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On the Radar
 A regular column by Steven Carbó, Director of Demos' Democracy Program
Media, Politics, and Apathy: The Specter of Voter Fraud
Sometimes when something is repeated often enough, it takes on the ring of truth.
That's the way it is with allegations of voter fraud. The myth has circulated for so long--decades in fact--that for many people it has moved from hypothesis to fact. Despite a massive void of evidence, the charges of widespread fraud perpetrated by individuals, or groups of individual voters, persist. In fact, they have become a major communications and lobbying tool in the arsenal of the Right.
In the months since the November 2004 election, conservative ideologues and their partisan allies have harnessed voter fraud allegations as a powerful "new" weapon against the American people and our ability to have a political voice. Misleading accounts of illegal voting--involving identity theft, double voting, and voting by people with felony convictions-are increasingly reported as fact in the mainstream press, partisan blogs and political debates. To meet their goal of advancing election policy that restricts access to the ballot box, a simple strategy: imposing strict new voter identification proposals on an unwitting electorate.
(continued)
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Featured Editorial
Locked out of Democracy
Sasha Abramsky
In the weeks since President Bush nominated John Roberts to succeed Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court, civil rights groups have started sounding alarm bells about their issues, moving them into the spotlight. Is Roberts for or against preserving legalized abortion? Is Roberts a wolf in lamb's clothing who will take a gavel to affirmative action, to environmental regulations, to eminent domain over private lands or regulate the right to reproductive choice or the definition of family?
There should be real concern about these issues, and the public debate is on. (continued)
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State News
California: McPherson Ditches Diebold; Courts Reject Redistricting Initiative
In a surprising move, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson rejected Diebold's signature electronic voting machine, the TsX, in late July. After conducting a mock election and casting 10,000 ballots on 96 machines, McPherson discovered that the Diebold system was plagued by paper jams and computer freezes. Initially, the failure rate for the tested machines was thought to have been 10 percent, but a later report revealed it to be 20 percent. Three California counties had already paid more than $40 million for 13,000 TsX machines. These counties are looking at alternative ways to conduct the November special election, including using paper ballots. Diebold has promised to fix the problems with its system and reapply for approval.
Also in California, the state Supreme Court reinstated a ballot initiative that would have given a panel of independent judges the power to draw political districts. Supporters of the Schwarzenegger-backed proposal gathered nearly one million signatures and anticipated that the measure would be included on the November ballot. But upon realizing that two different versions had been circulated -- one to voters and another to his office -- Attorney General Bill Lockyer sued to have the initiative removed from the ballot. Two lower courts had previously found that the error, which proponents argue was accidental, was enough to disqualify the proposal. The high court said that without evidence that discrepancies between the versions of the initiative "were likely to have misled the persons who signed the initiative petition ... it would not be appropriate to deny the electorate the opportunity to vote on Proposition 77."
Oakland Tribune 7/29/05; Ang Newspapers/InsidetheBayArea.com 8/3/05; Stockton Record 7/30/05; LA Times 7/22/05; San Francisco Chronicle 8/13/05
Florida: Volusia County Voting Machines Still in Limbo
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to order Voluisa County, Florida, to purchase disability-accessible touch-screen voting machines for the upcoming fall elections. The ruling is a blow to the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), which had failed to obtain a preliminary injunction to force the county to purchase touch-screens in time for the October 11 city elections before appealing to the federal appeals court.
While the 11th Circuit decision did not order the county to buy the disability-accessible machines before the fall elections, it said it would eventually hear the NFB's appeal. NFB claims that state law requires disability-accessible technology -- such as "audio ballots" and headphones -- to be in place by July 1, 2005. Volusia County said that it had rejected a contract with Diebold Election Systems for 210 touch-screen machines because the technology could not produce a voter verifiable paper trail.
