Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning
Perhaps the only positive thing one can say about GOP voter suppression is that it is relentless.
In 2008 the ME Legislature killed a Republican-backed bill designed to prohibit out-of-state college students from voting in the communities in which their schools were located. The state’s Democratic Attorney General Steven Rowe said at the time, that the proposal was unconstitutional under the 1979 ruling in Symm vs. United States, establishing the right of college students to treat their dorms as their residence for voting purposes.
This year, on July 25th, the clueless ME GOP Chairman Charlie Webster asked Maine’s Republican Sec. of State Charles E. Summers, Jr. to investigate 206 out-of-state college students whom he believed committed “voter fraud” because they registered and voted in the Pine Tree State.
Summers, after a two month investigation, was forced to admit that every one of the students was lawfully registered to vote in ME; that there was no evidence that any one of them committed voter fraud.
But why let a little thing like the absence of evidence of any crime get in the way of dissuading college students from exercising their right to vote? That’s exactly what Summers decided to do…
As we noted in “Local Radio Hosts School Maine’s Hapless GOP Chair on College Students’ Right to Vote”, registration of a car, payment of income and local taxes or the possession of a Maine driver’s license are all evidence supporting residence status. None of those items, however, are a prerequisite to residency status. Residence is defined by Maine’s Revised Statutes as “that place where the person has established a fixed and principal home to which the person, whenever temporarily absent, intends to return.”
Summers acknowledged that out-of-state students are lawfully entitled to treat their dorms as their residence. It is not unlawful for a student, who is still registered to vote in another state, to register and vote while residing in a dorm in Maine. Voter fraud would occur only if the student were to vote both in Maine and in another state in the same election.
Yet, at the same time he was acknowledging that Webster’s complaint against the 206 students was baseless, on Sept. 20 Summers mailed a threatening letter (posted in full below) which informed the students of the request that he “investigate” out-of-state students for “election fraud violations.”
Summers reminded the students that residents must obtain a ME driver’s license within 30 days of establishing residence in ME. He asked that students “take appropriate action to comply with our motor vehicle laws within the next 30 days.”
Summers, who no doubt is aware that the penalty for driving without a valid license in ME is $137 — as opposed to forfeiture of the right to vote — nevertheless attempted to link the two, stating in his letter:
Since possession of a ME driver’s license and the right to vote are not linked, the only reasonable inference to be drawn is that the letter was intended to confuse at best, but more likely to intimidate students by suggesting that, if they failed to timely comply with the motor vehicle statute, they may be guilty of “election fraud” which he’d been asked to “investigate.”
And the letter appears to have had its desired effect.
ThinkProgress reports that it interviewed several recipients of the letter who were intimidated, including one whose family was “pretty insistent” that she cancel her registration to vote in the Pine Tree State “to be on the safe side.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to uncover why the GOP has targeted college students for voter suppression in many states across the country. 2008 marked the second-largest youth voter turnout in U.S. history. The increase was especially great in precincts where college campuses are located and where younger voters preferred Barrack Obama to John McCain by a two-to-one ratio.
Republicans across the nation have been working very hard over the past year to try and keep that same “mistake” from happening again in 2012.
The September 20, 2011 letter from Maine’s Sec. of State Charles Summer follows below (larger version here):
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).
[Ed Note: Threat of violence removed. Violation of BRAD BLOG commenting rules. Knock it off. Thank you. – BF]
I am pretty sure that the GOP lunatics at large are going to try to steal the 2012 election.
All you hear in the media is poll poll polls etc and I fully believe that every last one of them is bias regardless whom does them thus they are worthless.
But that is ALL you hear everyday, every channel, is this poll says, that poll says.
To me what it appears to be is really an inoculation, a precursor, to get people resigned to the “fact” (the poll says) that Obama and which ever lunatic the rethuglicans nominate are neck and neck.
they know that all they have to do is make it appear as though they are very close and it makes it childs play to steal the election.
Oh yes.. this is such a scary and threatening letter… so much worse than say black panthers in front of the voting area with clubs in their hands swearing thd threatening people away from voting… my goodness these republicans with their mighty pen swords… makes a girl swoon with fear… NOT
Trouble with your reference, DKL, is that 1/2 of the black panthers spotted outside that Philly precinct were actually certified as civilian voting observers. In other words, authorized to be there.
The other guy was prosecuted for carrying the club.
2 black guys in front of a 95% black precinct. Not 1 complaint from a voter IN THAT PRECINCT!
Oh, those scary black folk working to protect their constitutionally guaranteed rights..
racism is ugly, DKL. When you wallow in it, that ugliness rubs off on you.
Not only does DKL ignore the actual facts of the incident in PA (no voters who were “intimidated” were ever found), he also ignores the well known saying that far more has been stolen with the point of a pen than the point of a gun.
DKL is 0-2, so who wants to bet he goes for the strike-out on his next post?
“Perhaps the only positive thing one can say about GOP voter suppression is that it is relentless.”
