Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the billionaire-funded Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority, said while addressing a right-wing Christian audience in 1980. “[O]ur leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populace goes down,” he added after he denigrated those who seek “good government” through maximum, informed voter participation as people who suffer from the “goo goo syndrome.”
Voter suppression has long been a staple of American politics, but the tsunami of new restrictions on the polling place now being rammed through by newly-elected Republican majorities in state after state is unprecedented, certainly since the era of Jim Crow was supposed to have been ended by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
While most Americans may think of the poll tax and literacy tests as forms of voter suppression associated the Jim Crow South, the confirmation hearings of the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Renquist included sworn testimony from former U.S. Attorney James Brosnahan and others reflecting that, as an early 60’s GOP activist, Renquist intimidated African-American and Hispanic voters in AZ by challenging their ability to read.
1965’s Voting Rights Act outlawed both the poll tax and literacy tests. In more recent times, pursuant to a 1987 federal court consent decree, and a subsequent provision of the National Voting Rights Act of 1993, another GOP suppression tactic, “caging lists,” was banned, though as documented by the BBC’s Greg Palast, the Bush administration-led Plutocrats didn’t let a little matter like illegality get in the way of their use.
21st Century voter suppression operates under cover. Or it had, until the new wave of legislation being passed by GOP legislatures across the country began hitting its stride. Until FL’s then-governor Charlie Crist overturned it, for example, the state banned convicted felons from voting even years after they’d been released from prison. In Armed Madhouse, Palast asserts that prior to the 2000 Presidential election, FL’s then Sec. of State Katherine Harris, appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of candidate George W. Bush, purged 94,000 “felons” from the state’s computerized voter rolls, though the only “crime” at least 91,000 were guilty of was “being Black, Democrat or both.”
Over much of the past decade, voter suppression efforts have been bolstered by bogus “voter fraud” claims leveled at groups like ACORN, who aided in the registration of those who might be likely to vote against the GOP (minorities and the working class); “non-partisan” GOP astroturf groups like the phony American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) created after the 2004 election solely to create and spread false propaganda about a Democratic “voter fraud” epidemic; laws meant to increase the legal risk to real non-partisan organizations for assisting in registration; draconian polling place “photo ID” restriction laws, and in a reduction of opportunities for early voting.
With the tide of GOP victories at the ballot box last November, those efforts have now been ramped up and are now front and center in some 30 state legislatures across the country…
Why GOP Plutocrats Suppress the Vote
If we are to understand our present circumstance, we must shed the ambiguous descriptor, “Republican,” in favor of the more accurate “Plutocrat,” when discussing the 21st Century GOP.
The word “Republic” is so ambiguous that James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, referred to it as a “representative democracy” while Montesquieu broadened the term to include oligarchy, which is the antithesis of democracy.
The so-called ‘Tea Party’ is a shell game — the modern equivalent to “the three minutes of hate” in George Orwell’s 1984. The manufactured “birther” controversy, the incessant dehumanizing, and often racist, propaganda about perceived “enemies” (Muslims, immigrants, terrorists, atheists, secularists, communists, liberals) and the myriad of wedge issues, as well as the deception of The Great American Jobs Scam, are all part of a divide-and-conquer strategy designed to mask the core goals of the Plutocrat Party, the bulk of which are immensely unpopular.
But deception has its limits, especially when the GOP unmasked its true agenda in the wake of their 2010 electoral success. That agenda is a devotion to inequality which has produced the greatest wealth disparity since the stock market crash of 1929.
While the accuracy of Michael Moore’s assertion that “the richest one percent have more financial wealth than the bottom 95% combined†has been questioned, there is no doubt but that large numbers of Americans are experiencing economic hardships not seen since the Great Depression — 46.3 million Americans now live in poverty; 50.9 million have no health insurance; one in six Americans go hungry.
Compare that to the 400 wealthiest Americans who have recently experienced an 8% net worth increase, “to $1.37 trillion.” In 2009, one hedge fund manager, David Tepper, received the equivalent of the annual salary of the President of the United States every 14 minutes. His $4 billion in earnings works out to $2 million/hour. All as corporations registered their highest profits ever in 2010!