Orlando Sentinel 7/06/05; Orlando Sentinel 7/23/05 and 8/02/05
Ohio: Blackwell & ES&S Settle Dispute; LWV Files Lawsuit
Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has reached an agreement with touch-screen voting manufacturer ES&S to give the Nebraska-based firm more time to market its machines to Ohio counties, bringing an end to a four month-long dispute. Earlier this summer, ES&S sued Blackwell, claiming that a directive he issued in April requiring all Ohio counties to purchase new touch-screen voting machines by mid-May was arbitrarily set, and that Ohio's paper trail requirements had been constantly changing. These inconsistencies had hampered ES&S' ability to gain state and federal certification in a timely fashion and to compete effectively with Diebold -- an Ohio-based company and the only manufacturer of touch-screen voting machines to have completed the state and federal certification process. Thirty-two Ohio counties had joined ES&S's suit, asking for the opportunity to choose from a range of touch-screen systems developed by different manufacturers.
Also in Ohio, a coalition of voter advocates, led by the League of Women Voters, has filed a lawsuit against the state for what they claim are thirty years of election deficiencies, including problems with voter registration, voting machine allocation, absentee and provisional ballots, and poll worker training. The lawsuit alleges Ohio has violated the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as failed to fulfill the requirements of the Help America Vote Act. The lawsuit intends to compel Ohio to make changes in time for the November 2006 election. "This lawsuit is not about overturning election results, it's about fixing a broken election system that is preventing people from having their vote counted," asserted Peg Hull Smith of the League of Women Voters of Toledo-Lucas County. However, Carlo LoParo, spokesperson for Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, called the lawsuit "misdirected," saying the issues mentioned in the suit are not the responsibility of the state, but of county boards of election.
AP 7/28/05 and 8/5/05; Columbus Dispatch 7/28/05; Business Wire 7/28/05; Democracy Dispatches 58
South Dakota: State Violates Voting Rights Act
A panel of federal judges has recently ruled that South Dakota is in violation of the Voting Rights Act for creating discriminatory voting districts. After a lawsuit was filed by under-represented American Indian voters asking for district lines to be redrawn, the state passed a law changing redistricting procedures. Charles Mix County, where the Yankton Sioux Tribe is located, then submitted a redistricting plan without sending it to the Department of Justice, as required by a 2002 consent decree. South Dakota claimed that it was not violating the law because the 2002 agreement did not cover Charles Mix County. However, federal judges found that the new law covered all the counties, including those counties covered by the 2002 agreement. Evelyn Blackmoon, lead plaintiff on the case, said that "this is an effort to change" the representation in Charles Mix County, where an American Indian has never served as an elected official.
Knight Ridder 7/27/05
Washington: Top-Two Primary Ruled Unconstitutional
On July 15, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly tossed out Washington State's new top-two primary as unconstitutional. The ruling came after the state's major political parties challenged the measure on the grounds that it violated their First Amendment right to nominate a candidate representing their party. The top-two primary system would have allowed the top two vote-getters to move on to the general election, regardless of political affiliation. Washington residents approved the change by voting in favor of Initiative 872 in last November's election.
Judge Zilly, however, issued an injunction declining to expand his ruling to allow political parties control over which candidates may claim affiliation. An appeal by sponsors of I-872 was filed immediately after Zilly's ruling. Unless the decision is overturned the state will revert back to the so-called "Montana primary," which does not require voters to declare a political affiliation, but which restricts them to choosing from a single party's primary ballot.
Washington voters had a "blanket primary" system for more than 65 years, where voters could vote for any candidate from any political party. In 2003, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, relying on a U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning California's open primary three years previously, ruled that Washington's blanket primary was unconstitutional for the same reasons Judge Zilly cited in the most recent ruling.
A report issued by Demos in 2004, Ballot Barrier: Will Proposition 62 Limit Voter Choice in California? [PDF], found that top two primaries force political parties to nominate candidates using methods with less public accountability than public elections. Such a system requires voters to absorb information about a large number of candidates without the assistance of partisan labels.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 7/30/05; Seattle Times 7/16/05; Report by Demos, Ballot Barrier: Will Proposition 62 Limit Voter Choice in California? (October 2004)
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EDR Roundup
Massachusetts advocates testified in support of an Election Day Registration (EDR) bill at a July 19 hearing before the Joint Committee on Election Laws. Supporters of the legislation emphasized that EDR states had an average voter turnout of 73.8 percent in the 2004 election, compared with an average voter turnout of 60 percent in non-EDR states.
