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Battle for Equal Voting Rights Shifts to Courts |
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With the first 2008 primaries less than 100 days away, several significant cases are working their way through the courts that could determine which of us can vote in next year’s elections. The case with the widest impact will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed last week to consider whether voter identification laws are constitutional.
The high court is looking at two combined cases, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board and Democratic Party v. Rokita, based on an Indiana law that requires all voters to show a photo ID. The AFL-CIO, along with its civil rights allies, opposes such laws because they suppress the vote of people of color, the poor and seniors, as they often do not have driver’s licenses or other government identification.
Supporters of voter ID laws, many of them Republican legislators, claim such laws prevent voter fraud. As is the case in other states, no evidence of voter fraud was presented in the Indiana case. We reported that with so much at stake in the next election, Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country rushed to pass voter ID laws, making it appear as though voter fraud is rampant. But that’s not the case, according to election experts.
Take a look at what Richard Hasen, a distinguished professor at Loyola Marymount University’s law school, wrote last year on Slate:
Beyond a few isolated instances and anecdotes, there is precious little evidence of the kind of voter fraud a state voter ID card requirement would deter. I am aware of no studies finding evidence of any kind of systematic or serious problems with voters casting ballots in someone else’s name, or with voters registering and actually voting using fictitious names.
Low-income people tend to drive less (and so they wouldn’t have a driver’s license, which is the most common form of ID), and they may not have the money to secure certified copies of documents, such as birth certificates, necessary to obtain a state-issued voter identification. Low-income people also happen to be more likely to vote Democratic.
Meanwhile, the battle to protect the right to vote continues in the states. In Georgia, a federal district court judge last month upheld a 2005 law requiring voters to show a photo ID.
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law and the Advancement Project, among others, filed a lawsuit Sept. 17 challenging Florida’s statewide election law that denies voter registration to any state citizen if the state cannot match the driver’s license or Social Security number provided on the registration form.
Not satisfied to suppress votes through intimidating ID laws, some opponents of voting rights are challenging the very law that ensures equal rights at the poll. A Texas district is challenging last year’s congressional reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments in September in a case brought by the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One. The suit claims the rules requiring federal approval before certain districts may change voting laws, is unnecessary.
The Senate rejected similar arguments and unanimously renewed the act July 26, 2006, after an intensive, grassroots effort by union members and civil rights, religious and voting rights groups. Activists’ efforts even moved some of the most recalcitrant senators to vote for the bill.
Responding to calls from the AFL-CIO and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, activists kept Capitol Hill phone lines busy as they made a big push to get their lawmakers to reauthorize the critical provisions of the act. The House voted to reauthorize by a strong 390–33 margin, with all the “nay” votes coming from Republicans.
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The Supremes will uphold the right of states to deny voting rights to illegal aliens, which is the purpose of the laws. Not a citizen? Go home and vote.
How would you know if voter fraud is, or is not, rampant? To date it has been so easy to register to vote in most states that this statement is clearly designed to mislead. In Arizona, we now require photo identification at the polls and citizenship proof to register. The Democrats hate it, but they will hate even more the fact that the country is moving toward counting only citizens in the 2010 Census and going to proportional representation (electoral college votes allocated by congressional district, not winner-take-all like it is now). That should deminish the ferver to support illegal immigration.
I think all states should require voters to present photo identification to vote. It is only common sense. There are millions of illegal aliens in the United States. Photo identification is needed to prevent voter fraud.
Like in Georgia where they arranged for a private vendor to SELL the id’s to fols w/out a drivers license, then arranged that the closest out let for 40miles from Atlanta? So you are an epleptic clerical worker for Atlanta PD and don’t drive cause it’s unsafe so have to ride a bus two hours each way from your downtown apartment for your voting pass-even though you have passed both a GBI and FBI background check? If you don’t you don’t vote. What about all our folks in public housing with no car? The people in assisted living? The grandparents who get chore services and such. Sheesh you guys are not paying attention-suppression is the problem, the larger the vote the more union friends are elected, and the bigger the cheat to steal an election
Grandparents, disabled, and minorities get around for other reasons. There is no reason whatsoever that those that truly have a difficult time meeting registration issues, or voting issues canont be thought of and still have reasonable voter registration and voter laws, including a secure, safe, ID.
Rather then make weak excuses why we should not have a safe, verifiable ID, then why not looking into making it safe, secure, and still available to those who have the right to vote, rather then just saying we can’t have a safe, secure vote.
One good move would be to actually consider that most studies that look at undervoting actually consider illegal aliens in the voting age population. So there go all those statistics. Those faulty studies have been used in court to prove that minorities are harmed by voter id laws.
Oh then those illegal aliens are included in the population statistics to decide the number of electoral votes, so there our vote gets influenced again, even without illegal aliens ever voting.
Its about time this is fixed. We have a right to a safe, secure vote, to promote the view that we must give that up to meet some greater objective is just an attempt to disenfranchise the legitimate voters themselves.
All those headlines about the how much the growing minority vote is so important forget to mention that the number of minority legal voters is much lower.
Then we are all supposed to be concerned when minorities vote less based on demographic data containing illegal aliens. Then fix it, support a secure, safe ID for voting. Maybe then I will be concerned again about the the minorites not voting. Until then its just an attempt to disenfranchise legitimate voters and it affects every legal citizens right to vote.
This url is a view by an economist on the current job growth statistics and how U.S. citizens are not the ones getting the jobs. So why aren’t the unions working to keep jobs for the people here legally? Why do they continuously push “rights” for illegal aliens? There is no right for illegal aliens to work - it is against the law.
The author gives the quote below from BLS then shows how a large portion of that new job growth is actually foreign born illegal alliens.
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/224473
Neither the establishment nor household survey is designed to identify the legal status of workers. Thus, while it is likely that both surveys include at least some undocumented immigrants, it is not possible to determine how many are counted in either survey. The household survey does include questions about whether respondents were born outside the United States. Data from these questions show that foreign-born workers accounted for about 15 percent of the labor force in 2006 and about 47 percent of the net increase in the labor force from 2000 to 2006.”
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