That can also be negative Ernie, especially when they use and get their energy from the dark side of the force.
Nunyabiz #1,
Does it really matter any more? Are we so dazed and confused that we think we have a choice any more?
We can’t deal with it, but the world is trying to from a distance.
Not good.
oops, sorry Nunyabiz, I should have said #2 …
The Republican party is quickly teaching young potential voters what they’re all about. If I was a student that was restricted from voting, I would remember it forever, and I wouldn’t like it. Republicans don’t think very long term, do they?
And in Wisconsin, the Republican leaders of the state had a rude awakening when the Government Accountability Board ruled that universities and colleges could attach a sticker to the back of student ID cards to provide any necessary information in order for the students to vote in Wisconsin. Their reaction? See:
http://host.madison.com/wsj/new...cc4c002e0.html
Maine is having an election in Now. . We can vote on whether to stop same day voting or not. Only problem, the question is so convoluted that many may not vote according to the way they feel is right.
Re Molly @11. The vote in November is on the right to same day registration — a people’s veto of the GOP effort to end that right.
While many may not fully appreciate the significance, citizens must come to understand that the assault on same day registration is but one component of a concerted, billionaire-funded and controlled effort to eliminate the ballot as the great equalizer in a society whose economic disparity is so great as to lean towards a new feudalism.
It is important that grass roots organizations get the word out that what is at stake is nothing less than democracy in Maine.
Sorry, but I don’t see the intimidation in this letter.
I suspect that in the course of the voter fraud investigation the SoS discovered that there were out-of-state students who were registered to vote who did not have a Maine driver’s license and people who were registered to vote in Maine yet were no longer living there.
Nowhere does he state that the recipient’s voter registration is improper or in jeopardy. He neither states nor infers that you must have a Maine driver’s license to vote.
Indeed, perhaps all these letters were sent to just two classes of people: Students residing in Maine without a driver’s license and students who left Maine yet are still registered to vote there. That would explain the use of the word, “Instead” which implies some sort of linkage, as you note.
I think your “reasonable inference” is not in fact reasonable.
John P. Garry III @ 13:
Sorry, but the folks in Maine — at least the Sun Journal editorial board — disagrees with you, and agrees with Ernie. They also ask this salient question in pointing over here in support of Ernie’s piece:
If all out-of-state students follow Summers’ instructions and obtain driver’s licenses here, abandoning their parents’ residences and practically declaring themselves emancipated, then on what date does the UMaine System refund their out-of-state tuition payments and charge them less-expensive in-state costs?
Read their coverage to see the numbers that the Sec. of State would be costing the state if he followed through with his intimidation.
As to your specific points, you wrote:
And, of course, neither of those things is illegal. Having a Maine driver’s license has NOTHING to do with voting in Maine. So your point is what again?
So why did he bother to send them that letter? Did he send it to anybody else in the entire state who may have recently moved there?
No. The only “classes” of people who received the letter were the ones who had their life uprooted by the chair of Maine’s Republican Party by being identified as a possible criminal, despite having broken no laws.
Thanks for your thoughts. I think your comment has nothing to do with reasonableness, and everything to do with a partisan interest in intimidating voters from participating in their democracy.
I’m afraid, John P. Garry,III, @13 that you’ve missed the mark by a country mile.
1. The evidence does not support your speculation that “the SoS discovered that there were out-of-state students who were registered to vote who did not have a Maine driver’s license.”
a) The letter makes no mention of such a “discovery.” It does not inform the recipients of such a “discovery.”
b) Since the purpose of the “investigation” was to determine whether any of the noble 206 committed “voter fraud” and since possession of a driver’s license has nothing to do with the right to cast a vote in ME, there was no reason why the SoS should even examine the question of whether the 206 had ME driver’s licenses.
c) The argument about driver’s licenses came from the clueless GOP Chair Charlie Summers during the radio broadcast we covered in Local Radio Hosts School Maine’s Hapless GOP Chair on College Students’ Right to Vote. The SoS knew full well that Summers was flat-out wrong, yet he addresses a letter to the 206 about the topic?
2) You are correct that the SoS took pains not to “explicitly” make a false statement to the effect that one must possess a ME driver’s license to vote. But you willfully choose to ignore the unassailable fact that since there is no link between driver’s licenses and the right to vote, there was no reason why the SoS should have singled out the innocent 206 for a letter that discusses driver’s licenses, the “investigation” of the 206 for “election fraud” and a withdrawal of their status as registered voters eligible to vote in ME.
3) There is not one word that suggests this letter was addressed to “students no longer residing in Maine.” Your effort to suggest as much reveals a desperate grasping for something, anything that would evade the unmistakable intent of the SoS letter — intimidation!
4) You conveniently ignore the precise effect that the letter had on those recipients interviewed by ThinkProgress. The fact that someone, like yourself, with the luxury of academic distance, does not personally experience intimidation, does not mean that those who are the direct recipients would likely be intimidated — especially when the letter bears the official seal of the SoS, which itself carries the implicit threat that it is backed by the power of the state.