Six out of every ten Americans are opposed to Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) effort to destroy Social Security, public education and Medicare — an agenda so radical that even Newt Gingrich described it as “right-wing social engineering.” 61% oppose the union-busting agenda led by WI Gov. Scott Walker (R).
The GOP had the audacity to use the filibuster to protect oil industry subsidies despite the fact that a meager 8% of Americans support their continuation.
Given their immensely unpopular agenda, the Plutocrat Party can cling to power only by four means: (1) Massive, paid-for propaganda courtesy of Citizens United; (2) wholesale electoral theft, which, as documented by numerous academic studies and two GAO reports, can be carried out by a minimum number of insiders with access to our e-voting systems; (3) a broad-based, voter suppression effort through photo ID laws, caging, severe restrictions on organizations who seek to assist registration and fraudulent mailers that advise citizens to vote on the wrong day or at the wrong polling place, and (4) narrowing the window of time citizens have to vote either by reducing the number of days of early voting, by providing an inadequate number of voting machines in Democratic districts or by e-system malfunctions on Election Day.
Using the ‘Voter Fraud’ Canard as the ‘Big Lie’
“We have right now a real danger of people that are illegally in the country being rounded up, herded into the polls. We’ve seen that in California, voting illegally.”-Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), GOP Presidential candidate, 2007
“We are not aware of any documented cases in which individual noncitizens have either intentionally registered to vote or voted while knowing that they were ineligible.” – “The Truth About Voter Fraud,” Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law School, 2007
As noted via Wikipedia, in Mein Kampf (1925), Adolf Hitler used the phrase, “the Big Lie” to describe “a lie so ‘colossal’ that no one would believe that someone ‘could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.'”
The fact-free Plutocrats use the “voter fraud” canard so often that it should perhaps qualify as a “Big Lie.” That “Big Lie” not only gave rise to the infamous U.S. Attorney firing scandal but an effort to conceal and alter a federal report which exposed “fears of voter fraud” to be “overblown and exaggerated.”
Consider, as but a single example, newly-elected Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach (R).
On Nov. 19, 2010 Brad Friedman observed that “Kobach’s campaign was almost entirely built on the promise of putting a stop to the state’s out-of-control…’voter fraud’ epidemic.” Friedman added, after noting that there has been no evidence put forward to support Kobach’s assertion about such an epidemic:
KS then passed a law which will require KS residents to present photo IDs at the polls in 2012 and will require those who seek to become registered voters in 2013 to present proof of U.S. citizenship, though the KS state Senate rejected Kobach’s last-minute effort to move the date for proof of citizenship up to 2012 (in time for the upcoming Presidential election).
Ned Valentine of The Dispatch observed [emphasis added]:
Twenty questionable votes cast a year out of millions of votes cast over a decade cannot affect any outcome or rob anyone of our share of say in the political process. Those are Kobach’s own figures.”
While it is unclear just who cast the “twenty questionable votes,” what makes them “questionable” and if they were actually illegally cast, we are aware of cases of “voter fraud” in which individuals do illegally cast ballots in districts where they did not reside. Polling place Photo ID restrictions apparently did not deter Charlie While (R) the newly-elected Sec. of State of Indiana, a state with some of the most restrictive Photo ID restrictions in the nation, from facing three felony charges relating to “voter fraud.” Utah’s former Gov. and possible Presidential aspirant John Huntsman, Jr. (R) may have committed a similar offense. And, of course, The BRAD BLOG has spent years documenting beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ann Coulter committed felony voter fraud in Palm Beach, FL and most likely in the state of Connecticut as well.
The next GOP politician who calls for Coulter’s prosecution will be the first.
Multi-State Voter Suppression Now Underway
The TX Plutocrats recently approved Photo ID restrictions long opposed by Project Vote and scores of other non-partisan democracy advocacy organizations. Another TX bill would prohibit anyone who is not a TX voter to register someone to vote in TX.