Meanwhile, on July 20, a North Carolina House Committee voted along party lines to approve a measure that would enable voters to register and cast a ballot the same day during the early voting period. Currently, North Carolina residents must register 25 days in advance of an election in order to vote.
The passage of EDR legislation would likely be particularly beneficial for young people in North Carolina. A recent study by Democracy North Carolina shows that almost 70 percent of 18-24 year-olds would be more likely to vote if they could register on Election Day. Only 2 percent of the 529 young North Carolinians surveyed said they were aware of the state's current voter registration deadline. "Young people want to be involved, but as first time voters the process can often be intimidating and confusing," said Katie White, a North Carolina student. "We need to streamline the voting process so that it's as hassle-free as possible. Same-day registration is already working in six states and there's no reason that North Carolina can't make this a reality as well."
Worcester Telegram and Gazette 7/20/05; University Times 7/29/05; Charlotte Observer 7/22/05; AP 7/20/05
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Voter ID Roundup
In response to a wave of criticism, Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer has revised her plan for implementing Proposition 200's voter identification requirements. The previous version of the plan required voters to show election officials either one piece of government-issued photo ID with a valid address, or two forms of non-photographic identification, such as a bank statement or a utility bill. Voters lacking the requisite identification would not be allowed to cast provisional ballots. Under Brewer's revised plan, these criteria will still apply to most voters. But people whose names are on the precinct list but whose addresses are different from those on their IDs will be allowed to cast provisional ballots, as will American Indian voters with only one piece of non-photographic ID. "I still think a lot of people in '06, U.S. citizens who are registered, are going to be sent home because they're used to voting in a certain way," said Steve Gallardo (D-Phoenix). "A lot of people are going to be disenfranchised if provisional balloting is not [generally] available."
Criticism of a Washington State ballot initiative that would impose new voter ID requirements has also intensified this month. Initiative 342, which is modeled on Arizona's Proposition 200, would require prospective voters to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote and at the ballot box. The measure would also require agencies administering public benefits to verify a person's eligibility for benefits, including their citizenship status, and report violations of immigration law to the authorities. According to Soya Jung Harris, from the Social Justice Fund Northwest, the initiative is "being driven by a deeply cynical anti-immigrant movement that's working hard to divide our nation along racial and ethnic lines." It represents "a brand of bigotry [that] threatens to relegate not just immigrants, but families who have been in this country for generations, to second-class citizens." The initiative would need to attract 224,880 signatures in order to qualify for the 2006 ballot.
For the third time this session, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle has vetoed a bill that would have required voters in his state to show a photo ID at the polls. The governor stressed that the legislation would inevitably have disfranchised poor and elderly Wisconsin residents, many of whom lack driver's licenses or other forms of state-issued ID. Sponsors of the voter ID measure will now concentrate their efforts on amending the state constitution to require Wisconsin voters to show photographic identification at the polls.
Finally, former President Bill Clinton has criticized Georgia's new voter ID bill. "All over America there are efforts to restrict access to the vote under the guise of preventing voter fraud," he said. "And I say guise -- look at this Georgia bill, all the ID you've got to produce to register to vote." Meanwhile, in Georgia state officials are commissioning a bus to drive through the state and issue photo ID to low-income individuals who need it. People who haven't previously had state-issued ID will be able to sign a form saying they can't afford the $20 fee and get a free card. But critics maintain that one bus will not be adequate to issue ID to all the elderly and rural Georgia citizens who need it. The Georgia branch of the AARP recently released research showing that a third of all Georgians over the age of 75 currently lack a driver's license. Moreover, people who want a state ID will still need to present documents proving their identity -- often at a financial cost. State Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta) dismisses the bus tour as "a public relations gimmick" that will not prevent disfranchisement.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 7/22/05; Cox News Service 8/3/05; Atlanta Journal-Constitution 8/9/05; AP 8/12/05; Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 8/13/05
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Felony Disenfranchisement Roundup
Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack's Executive Order, which restored voting rights to over 80,000 ex-felons, is now being challenged by the Muscatine County Attorney's Office. The Attorney filed a mandamus petition with the 7th District Court which claims that the Governor acted outside of his authority by issuing an Executive Order to grant voting rights, and the petition seeks to force him to act on his "responsibilities as an officer of the law." The Governor's Deputy Attorney General Julie Potoroff argues that the Muscatine County Attorney's Office is not the proper authority to file the petition. District Court Judge Patrick Madden has scheduled a trial date of August 31 to hear the merits of the Muscatine County Attorney's petition. Should the challenge succeed, the voting rights of tens of thousands of Iowans will be placed in jeopardy again.
