The GOP War On ‘Undesirable’ Voters

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

"King" Russell Pearce gets a lot of media attention for his anti-immigrant hate mongering. But one of his early "successes" (sic) was Prop. 200 in 2004, which required that voters be able to produce both identification and proof of citizenship prior to being allowed to vote in any election. This was a solution in search of a problem that did not exist in Arizona — there had not been a prosecution for "voter fraud" in Arizona for many years. ("King" Russell's voter I.D. requirement only applies to voters who vote at the polls, but not to early mail-in ballots preferred by most Republican voters).

Claims of "voter fraud" have been promulgated by the Republican Party ever since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Republicans want to keep "undesirable" voters from voting — the poor, people of color and young voters who tend to vote Democratic, when they do vote. There is an entire cottage industry in the right-wing media built upon promulgating claims of voter fraud.

The most recent example of this was the entirely fabricated attack upon the voter registration efforts of community organizer ACORN by FAUX News Fraudcasting (an independent Investigation by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes,  California Attorney General Jerry Brown, found no criminal wrongdoing by the organization, and a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said it could not find any instances in which questionable people registered to vote by ACORN showed up at the polls on Election Day).

And the infamous "pimp videos" by James O'Keefe and Andrew Beitbart played by FAUX News Fraudcasting on a 24-hour loop for months on end? Yeah about those videos. The videos were substantially edited, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments. In fact, O'Keefe never wore his ridiculous pimp regalia into a single ACORN office, always dressing instead like a buttoned-down junior accountant. Now reopen Breitbart's ACORN fraud — and get the story right – Joe Conason – Salon.com (Both O'Keefe and Breitbart faced prosecution in several states for violation of privacy rights). The only "fraud" committed was journalistic fraud committed by the right-wing noise machine orchestrated by FAUX News Fraudcasting.

With these kind of inflammatory "voter fraud" stories promulgated by the right-wing noise machine for many years, versions of Arizona's Prop. 200 were enacted by several other states, including the state of Indiana.

The Indiana Democratic Party and other organizations sued to challenge the voter I.D. requirement as an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote and a poll tax. Numerous amicus briefs were submitted with statistical data to establish that, like Arizona, the state of Indiana had not had a single prosecution for "voter faud" in many years. It was a solution in search of a problem that did not exist. Despite the substantial weight of the evidence, the U.S. Supreme Court in Crawford, et al. v. Marion County Election Board, et al. (2008) http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-21.ZO.html, upheld the voter I.D. law in a 6-3 decision.

States that require voter I.D. must be willing to pay for them, the result of a court ruling that declared part of Georgia's I.D. law unconstitutional because people lacking I.D.s would have to pay for cards themselves – creating, in effect, a poll tax.

[Arizona's Prop. 200 proof of citizenship requirement to register to vote was recently struck down by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on federal preemption grounds, ruling that Prop 200 violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).]

The Washington Post reports today, in an article republished in local Arizona newspapers, In states, parties clash over voting laws that call for IDs, limits on where college students can cast ballots:

New Hampshire House Republicans are pushing for new laws that would prohibit many college students from voting in the state – and effectively keep some from voting at all.

One bill would permit students to vote in their college towns only if they or their parents had previously established permanent residency there – requiring all others to vote in the states or other New Hampshire towns they come from. Another bill would end Election Day registration, which O'Brien said unleashes swarms of students on polling places, creating opportunities for fraud.

Entirely missing from this WaPo report is any mention of the law: Symm v. United States , 439 U.S. 1105, 99 S.Ct. 1006 (1979) mandated that college students be allowed to register to vote in the county or precinct where they attend school. See also: NEWBURGER v. PETERSON, U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire (1972), in which the court ruled the state cannot bar college students from voting in New Hampshire even if they intend to leave after graduation.” The bill sponsor, Rep. Gregory Sorg (R), told a public hearing that he had not read the decision but did not “care” for it. TheDartmouth.com: Legislators debate student voting.

Back to WaPo:

Many states, for instance, do not require identification to vote. Measures being proposed in 32 states would add an ID requirement or proof of citizenship, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

* * *

Democrats charge that the real goal, as with anti-union measures in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere, is simply to deflate the power of core Democratic voting blocs – in this case young people and minorities. For all the allegations of voter fraud, Democrats and voting rights groups say, there is scant evidence to show that it is a problem.

"It's a war on voting," said Thomas Bates, vice president of Rock the Vote, a youth voter- registration group mounting a campaign to fight the array of state measures. "We'd like to be advocating for a 21st-century voting system, but here we are fighting against efforts to turn it back to the 19th century."

Exactly! Back to the good old days when only white men who owned property and were free of debt (few would qualify today) were qualified to vote.

There is one case of "voter fraud," however, you may not have seen reported. The state of Indiana finally has its first "voter fraud" prosecution in many years – Indiana's newly elected GOP Secretary of State Charlie White — the guy who is in charge of elections in Indiana. I kid you not. Indiana's New Republican Sec. of State Charged With Three Counts of Felony Voter Fraud:

White, the new chief election official in IN, the state with one of the most draconian voter suppression polling-place Photo ID restriction laws in the nation, has been charged with three counts of voter fraud (as well as additional counts of perjury, financial institution fraud, and theft), just two months after being sworn in last January, for having lied about his address when he voted in last year's GOP primary…

According to the Indianapolis Star…

The state's top election official will face seven felony counts, including voter fraud, perjury and theft, a special prosecutor said today.

Secretary of State Charlie White was accused of intentionally voting in the wrong precinct during the May 2010 primary, a potential felony.

White turned himself in at the Hamilton County Jail Thursday afternoon and was released after posting $10,000 bond.
…
White has admitted to voting in a district where he no longer lived.

* * *

White, who had previously served as the chair of the Hamilton County Republican Party, is refusing to step aside from the SoS post despite calls from both Republicans and Democrats to do so, according to the Courier-Journal.

In a statement released yesterday, Republican Governor Mitch Daniels said: "It would be neither credible nor appropriate for the state's top elections official to continue to perform his duties while contesting criminal charges, some of them under the very laws the secretary of state implements."

Ya think?

As for Indiana's voter I.D. requirement that the U.S. Supreme Court said would not be overly burdensome to voters:

Indiana's new polling-place Photo ID restriction laws, among the most draconian in the nation, elderly veterans, as well as nuns and students were turned away from the polling place while trying to exercise their legal right to vote. The law, as instituted under the previous Republican SoS, now-Congressman Todd Rokita, created enormous obstacles to voting for Indiana residents — mostly elderly, students, and minorities (read: Democratic-leaning voters) — who did not already own state-issued photo ID cards.

Studies cited [PDF] by the League of Women Voters, and many others, have warned that more than 20 million legal American voters — the majority of them Democratic-leaning — stand to be disenfranchised nationally by such laws. So, naturally, Republicans continue to work to institute such restrictions in state after state across the country, even as those like White are regularly found to have flaunted such laws.

"Voter fraud" is almost a non-existent problem in this country. GOP "voter suppression," however, is an entire cottage industry designed to keep "undesirable" voters from voting — the poor, people of color and young voters who tend to vote Democratic, when they do vote. And yes, it is illegal. But the corporate media chooses not to report it.