Schipul)
By Brad Friedman
This is not unexpected, though its still disturbing to those concerned about voting rights — and the possibility that more than half a million legally registered voters in Texas may not be allowed to vote in this November’s election.
A three judge panel on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has, for now, blocked the U.S. District Court’s ruling last week in Texas, issued after a full trial on the merits of the law, which had struck down state Republicans’ polling place Photo ID voting restriction after finding it deliberately discriminatory and a violation of the U.S. Constitution and federal Voting Rights Act.
Following Tuesday’s order by the 5th Circuit [PDF] reversing the lower court ruling, for now, the plaintiffs challenging the state statute said, almost immediately, that they plan to file an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court to put the law back on hold before the November elections.
Voting rights proponents worry that, if the Court holds true to its recent rulings in voting rights cases in NC, in OH and, most recently, in WI, they are likely to allow Texas’ discriminatory law to stay in place this November, pending a full hearing on the merits at a later date.
There is, however, some important differences in the Texas case than in those other three, which we’ll explain in a moment.
Texas had appealed the initial 147-page ruling [PDF] by U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonazles Ramos, issued last week, which found that the Texas Photo ID voting statue, SB 14, “creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose.” She also determined that the state requirement that voters produce one of a few very specific types of state-issued Photo ID when voting at the polling place amounted to an “unconstitutional poll tax”, since all such ID requires at least some payment by voters…
On Tuesday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel (two Republican appointees and one Democratic appointee) issued their order to stay the lower court’s ruling, effectively putting the law back into effect for the November election. Early voting in Texas begins on October 20th.
“Essentially, all the marbles of this 5th Circuit order come down to ‘it’s too close to the election to stop the law from going into effect, because pollworkers will be confused,”explains election law expert Justin Levitt of the NYU Brennan Center for Justice.
The law eliminates same-day voter registration and out-of-precinct
voting, cuts the number of early voting days from 17 to 10, and requires
voters to present specific forms of identification at the polls. About 70% of black voters voted early in 2008 and 2012, and African
Americans were also more likely to use same-day registration than other
groups.
By Maya Rhodan
A federal judge ruled Friday against a petition by the Justice Department and civil rights group to block North Carolina’s expansive voting law from taking effect before November’s election, writing there was not enough evidence that it would cause “irreparable harm” if it remained in effect.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder said in his opinion that though the plaintiff’s raised plausible claims against the 2013 law, there was no need for an injunction on the law while the issue was litigated in the courts. The state’s request to dismiss the case altogether was also denied, and it will stand trial next year.
The law, which has been called one of the most suppressive laws in recent history, is being challenged by the Obama Administration and a group of civil rights organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Advancement Project, and the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, which claims the law will disenfranchise thousands of black voters. The law eliminates same-day voter registration and out-of-precinct voting, cuts the number of early voting days from 17 to 10, and requires voters to present specific forms of identification at the polls.
About 70% of black voters voted early in 2008 and 2012, and African Americans were also more likely to use same-day registration than other groups.
Jep Bush Wants to be President: He thinks he can sucker
Latino voters into voting for him because he speaks Spanish
and that blacks will forget his racist voter purges. (Illustration by DonkeyHotey)
By Ronald David Jackson Jeb Bush:While governor of Florida, he stole the 2000 Presidential Election for his brother George Bush by illegally purging thousands of eligible minority voters (mostly blacks) from the voting rolls. Al Gore would have won Florida easily and thus would have won the 2000 election if these black citizens were not blocked from the ballot box. Republicans have accelerated their voter suppression efforts because of the bad example set by Jeb Bush.
Investigative Reporter Greg Palast Decribes How Blacks Were Purged From Florida's Voting Rolls
94,000 people on a voter "purge" list -- half of them African-American -- continue to be banned from voting in Florida, even though the state knows the list is wildly inaccurate.