Meanwhile, thousands of formerly incarcerated people, their families, friends, and supporters gathered from across the country to march on Washington D. C. last Friday. The Journey for Justice March, organized by the Right to Vote Campaign's own Roberta Franklin, pointed to the staggering incarceration rates and ruthless sentencing policies in the United States. "This march in August is to send a message to our leaders, and an opportunity for the world to support our demands," said Franklin. "We must stop relying on incarceration, and give people an education and provide them with rehabilitation."
Article contributed by Mervyn Marcano, Right To Vote
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National News
Marchers Call For Reauthorization of Voting Rights Act
Thousands commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) by marching through downtown Atlanta calling for reauthorization of the landmark legislation. Originally passed in 1965, the Voting Rights Act banned racial discrimination in voting, outlawed literacy tests, and removed other barriers to voting by people of color, especially in the South. But many advocates are concerned that President Bush will not reauthorize the expiring provisions of the law. The "pre-clearance," bilingual voting and federal monitors sections are set to expire in August 2007. "The civil rights accomplishments of the last 50 years are now in jeopardy," said Rev. Jesse Jackson, organizer of the August 6 march, who chose Georgia as the location for the protest partly because the state's legislature recently passed an extremely restrictive voter ID law that will likely have a disproportionate impact on people of color. "Forty years later, we're still marching for the right to vote," said Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). "Don't give up, don't give in. Keep the faith, keep your eyes on the prize."
Augusta Chronicle 8/6/05; St. Petersburg Times 8/7/05; Chicago Tribune 8/7/05
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Federal News
Colorado Secretary of State Confirmed to Election Assistance Commission; EAC Issues New Guidance on Statewide Databases
On July 28, the U. S. Senate confirmed Colorado Secretary of State Donetta Davidson to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), filling the position formerly held by DeForest Soaries. Davidson, who will resign her post to join the commission, will assume her new position in late August. Donna Brazile, the chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, urged the Bush Administration to "address the assertions by former Chairman Soaries that the EAC is underfunded and neglected…. Davidson must have the proper resources and staff to prevent voting problems ... and ensure that states properly implement the Help America Vote Act."
Meanwhile, the EAC recently released new guidance on statewide voter registration databases. Natalia Kennedy from the Brennan Center for Justice writes:
The EAC's guidance explains how states should implement the federal requirement that existing voter registration lists be replaced with coordinated statewide databases by January 1, 2006. Without protections for voters' rights, new statewide databases could disenfranchise many eligible voters. Although the guidance does not address all of the potential problems with voter databases, it does include important recommendations that, if adopted by states, will reduce the number of eligible voters kept off the rolls, help prevent unjust purges, better protect voters' privacy, and improve database security. The Brennan Center had criticized an earlier draft of the guidance for failing to address how states should protect voters' rights as they implement their statewide databases. Recognizing that databases are fallible and may be subject to abuse, the final guidance now urges states to adopt a number of safeguards to ensure that voters' rights are preserved. The Brennan Center has cautiously praised the new and vastly improved guidance.
AP 7/21/05; Democratic National Convention press release 7/25/05; AP 7/29/05
News about Puerto Rico
On August 3, a federal appeals court rejected another challenge by residents of Puerto Rico who have been seeking the right to vote in U.S. presidential elections. "The case for giving Puerto Ricans the right to vote in presidential elections is fundamentally a political one and must be made through political means," said Chief Judge Michael Boudin. The judge added that before Puerto Ricans could gain the right to vote in the United States, either the U.S. Constitution would need to be amended, or Puerto Rico would need to become a state.