Faced with multiple upcoming state Senate recall elections in the wake of their union-busting legislation, the WI Plutocrat Party not only moved swiftly to cram through new polling place photo ID laws, closing the vote within minutes, before most Democrats were even able to cast their vote (watch the video, it’s remarkable). They also added an amendment to insure that the bill would take effect before the upcoming July recall elections which might otherwise result in Democrats taking over the majority in the Senate. The alacrity of the legislation prompted Rep. Jennifer Shilling (D-LaCrosse) to note that it felt like the rules were being “changed…in the middle of the game.”
Ed Note: The video of WI Republicans jamming through their Photo ID restrictions last week, in a vote that was closed within minutes, was so remarkable, it needs to be embedded here so you can watch what happened. No, the guy in the sunglasses, banging the gavel and running the vote is not a mafia don, he’s WI’s GOP Senate President Mike Ellis…
The MN House similarly approved a photo ID measure recently on a party line vote, while the OH GOP pressed forward with legislation that would shorten the early voting period.
RI was recently added to the list of photo ID states, and ME House Speaker Bob Nutting (R-Oakland) is pressing forward with legislation that will not only require photo ID but “ban absentee voting during the two business days before Election Day…and eliminate registration for most voters during the same period and on Election Day.”
In a May 23, 2011 editorial, Robert Brandon of Philly.com observed:
…In 2008, more than six million Pennsylvanians went to the polls for the presidential election, and only four were charged with misrepresentation.
So why did the House State Government Committee recently approve a bill to require photo ID of Pennsylvania voters, a program that would cost more than $11 million to initiate and millions more to run each year?
Brandon then provided the answer:
In NC, a state where 60% of the ballots cast in the 2008 general election were cast before Election Day, the period for early voting was shortened from 18 to 11 days.
As SC joined the growing list of states with photo ID restrictions on voting, GA sought to limit early voting atop its already existing photo ID restrictions.
What is mind boggling is why the SC and GA Plutocrats even bothered to pass voter suppression laws. Both states use 100% unverifiable, Direct Voting Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems.
Last year, SC’s ES&S touch screens provided the “it’s the machines, stupid!” moment when the DREs announced that the unemployed and completely unknown Alvin Greene handily defeated the respected circuit judge and former state legislator Vic Rawl in the Democratic primary U.S. Senate race.
Rawl had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars; appeared at 80 campaign events; had hundreds of volunteers. Greene had no campaign website, no volunteers, no campaign literature. He didn’t even own a computer or a phone.
In Lancaster County, Rawl won paper-based absentee ballots over Greene by a staggering 84 percent to 16 percent margin; but Greene easily led among unverifiable Election Day e-votes by 17 percentage points, according to the machines.
Despite testimony from voters who said they saw their votes flipped from Rawl to Greene on the touch-screens and computer and political scientists who testified that only a problem with the voting machines could have led to the announced result, the SC Democratic Party Executive Board rejected Rawl’s challenge. Neither they nor most of the mainstream media could see or hear a thunderous e-voting system train wreck even as it crashed into democracy’s front door. Or they just did not want to.
In FL, the same Plutocrat Party that gave us the 2000 fiasco rammed bills through the legislature that would cut early voting from two weeks to one, force registered voters who move from one county to another to use provisional ballots if they wish to update their name or address at the polling place, and imposed restrictions on registration activity that include financial and civil penalties that were severe enough to cause the League of Women Voters, which had registered voters over the past 91 years to “immediately stop voter registration efforts across the state.” Lydia Galton, Pres. of the League of Women Voters of Collier County described the bill as a declaration of “war on voters.”
The new laws in TX, NC, SC, FL and GA are all subject to U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) review under the Voting Rights Act. At the request of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), the DOJ agreed to “carefully consider” Florida’s new voter suppression laws. We’ll see if they do, and if they “carefully consider” them elsewhere as well. In states which do not require preclearance of voting laws under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, however, democracy is likely to take a big hit in 2012, thanks to the very folks who pretend to care about it the most — as long as its politically advantageous to do so, in any case.
CORRECTION: We originally reported the WI Senate’s bill on photo ID restrictions was rammed through the body at 11pm at night. In fact, it was rammed through at 11am and was passed within minutes before many of the Democrats had time to vote, as the article above has been edited to correctly reflect.