Let’s start in the year 2000, when Jeb Bush, then-Governor of Florida, managed to get 12,000 mostly-minority voters purged from the voting rolls in his state. He did this by wrongly identifying these eligible voters as convicted felons. As Ari Berman pointed out in Rolling Stone, Bush attempted to use this same technique in 2004 to give his brother Florida’s electoral votes, but public outcry prevented a second purge of minority voters.
A few years later, Bush set his sights on younger minority citizens, specifically third graders. The state of Florida had been faced with a problem in their test scores for fourth grade students – they were falling significantly below an acceptable level for the state. Rather than investing in textbooks or tutors or more teachers, Bush decided that the easiest thing to do would be to keep minority students out of the fourth grade. He did this by forcing thousands of minority third grade students to repeat that grade, preventing them from “dragging down” the fourth graders’ test scores.
A look at those states where Republicans are using the Supreme Court's recent decision on the Voting Rights Acts to turn back the clock on voting rights.
by Kara Brandeisky and Mike Tigas ProPublica, Nov. 1, 2013.
Last year, we wrote extensively about photo ID laws and the Supreme Court's decision to strike a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, with gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and the debt ceiling and healthcare debates already shaping the 2014 midterms, we're revisiting voting policies to see which states have enacted tougher restrictions since the Supreme Court ruling in June.
President Johnson signs Voting Rights Act in 1965, surrounded by elected
officials and Civil Rights leaders. Almost 50 years later, minorities, the
poor, and the elderly are still fighting to maintain full voting rights.
Remind me – what is Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act?
Under the Voting Rights Act, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination needed to get permission from the federal government to enact any changes to their voting laws, in a process called "preclearance." As of June 2013, nine states, mostly in the South – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia – needed to get any new voting laws pre-approved. Some counties and townships in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota and Michigan were also subject to preclearance. Section 5 first applied to states that imposed literacy tests or other unfair devices, and had low voter registration or turnout. Congress later expanded the law to add jurisdictions with sizable minority populations and English-only election materials. States and localities could "bailout," or get off the preclearance list, after 10 years of elections without any problems. Several smaller jurisdictions bailed out over the years, including parts of Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Wyoming, Hawaii, and Colorado. Of course, some of the biggest voting law battles of the 2012 election were in states not covered by Section 5 at all, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.
What did the Supreme Court strike down in Shelby County v. Holder?
The Supreme Court decided, 5-4, that the preclearance formula was unconstitutional under the 10th Amendment, which gives states the power to regulate elections. The Court ruled that the coverage formula was "based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day."
From the decision:
One important technical point: the Supreme Court actually left Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – the part of the law that describes how preclearance works – intact. Instead, the Court struck down Section 4, which explains which states and localities are subject to preclearance. If Congress amends Section 4, the Justice Department can start enforcing Section 5 again.
Why does this matter?
While literacy tests are a thing of the past, voting rights advocates say that statutes that limit early voting and registration, require voters to show photo ID, and purge voter rolls still disproportionately affect poor and minority voters. The Supreme Court's June 2013 decision also effectively shifted the burden from states to citizens. Before, a state subject to preclearance had to demonstrate that a new voting law was not discriminatory and let voting law experts in the Justice Department evaluate it before it could be implemented. Now it is up to voters to challenge voting laws by filing lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination. But most court cases involving Section 2 have been limited to redistricting, not other controversial voting measures, says Yale University law professor Heather Gerken.
Four leaders of the Civil Rights Movement: From left: Bayard Rustin,
Andrew Young, (N.Y. Cong.William Ryan), James Farmer, and John Lewis
in 1965. John Lewis is now a member of the House Representative
representing Georgia's 5th District, now forced to continue voting rights
fight — thanks to the Supreme Court and the Republican Party.
"With redistricting, there's always one very wealthy political party or another who can hire some very good lawyers and go into court and challenge it," Gerken said. "But a lot of the types of things that were challenged under Section 5 were smaller questions, like, ‘Can you change a polling place? Can you shut down early voting hours in ways that might affect the black community?' There are things smaller than redistricting that can fall through the cracks."