Boston Globe 8/4/05
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On the Radar
A regular column by Steven Carbó, Director of Demos' Democracy Program
Media, Politics, and Apathy: The Specter of Voter Fraud
Sometimes when something is repeated often enough, it takes on the ring of truth.
That's the way it is with allegations of voter fraud. The myth has circulated for so long--decades in fact--that for many people it has moved from hypothesis to fact. Despite a massive void of evidence, the charges of widespread fraud perpetrated by individuals, or groups of individual voters, persist. In fact, they have become a major communications and lobbying tool in the arsenal of the Right.
In the months since the November 2004 election, conservative ideologues and their partisan allies have harnessed voter fraud allegations as a powerful "new" weapon against the American people and our ability to have a political voice. Misleading accounts of illegal voting--involving identity theft, double voting, and voting by people with felony convictions-are increasingly reported as fact in the mainstream press, partisan blogs and political debates. To meet their goal of advancing election policy that restricts access to the ballot box, a simple strategy: imposing strict new voter identification proposals on an unwitting electorate.
Legislating on lies in Georgia
In Georgia, where the legislature recently passed a restrictive, new voter ID bill, the Atlanta Journal Constitution has spent the last several months covering allegations of voter fraud. Writing in those pages, Republican State Rep. Willie Talton claimed that, "in the modern world that we live in today, there are too many people who steal identities and commit voter fraud." He went on to cite several convictions in the 1990s in a "massive" voter fraud case, where two elections were thrown out and several individuals imprisoned. But Talton fails to mention that the vote-buying case in question involved absentee voting--a form of voting made easier by the new Georgia law and one that cannot be regulated by a photo ID requirement.
Four months later, also in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Republican House Majority Leader Jerry Keen echoed Talton's charges about the pervasiveness of fraud--but drawing on much less convincing evidence. "We may not know about every case of voter fraud, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen," Keen said. His scenario--an individual stealing a utility bill out of someone's garbage and voting as that person--sounded more like an amateurish prank than an effective strategy for changing the outcome of an election. Atlanta Journal Constitution associate editorial page editor Jim Wooten offered rhetorical support for the all-pervasive fraud argument in three other opinion pieces. Similar op-eds and editorials were run in leading papers in Wisconsin, Indiana and Washington State, where strident allegations of voter fraud fueled calls for voting restrictions.
These press placements have several things in common. Each sound alarms about the integrity of our elections system on the basis of "evidence" that may be preliminary, unsubstantiated, or misrepresented.
Those advancing the specter of voter fraud have also begun co-opting the language of voting rights advocates. An individual who steals someone's utility bill or bank statement in a poor neighborhood and then uses the document to vote in place of that person commits, in the words of Georgia State Rep. Talton, "the worst form of disenfranchisement."
And the solution most frequently offered to combat this phantom voter fraud: strict voter identification requirements that are advanced as a practical and non-burdensome remedy. They compare the fundamental right of voting to voluntary activities that require ID--boarding a plane, purchasing alcohol, driving a car. It is an emotional appeal that blurs the real impact that ID would have. Indeed, the ID requirement appears as such a common sense solution that the fact that over 150,000 Georgia seniors lack a driver's license--the most commonly accepted form of identification--gets lost in the debate.
Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox testified before her state's legislature this summer that there is zero evidence of voter fraud at the polling places that would have been prevented by a photo identification requirement. But to many of our elected leaders and their allies in the press, the real evidence on voter fraud doesn't matter. Those who object to new voting requirements like photo identification are utterly dismissed.
Continuing obfuscation of the truth
It is clear that we are confronting a clever, organized campaign to halt the pro-voter election reform that followed the 2000 election and passage of the Help America Vote Act. The voter fraud drumbeat is now heard in states across the country, offering a resonant and emotional counterpoint--"ballot integrity"--to our calls for fair ballot access. Their campaign has saturated not only newsprint, but the book publishing world, talk radio, and even the television talk show circuit. Witness Wall Street Journal editorialist John Fund's magnificent job in touting "findings" in his new reverse roman à clef, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.