UPDATE 05/25/11: In the body of this post, we noted that IN Sec. of State Charlie White (R) faces three felony charges relating to voter fraud.
As reported by The Indiana Lawyer, in addition to the criminal charges, the IN Democratic Party filed a legal action seeking to compel the state’s “Recount Commission to rule on whether White…was eligible for office because he registered using a false home address during his campaign.”
Both the commission and White, who is still in office, appealed a circuit court order compelling the commissioners to hear the challenge. “White argued that putting the recount matter first could jeopardize the felony case if he decides to defend himself.”
The IN Supreme Court has now rejected White’s request for a stay. The commissioners must rule on the Democratic Party challenge.
While the commission “could…remove White if it determines he wasn’t legally registered and able to be included on the ballot in the first place,” Indiana’s law and order Attorney General Greg Zoeller (R) asserts the statute only requires that “someone must be ‘registered,’ not that he or she must be ‘legally registered,'” The Indiana Lawyer reports.
I guess what Zoeller really means is IOKIYAR!
Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).
Actually, that vote in Wisconsin has held at 11:00 >>AM
(Oops, I guess the arrowhead brackets I added for emphasis must’ve signaled the end of the comment, or something, so it’s a good thing I copied my comment to my “clipboard” before posting, so I can repost it w/o those brackets…)
Actually, that vote in Wisconsin has held at 11:00 AM (see the video). Maybe you were thinking f the long debate they had into the night during the amendment phase before that (but then they limited debate on the actual bill to a whole hour). I had to work, but I work on the other end of State Street, a short walk from the Capitol, and I was listening online via Wisconsin Eye. When they got to the actual vote, I heard all the commotion going on, but I couldn’t see what was going on, since I wasn’t able to get the live video stream for some reason, so I decided to use my lunch break to go down to the Capitol and find out what the heck had just happened, and some of my fellow protesters (whom I’ve seen a lot of the last few months!) who were there filled me in.
These laws must be challenged in the courts, one state at a time. Right now!
In WI, Dems must seek a restraining order preventing this law from taking effect before the recall. The recall is the last chance for voters to restore democracy. Get on the stick, please!
Henryclay @4 wrote:
Good luck with that. In 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s photo ID law in a 6 – 3 decision.
Better that those involved in the recall take steps to aid citizens to obtain photo IDs. There needs to be a massive get-out-the-vote drive. The very survival of constitutional democracy in WI depends on it.
Felix – Thanks for the correction! That one was my fault (not Ernie’s) as I added in the time during the edit. Have now fixed appropriately.
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Good post Ernie.
The bleep goes on.
The minuscule voter problems targeted while the mega-problem of using corruptible voting machines, instead of paper ballots counted in a competent manner, seems to be considered irrelevant.
Nice work on this as usual, Brad Blog team.
The new SOS in Colorado, a high-profile GOP campaign finance attorney, tried and failed to push the “voter fraud” line here, coming up with his own half-baked data and testifying in the state House and Senate in favor of a bill he essentially wrote that would have granted him sweeping powers to throw voters off the rolls. He also took his b.s. data to Capitol Hill and testified there. His bill passed the GOP-controlled House but was killed in the Dem-controlled Senate.
http://tinyurl.com/3grwepy
JT –
Great article you’ve got linked over at the CO Independent. Wish more journalists covered what’s going on exactly like that. This is, make no mistake, an all out War on Democracy by the GOP.
That is not some partisan opinion of mine. It is merely plainly observable, independently verifiable fact.
And while CO was lucky to have pushed back this latest assault in the state by the new GOP SoS, as my own experience following this stuff over the last decade informs me, they will be back — year after year, session after session, until the moment they get a favorable (read: GOP) House, Senate and Governor to institute their anti-democracy voter suppression legislation. That, of course, is much easier for them than actual advocating for policies that the majority of voters might actually support at the ballot box.
Thanks for staying on top of it! And holler whenever we can help!
