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4-22-08, 9:58 am
Washington, Apr 15 (Prensa Latina) The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School has found that 25 percent of adult African Americans, 15 percent of adults earning below $35,000 annually, and 18 percent of seniors over 65 do not possess government-issued photo IDs necessary to vote.
Steven Rosenfeld, a fellow at Alternet.org, says in his new book "Loser Take All," edited by Mark Crispin Miller (Ig Publishing, 2008), that since the 2004 election, activist lawyers with ties to the Republican Party and its presidential campaigns, Republican legislators, and even the Supreme Court -- in a largely unnoticed ruling in 2006 -- have been aggressively regulating most aspects of the voting process.
Collectively, these efforts are undoing the gains of the civil rights era that brought voting rights to minorities and the poor, groups that tend to support Democrats.
In addition, notes Rosenfeld, the Department of Justice (DOJ), which for decades had fought to ensure that all eligible citizens could vote, now encourages states to take steps in the opposite direction. Political appointees who advocate for stringent requirements before ballots are cast and votes are counted have driven much of the DOJ's Voting Section's recent agenda.
As a result, the Department has pushed states to purge voter lists, and to adopt newly restrictive voter ID and provisional ballot laws.
In addition, during most of George W. Bush's tenure, the DOJ has stopped enforcing federal laws designed to aid registration, such as the requirement that state welfare offices offer public aid recipients the opportunity to register to vote.
Two states with Republican-majority legislatures -- Florida and Ohio --, notorious for their contested vote results in the 2000 and 2004 elections, made voter registration drives more difficult by raising penalties for errors on registration forms. In Ohio, where ACORN was registering approximately 5,000 new voters per week, those efforts were suspended during the litigation, meaning an estimated 30,000 people were not given the opportunity to register.
Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, told the House Judiciary Committee on March 22, 2007 that, "The Voting Section did not file any cases on behalf of African-American voters during a five-year period between 2001 and 2006," adding that, "no cases have been brought on behalf of Native American voters for the entire administration."
Looking toward the 2008 election, it appears the purges -- as well as the new voter ID laws, restrictions on registration drives and stricter rules for counting provisional ballots -- could be a new and legal way to accomplish a longstanding GOP electoral tactic: thinning the ranks of likely Democratic voters.
Rosenfeld recalls that in numerous elections dating back to the 1960s, the Republican Party has tried to challenge new voter registrations to accomplish this goal, although since 1981 federal courts have blocked some of those efforts as illegal electioneering.
Among the intimidating tactics are warning signs posted near the polls, or radio ads targeted to minority listeners containing dire threats of prison terms for people who are not properly registered -- messages that seem designed to put minority voters on the defensive.
Analysts like Rosenfeld now ask themselves if the history of vote suppression tactics will repeat itself during the 2008 presidential election.
While the Democrats are not saints when it comes to voter suppression -- recall how John Kerry's supporters disqualified signatories to Ralph Nader's presidential petitions in 2004 -- they do not have the same kind of vote suppression apparatus in place as the Republicans do.
Finally, the tactics that can be implemented well before the voting begins -- stricter voter ID laws, voter purges, registration drive curbs, tougher provisional ballot laws and easing rule for voter challenges -- are already underway in several states.
Prensa Latina
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