The campaign deployed a new tactic just two weeks ago, when the American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund, a shadowy new organization led by Mark (Thor) Hearne, II, the former National Counsel to Bush-Cheney '04, Inc., released Vote Fraud Intimidation & Suppression in the 2004 Presidential Election. The spurious report claims that "thousands of Americans were disenfranchised by illegal votes cast on Election Day 2004," and that "paid Democratic operatives were far more involved in voter intimidation and suppression activities than were their Republican counterparts." In order to deflect blame and stave public inquiry, vote suppression is now reduced to partisan squabble.
Bringing the debate back to reality
Those of us who work to create fair elections and increase participation need a campaign of our own, shorn of partisan trappings, to shift the debate away from the polarized frame that pitches voter access against ballot integrity. Their story, however false, appeals to the fears that the Right has engendered in Americans for the last four decades; we, and the American people, might very well lose if we keep talking about elections the way we do today. The challenge is for voting rights activists to develop a bold and coherent set of messages--about our values, about fair elections, about the high American ideal of everyone having a voice in how they are governed. We must act now, before yesterday's myth becomes today's truth and ends the progress we have made toward achieving equal voting rights for all.
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Featured Editorial
Locked out of Democracy
Sasha Abramsky
In the weeks since President Bush nominated John Roberts to succeed Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court, civil rights groups have started sounding alarm bells about their issues, moving them into the spotlight. Is Roberts for or against preserving legalized abortion? Is Roberts a wolf in lamb's clothing who will take a gavel to affirmative action, to environmental regulations, to eminent domain over private lands or regulate the right to reproductive choice or the definition of family?
There should be real concern about these issues, and the public debate is on.
There is another crucial American right that has, however, received scant attention: fair, universal access to the ballot box. Sure, a smattering of articles have looked at memos the young Roberts wrote back in the early 1980s urging a limited interpretation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and civil rights organizations as well as many progressives and Democratic politicians have raised questions about this. But they haven't addressed what is arguably a central challenge to participation in modern America's democracy. No longer is the challenge straightforward racial disempowerment, backed up by supremacist state politicians and terror groups such as the KKK--the Voting Rights Act has indeed relegated those abuses to history. Today, one of the chief threats to minority voting rights comes from the practice of disfranchising people with felony convictions, and it is a threat that the courts--all the way up to the Supreme Court--have conspicuously failed to recognize.
As more and more crimes, especially drug offenses, have been defined as felonies during decades of "tough on crime" rhetoric and populist politicking, so more and more people are receiving felony convictions. Until this year, a half-dozen states--mainly in the South--permanently disfranchised people with felony convictions. And, although there have been some victories--like when Nebraska and Iowa jettisoned their permanent disfranchisement laws earlier this year--the fact is that 48 out of 50 states still deny voting rights to people based on conviction status. Maine and Vermont stand alone as never denying ballot access based on felony status.
The result is that in 2005, in a country that considers itself the world's preeminent democracy, almost five million Americans--those in prison, on parole or probation, or living in states where voting restrictions extend beyond the end of one's criminal sentence--are now legally without a vote and politically voiceless. Millions more, not familiar with the intricacies of recent law changes, likely think they cannot vote. Quite simply, the combination of the "War On Crime" and felon disfranchisement codes has resulted in the biggest contraction of the franchise since the South adopted Jim Crow at the end of the nineteenth century.
In states such as Alabama, where a single felony conviction is enough to result in lifelong disfranchisement, teenagers, many of them African American, routinely lose their right to vote before they have even had a chance to exercise it. Regaining the vote is so onerous a process in Alabama that vast numbers simply drop out of political participation altogether, living the remainder of their lives as political invisibles.
Numbers compiled by the D.C.-based Sentencing Project and other researchers suggest that in many areas of the South, up to a third of African American men have lost their right to vote because of a criminal conviction. The expansion of the criminal justice system has had such an extreme impact on voting rights that elections from the local, all the way up to the presidential levels are now affected as much by who cannot vote as by who does cast a ballot.