Original article …
GOP 2010 Tide? Do you really believe they won all those races legitimately? Think again.
http://richardcharnin.com/2010SenateMidtermsPostElection.htm
Let’s look at the 2010 House and Senate pre-election polls: RV vs. LV http://richardcharnin.com/2010ElectionForecastModels.htm
The 2010 House and Senate Forecast Models are based on a comprehensive analysis of Registered Voter (RV) and Likely Voter (LV) polls.
The LV Model predicts a 234-201 GOP House and a 50-48 Democratic Senate. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball predicts a 233-202 GOP House and a 49-49 Senate. Electoral-vote.com has a 51-48-1 Democratic Senate and a 217-200 GOP House with 18 ties. But the registered voter (RV) projections tell a different story.
The Democrats lead the weighted average of 18 Senate RV polls by 8.5%. They lead the corresponding LV sub-samples by 0.9%.
The RV projections indicate a 53-45 Democratic Senate.
The GOP leads the latest 30 House Generic LV polls by 6.8%. They lead the latest 19 RV polls by just 0.7%.
The RV projections indicate a 221-214 Republican House.
The Democrats lead in the following Generic Ballot RV polls: Pew, ABC/WaPo, CBS/NYT, McClatchy/Marist, Newsweek, NBC
Both House and Senate models assume an even UVA split of the undecided 10%.
Pre-election (RV) polls interview registered voters. Likely voters are a sub-sample based on the Likely Voter Cutoff Model (LVCM). Media pundits and political sites such as realclearpolitics.com focus on LV polls during the final weeks of every election cycle while RV polls are phased out a month before the election.
Pollsters claim that LV polls are good predictors – and it’s partly true. Since the 2000 selection, LV polls have matched to the fraudulent recorded vote quite well.
But RV polls more closely matched the True Vote – before the miscounts.
From the 14 points of fascism. This is number 14.
Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
From the book, They Thought They Were Free.
If you google the 14 points of fascism , you will see that it is a description of US.
Funny how so much voter fraud seems to be connected to Rethuglicans themselves from Mitch Daniel’s Secretary of State to Ann Coulter to all those young men Patrick McHenry had living with him in North Carolina to McHenry himself taking a homestead exeption in D.C. while still voting in North Carolina.
Voter Photo Id Statutes: Crawford V. Marion County Election Board A Greater Threat To (d)emocracy Than Citizen’s United
The right to vote is, probably, the most important right of citizenship. Voter Photo ID statutes together with the corporate propaganda activities authorized and approved by the Supreme Court’s in its decision in the Citizens United case, pose huge threats to (d)emocracy. Unfortunately, there has not been publicity regarding the 2008 decision of the United States Supreme Court upholding Indiana’s statute requiring a state photo ID for a voter to cast a vote. In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U. S. ____ (2008) http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-21.ZS.html the United States Supreme Court gave a state the right to disqualify and disenfranchise otherwise qualified resident voters, who did not have a state approved picture ID. The Court based its decision on finding there were valid state interests in creating voter confidence and the prevention of voter fraud. In spite of the Court’s recognition “The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history.†Further, after re-approving a prior US Supreme Court decision finding that a poll tax was legally unacceptable and impermissible. However, the majority went on to find that Indiana’s provision of a “free†state ID, which required that the person had to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles present a birth certificate or other identification, which the court agreed in many cases had to be procured for a cost, was not tantamount to a poll tax. The court stated:
“To obtain a photo identification card a person must present at least one “primary†document, which can be a birth certificate, certificate of naturalization, U. S. veterans photo identification, U. S. military photo identification, or a U. S. passport. Ind. Admin. Code, tit. 140, §7–4–3 (2008). Indiana, like most States, charges a fee for obtaining a copy of one’s birth certificate. This fee varies by county and is currently between $3 and $12. See Indiana State Department of Health Web page, http://www.in.gov/isdh/bdcertifs/lhdfees/toc.htm. Some States charge substantially more.”