What have preclearance states done since the Supreme Court ruling? NORTH CAROLINA: Two months after the Supreme Court decision, North Carolina passed a number of measures, including strict new photo ID requirements. The law also eliminates same-day voter registration, shortens the early voting period by seven days, and specifies that ballots cast at the wrong polling station will be thrown out. Some changes will be phased in starting in 2014, and the photo ID provision goes into effect in 2016.
The North Carolina NAACP and a civil rights group called the Advancement Project have filed a lawsuit challenging the changes. The Justice Department also filed a suit of its own. But the suits venture into some new legal territory.
"What North Carolina did was definitely at the extreme of practices in this country," Gerken said. "So if anything is vulnerable to a suit, it's likely to be the North Carolina law. But again, the case law was built around redistricting cases. It wasn't built around this kind of work."
TEXAS: Last year, a federal court rejected Texas' voter ID law, calling it "the most stringent in the country." The panel also rejected the state's redistricting maps, finding that they protected white incumbents while altering districts with minority incumbents. But on the very day of the Supreme Court ruling, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the state would "immediately" enact both measures.
The photo ID law requires voters to present an approved form of photo identification, where before they could present mail, utility bills or other proof of voter registration. The Justice Department had refused to approve the law based on the state's findings that Hispanic registered voters were far less likely to have the approved photo IDs. The new law also requires the photo ID presented on voting day to match the state's voter rolls — complicating voting for some married women and others with name changes.
The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against the newly enacted photo ID requirements and joined an ongoing lawsuit against the disputed redistricting maps.
FLORIDA: After the Supreme Court ruling, Florida resumed its plans to remove non-citizens from its voter rolls using the federal SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database. The Department of Homeland Security database helps government agencies check the immigration statuses of people applying for government benefits like drivers' licenses, housing assistance, or Medicaid. But opponents of Florida's measure say that SAVE data is faulty and not meant for elections, and that using the database to verify voter rolls will disenfranchise eligible voters. (Colorado legislators rejected a bill to purge rolls based on SAVE data for this very reason, but that didn't stop Secretary of State Scott Gessler from moving ahead with the plan.) The Miami Herald found that Florida voters flagged for verification were disproportionately Hispanic, and most turned out to be citizens. The Department of Justice has also said that SAVE is not meant to be "a comprehensive and definitive listing of U.S. citizens," especially since it doesn't include data about people born in the United States.
A nonprofit group has challenged the law, but a federal court dismissed the lawsuit after the Supreme Court ruled that Florida was no longer subject to preclearance. Another group has appealed a similar case to the 11th Circuit.
VIRGINIA: Virginia passed a number of voting laws this spring that seem likely to go into effect in wake of the Supreme Court ruling.
The Virginia legislature passed a photo ID law last year (which the Justice Department approved), but the more recent measure goes further to limit what kinds of voter identification are acceptable. Voters can no longer show utility bills, bank statements, government checks or paychecks before they vote, but they can get an ID for freeif they don't already have one.
Voters wait in long lines in Virginia, Tuesday, Nov 5, 2013.
The new laws also require the Virginia State Board of Elections to remove ineligible voters by comparing state voter rolls with the SAVE database and other states.The Democratic Party of Virginia has sued the state over the interstate crosschecks, contending that the database has erroneous information and the law will disenfranchise poor, elderly and minority voters, but a federal judge rejected the suit for lack of evidence. As of Oct. 17, the Board of Elections had already purged more than 38,000 voters.
SOUTH CAROLINA: In October 2012, a federal court blocked the implementation of South Carolina's photo ID law until 2013. The court found that although the law was not discriminatory, there was not enough time to implement changes before the 2012 election. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said the Supreme Court ruling now allows states to "implement reasonable election reforms, such as voter ID laws similar to South Carolina's."