Roberts argued in the 1980s that the Voting Rights Act should be restricted to "intentionality." To prove a violation of the Act, under the definitions he set forth, plaintiffs would have to demonstrate not simply that policies and social structures had the effect of restricting minority populations' ability to vote and otherwise politically participate, but that there were individuals in positions of authority who specifically intended their laws and regulations to produce this outcome.
For activists schooled in understanding how social, cultural, economic, and political structures can create vastly unfair racial divides and perpetuate inequalities generated over centuries of previous intentional discrimination, such an argument cannot help but set off alarm bells.
Yet, with or without Roberts' accession to the Supreme Court, the clarion should have been sounding loud and clear in recent years. After all, judicial reluctance to bar practices of felon disfranchisement in an era of mass, and racially-skewed, incarceration has, over the past three decades, resulted in backdoor disfranchisement of mammoth proportions. While the Voting Rights Act has been used to break down most vestiges of Jim Crow, advocates in states as far flung as Washington and Florida have been unable to convince courts to apply it in the one area where America's ongoing racial divides are most clearly, and depressingly, on display--the criminal justice arena.
For many years now, state and federal courts, hearing Voting Rights Act challenges to permanent felon disfranchisement laws have ruled that felons' political rights are not protected under the Voting Rights Act, essentially applying Roberts' intent criteria and arguing that states aren't intentionally convicting and incarcerating people simply because of the color of their skin. This, despite the fact that social circumstance and the peculiarities of U.S. history have combined to produce intense racial disparities throughout the criminal justice system, and, by extension, have disfranchised legions of impoverished Black males.
Filling the void left by the courts, several states have modified or abandoned their disfranchisement laws in the past few years. Most recently, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack dramatically re-enfranchised somewhere in the region of 50,000 Iowans who have completed their sentences. Yet many other states, including Florida--where the 2000 presidential election was decided by a mere few hundred votes, and where between half- and three-quarters of a million citizens are disfranchised--have opted to keep their disfranchisement laws intact.
Mass, and permanent, disfranchisement in a democracy is simply unacceptable. Whether John Roberts is confirmed or not, it is time for the courts to step in and say so loud and clear.
Sasha Abramsky is a Senior Fellow at Demos. His book, Conned, on felon disfranchisement will be published by The New Press in early 2006.
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Announcements
On September 27, 2005, Demos will host its Fifth Anniversary Celebration at the New-York Historical Society, featuring special guest Bill Moyers. We invite you to join us in celebrating Demos' work and renewing our commitment for the future. For more information about the event, Celebrating Ideas, Action and Change, Demos @ 5, please contact 5@demos.org or visit the events page at: www.demos.org.
Demos will conduct a workshop entitled Political Inequality: Voting Reforms for the 21st Century at the NCSL Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA, on August 18, 2005, 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. The workshop will focus on policies that ensure equal access to the ballot box, including Election Day Registration, voting rights for people with felony convictions, states' compliance with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA). For more information, contact Quinta Martin at (202) 956-5132 or visit: http://www.stateaction.org/sif.
Wondering how to fit advocacy work into your foundation? Funding Advocacy: The Philanthropy of Changing Minds, a new guide from GrantCraft, explains what's legally permissible and how to work with grantees who lobby, build a constituency, prepare for opposition and measure success. Find out more or download the guide at: http://www.grantcraft.org.
The Pew Hispanic Center has released a new report entitled Hispanics and the 2004 Election: Population, Electorate and Voters. To view the report, visit: http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/48.pdf
The Century Foundation has released a new report entitled Balancing Access and Integrity: The Report of the Century Foundation Working Group on State Implementation of Election Reform. To view the report, visit: http://www.reformelections.org/publications.asp?pubid=542
The League of Women Voters has issued a new report entitled Next Steps on Election Reform. To view the report, visit: http://www.lwv.org/elibrary/pub/voting_nextsteps_bw.pdf
Democracy Dispatches will be taking an end-of-the-summer break. We'll be back in late September.
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