Crawford at n. 17
Further, the Court stated:
“Both evidence in the record and facts of which we may take judicial notice, however, indicate that a somewhat heavier burden may be placed on a limited number of persons. They include elderly persons born out-of-state, who may have difficulty obtaining a birth certificate; persons who because of economic or other personal limitations may find it difficult either to secure a copy of their birth certificate or to assemble the other required documentation to obtain a state-issued identification; homeless persons; and persons with a religious objection to being photographed. If we assume, as the evidence suggests, that some members of these classes were registered voters when SEA 483 was enacted, the new identification requirement may have imposed a special burden on their right to vote.”
In Crawford the Court recognized that at the time of passage of the statute there were at least 43,000 voters without acceptable photo ID cards. Crawford at n. 20. However, the court went on to find: “… even assuming that the burden may not be justified as to a few voters, that conclusion is by no means sufficient to establish petitioners’ right to the relief they seek in this litigation.†The Court, also, rejected the argument that this Statute was designed to disenfranchise Democratic voters stating:
“It is fair to infer that partisan considerations may have played a significant role in the decision to enact SEA 483. If such considerations had provided the only justification for a photo identification requirement, we may also assume that SEA 483 would suffer the same fate as the poll tax at issue in Harper.
But if a nondiscriminatory law is supported by valid neutral justifications, those justifications should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators. The state interests identified as justifications for SEA 483 are both neutral and sufficiently strong to require us to reject petitioners’ facial attack on the statute. The application of the statute to the vast majority of Indiana voters is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting “the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.†Anderson, 460 U. S., at 788, n. 9. “(Emphasis Supplied)
Thus, a number of the arguments against Voter ID bills that have been put forward by liberal commentators and opponents of recent Voter ID legislation have already been rejected by the United States Supreme Court. Thus, wherever these voter photo ID statutes have been enacted, Democrats must immediately start programs to get state approved photographic ID cards to their likely voters.
Finally, whereas, Citizens United gives corporations, undisclosed entities, and persons with money the unfettered right to spend money to persuade voters. When they lie about issues, there is always a chance that the falsehoods and lies will ultimately be exposed (witness Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, etc.), voters will see the truth, and vote the rascals out of office. However, the Crawford decision, upholding statutory requirements for state approved photographic ID and other new voting requirements, disenfranchises qualified voters. The voter’s right to vote is stolen. Citizens are denied there right to elect their government representatives. The chances of voting the rascals and their minions out of office, becomes difficult, if not impossible. (d)emocracy dies.
Peter J. Krieser
Lawyer
Minnesota
Former Minnesota Assistant Attorney General, retired, (Manager of Minnesota AGO Health Licensing Division [1999], Senior litigation attorney [Senior Advocate] Minnesota AGO Health Licensing Division [1999-2009])
Peter J. Kreiser writes @18 wrote:
Actually, not, Peter.
The very language you cite — that the challenge in Crawford was a “facial” rather than an “as applied” attack on the IN statute — underscores that a plaintiff who could present an undue burden or evidence of invidious discrimination could produce a different result.
The lead opinion, in Crawford, specifically discusses the availability of photo ID in IN free of charge and specifically concluded that the statute does not impose an undue burden.
As to the reference to “liberal commentators,” I would respectfully suggest that read my follow up piece wherein I quote John Tanner, who had served as the Chief of the DoJ’s Voting Rights Division in the Bush II administration.
Tanner can by no stretch of the imagination be described as a “liberal.â€
But then, the words “liberal†or conservative are meaningless. Election integrity is not about left or right. It’s about right and wrong.
I am also surprised, Peter, that you would bring up Crawford in relation to this piece, rather than my follow-up piece. The mere fact that the Supreme Court rejected the facial challenge in Crawford does not mean than any other state is required to pass photo ID legislation or that such legislation is a good idea. In a democracy, disenfranchisement is never a good idea.
Finally, Peter, I have to take exception to your use of the words “voter ID.” Voters identify themselves when they register to vote and when they sign in at the polls. The laws in question require “photo ID” precisely because the GOP understands that the highest percentages of citizens who do not have photo IDs are the same citizens who would not likely vote for the GOP.
