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For anyone who thought legal disenfranchisement was a thing of the past, think again. The 2012 campaign season — which will pick up speed in the wake of the elections held around the country today — may well bring the harshest attack on voting rights in decades. As evidenced by a new video released today by the Advancement Project and Brave New Films, a blitz of new voter identification restrictions has flooded state legislatures, threatening to disenfranchise millions of voters who don’t have the money, transportation or paperwork to secure necessary IDs.
A report from the Brennan Center for Justice finds that the majority of these voters are from groups traditionally viewed as part of the Democratic base. But whatever their party affiliation, the new legislation stands to limit the participation of millions of African-American, Latino, young and elderly voters.
The numbers don’t lie. According to a report from our partners at the Advancement Project, the new laws could disenfranchise 21 million Americans and cost taxpayers $20 million in free IDs. This at a time when state budgets are already strapped. Last month, one news report explained how those targeted by this new wave of restrictions are the same populations that are particularly vulnerable to political, social and economic neglect. For example, a quarter of Black citizens nationwide do not hold the proper state-issued photo ID required under the new state laws. What used to be achieved through poll taxes and literacy tests is now the work of conservative state legislators and governors. In South Carolina, 61-year-old Willie Blair, an African-American farmer, was recently featured on NPR describing the bureaucratic nightmare to which he’s been exposed because of the new restrictions.
If all this sounds like an orchestrated effort to restrict voting rights in key battleground states nationwide, that’s because it is. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative advocacy group backed by the billionaire Koch brothers and corporations, is the key architect of legislation that’s been introduced in 34 states this year as a panacea to the specter of “voter fraud” that conservatives often get worked up about as election season nears. But when NPR asked a spokesman for the South Carolina State Election Commission if voter fraud was cause for concern, the official responded that there have been no recorded or confirmed cases in the state’s recent history. Advancement Project has written extensively about the myth of voter fraud, asserting that state ID requirements would fail to address the rare improper voting case that crops up.
The U.S. has a problem with voter turnout, not with voter fraud. Only 64% of eligible voters went to the polls in 2008 and 2004. That’s why the video being distributed today by Advancement Project and Brave New Films is so important. It documents the massive attack being waged on our voting rights right now, and points the way toward a range of election protection and Get Out the Vote efforts that racial justice and progressive organizations can take up in the next year. It’s time for all of us to step up, and to begin right now. It’s the only way we can make sure that voters are not deprived of their right to be heard in 2012 and beyond.
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Voted in Texas today. Received a flyer from the polling people serving notice of required ID for future elections starting in 2012. Photo ID law was passed by the Tx legislature (overrun with Repubs) this year. Disenfranchisement begins next year.
If you don’t have a valid photo ID you can apply for a free “election id card at Tx DPS. You know, the DPS that never answers or returns calls, has lines around the building all day long… that DPS.
Not to defend these laws, but the practical question that always puzzles me is, “How do people function without an I.D?”
How do they cash a check (personal, SS, disability, employment, whatever)?
How do they open a bank account? (Is it that the older ones have a bank account from waaay back, when ID requirements were much less stringent, or when they had ID such as a driver’s license?)
How do they use a credit card? (Anytime I use one at a store where they don’t already know me — i.e. local market, pharmacy, etc. — the clerk will usually at least glance at my ID?)
How do they drive? If they use public transportation, how do they prove they qualify for senior citizen’s discounts? (Just by looking old enough?)
And legal immigrant naturalized citizens have no ID?
“Young” voters? 18 year-olds without any ID? Seems a wee bit of stretch to me.
It’s the New GOP voter suppression!
…..because voter suppression isn’t just for African Americans anymore.
Just adding: Would appreciate some concrete examples and explanations so that I can understand the situation better. (Makes it easier to counter arguments from R’s if you have examples.)
this is a non issue.. just another band wagon to distract the masses. According to Brad Friedman on Ring of Fire the voting machines are rigged, all of them No one…democrat or republican… does not matter, they will do nothing about it. Greenwalds video does not even mention that. the corporations own the machines and the politicians. the democrats had power for 2 years and all of a sudden they are calling on us to have a fit about the republicans when they have done nothing about the voting machines themselves. They won’t even talk about them. Our votes don’t count anymore and there is a growing number of us who know that and that is why people do not bother.
They’d like a means test as well. If your not a property owner white and Conservative don’t bother trying to register, is what it come down to. As one of my Conserv. friends said to me Poor people shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
Is Mississippi going to photo id all their new persons?
It’s denying easy access to absentee ballots too….on Friday when I went to pick up my absentee ballot, I was told that our Republican legislature changed the rules this year, requiring you to pick them up more than 5 days ahead (denying me my usual practice of looking it over closely on the weekend before the election).
So sure enough, today (Election Day) I woke up with the flu, spiking a fever of 103.8 degrees. But I got out of bed, voted, and then shook hands with every Republican candidate outside my polling place.
These days benefits like unemployment are usually transferred electronically. A person needs an ID to enter a program. If it is lost later, a low income person can scarcely spare the few dollars needed to replace it,so does without.
Also, homeless people frequently lose all their possessions and have a great deal of difficulty (and often a great deal of time elapses) in replacing identification. They don´t have credit cards. If you spend time among the very low income, you will see that replacing lost identification for them is not nearly as easy as it is for those who have a home, a bank account, credit cards and all the comforts we like to be accustomed to.
Sadly another example of Uncle Joe Stalin’s thought about “voters don’t matter, its the people who count the votes who matter”. Weren’t we enemies, and deathly afraid of him. I must have missed the memo about adopting his policies.
The problem seems to be that people who don’t support the corporatocracy want to think they should have a say in a “democracy”…. or at least in what’s supposed to pass as one.