MISSISSIPI: Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said Mississippi will enact a strict photo ID law by 2014. The state says it will provide free transportation to government offices where voters will be able to obtain free photo IDs.
ALABAMA: Secretary of State Beth Chapman said Alabama would also enact changes to its photo ID law by 2014. Like Virginia, Alabama used to accept other kinds of non-photo identification, such as utility bills and Social Security cards. But the new law requires voters to present photo IDs (the state will also provide free voter IDs to those who don't have them). Legislators passed the measure in 2011, but Alabama stalled in submitting the law for preclearance.
ARIZONA: The Supreme Court issued another significant ruling on voting laws this summer: In Arizona et al. v Intertribal Council of Arizona, Inc. et al., the Court ruled that Arizona, formerly a preclearance state, could not unilaterally require voters to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote in a federal election. But the Court said Arizona could sue the Election Assistance Commission to get the federal voter registration form amended to require proof of citizenship. Now, both Arizona and Kansas have sued the commission.
In case their legal challenges are unsuccessful, the states are setting up two-tiered systems of voter registration, requiring proof of citizenship for state and local races but not federal ones. So far, Kansas has suspended registration for about 17,500 voters until those they submit proof of citizenship.
SOUTH DAKOTA: Four Directions Inc., a Native American voting rights group, has asked the Justice Department to investigate why Secretary of State Jason Grant has so far refused to use federal money to fund satellite voting centers for registration and early voting on some Native American reservations.
What about non-preclearance states?
The 35 states that were not subject to any kind of preclearance were unaffected by the Supreme Court decision. But several of those states have also moved to tighten voting rules this year.
ARKANSAS: This spring, Republican legislators overrode the governor's veto to pass a law requiring voters to show photo IDs. If voters don't have them, they can cast provisional ballots and return with IDs by the Monday after the election. The state will also provide free IDs to people who do not already have them.
IOWA: In late March, Iowa implemented an administrative rule allowing Secretary of State Matt Schultz to begin a voter roll purge using the SAVE database. Activists have sued Schultz in an attempt to stop the purge.
INDIANA: In May, Indiana enacted a law requiring officials to check voter rolls for individuals registered to vote in other states. The advocacy group Project Vote worries that the measure could lead to voter purges.
TENNESSEE: This spring, Tennessee passed a bill restricting the kinds of IDs that can be used to vote. Previously, voters could show student IDs, out-of-state IDs, library cards, or any other IDs issued by counties or municipalities. Now only photo IDs issued by the state of Tennessee or the federal government are acceptable. The Green Party of Tennessee has sued the state over the law.
So, where does all of this leave the Voting Rights Act?
The Supreme Court left it up to Congress to write new preclearance criteria. In a July hearing, House Republicans showed little interest in rewriting Section 4. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., says there's actually quiet Republican support for the issue. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., made headlines when he publicly supported restoring the law.
"There is at least one Republican, and you'll find out in the future a lot more, that is committing to putting life in this most important civil rights act that got a stab in the back from the Supreme Court," Sensenbrenner said.
Gerken, the law professor, isn't optimistic that Congress will come up with a new Section 4 formula. But she said there are other actions Congress could take. For example, she has advocated that Congress adopt an "opt-in" approach and allow civil rights groups to file simple complaints for the Justice Department to investigate. Then the agency could halt the implementation of discriminatory laws as necessary.
Yale law professor Travis Crum has also suggested a "bail-in" measure, by which Congress could instead strengthen Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, letting courts put states under preclearance if their voting laws violate the 14th or 15th amendments.
As part of the Justice Department's lawsuits against Texas and North Carolina, the federal agency has asked the courts to put those states back under preclearance.
This post will be kept up-to-date. Has your state or local government restricted voting rights since June 2013? Tweet at me, email me at kara.brandeisky@propublica.orgor leave a comment below.