As Mr. Canning’s excellent article so aptly points out, statutes requiring photographic voter ID is a Conservative v. Liberal issue. My position is that voting should be easy for any American citizen, and there should be no unnecessary impediments to prevent eligible voters from voting. For example, currently, Minnesota has one of the nation’s easier voter registration requirements, low voter fraud allegations (less than10 prosecutions), and highest per capita voting rates. We have had two clean elections where (1) the Democratic Senator (Franken 2008) was elected by less than 500 votes and, (2) the Democratic Governor (Dayton 2010) was elected by less than 9,000 votes. Unnecessary statutory impediments that reduce voter turnout are an assault on democracy. On this I believe that Ernest and I agree.
When I wrote my comment, I realized that the decision in Crawford was made on the basis of a “facial attack†of the Indiana photographic ID requirement voting statute. I did not mean to convey that the Constitutionality of voter photo ID statutes as they are applied was decided. However, the Crawford Court took factual findings and judicial notice of facts into consideration. It is worrisome that the Crawford Court so easily disposed of the argument, that in order to obtain a photographic ID card in Indiana, persons might have to expend money to first obtain a birth certificate or other form of acceptable identification, and obtain transportation to the local Department of Motor Vehicle office, is tantamount to a poll tax. It is also concerning that the Court would suggest that 43,000 registered voters, who, the Court recognized, did not at the time of the passage of the statute have adequate identification to vote, was not problematic. Finally, the Court also recognized that voter fraud had not occurred in Indiana, so the voter photo ID statute was “fixing†a non-existent problem.
A number of the arguments against Voter photo ID statutes remain. For example:
 First, there is an “Equal Protection†argument based on the fact that many, if not most, of the people who obtained a photographic driver’s license never had to produce a birth certificate or other independent form of identification. All of these photographic voter ID bills and statutes require the applicants produce underlying identity documents (birth certificates, baptismal certificates, or other approved independent forms of identification) in order to obtain a state issued photographic ID card. So under these statutes to exercise the right to vote an American must obtain a voter photographic ID, and to obtain a photographic voter ID you have to “produce your papers.†Whereas, many, if not most, of the people who currently possess a driver’s license never had to produce a birth certificate or other independent form of identification to obtain their photo driver’s license. Regarding the reliability and effectiveness of using a photo driver’s license for identification, consider how many prosecutions occur statewide per year for use of fake, phony or altered driver’s licenses used by persons for access to bars, automobile purchases, fraudulent check cashing, etc., versus the number of prosecutions for voter fraud per election. Yet, without further documentation requirements these voter photo ID laws accept a photo driver’s license. Thus, there is no rational basis for excepting people with photo driver’s licenses from producing the same independent documentation, as those without. Unless there is a requirement that all persons must provide equivalent underlying documentation to obtain a state approved photo voter ID there is a basis for a claim of denial of Equal Protection under the 14th Amendment.
 Second, some of the recently passed voter photo ID statutes require a fee for the State Picture ID which should be ruled to be a poll tax.
 Third, more reliable “scientifically acceptable†polling and demographic evidence showing voter disenfranchisement, especially of minority voters, may serve as a basis for finding photo ID statutes unconstitutional, or violating of the Voting Rights Act.
 Fourth, some of these photo ID statutes do not provide enough time for fair and reasonable implementation before their effective date.
Surely, there are other arguments.
I believe that a democratic society is based upon voter accessible, free and fair elections. Elections where citizens, who should be eligible voters, are not disenfranchised because of discriminatory unnecessary statutory impediments to their voting. On this I assume Ernest and I agree. Further, I am concerned that Crawford is a first step by the Supreme Court toward approving these voter photo ID statutes, which impede voting. This should not be a Liberal v. Conservative issue, but the ultra-right wing corporatist Republican legislators, pundits, think tanks, governors, and jurists, who have sought to restrict voting and “cage†voters, have made it such. Thus, it is important for liberal commentators, pundits and the public to be made aware of the decision in Crawford and the reasoning and statements of the Crawford Court. Based on what I hear on liberal talk radio and MSNBC they are not aware. These unnecessary voter photo ID statutes restrict voter accessibility and threaten democracy.
Peter Krieser