[i] Including, as cited at http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10838, Germany, UK, Spain, Belgium, France, Greece, and Italy. "Most European countries . . . hold their elections on Sunday," according to R. Michael Alvarez and others writing for the Caltech-MIT Voting Project ("Voter Opinions about Election Reform: Do They Support Making Voting More Convenient?" VTP Working Paper #98, July 14, 2010, page 7 and reference there). Other democracies have their election days spread over weekends, not the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Minnesota, uniquely in this country, "guarantees citizen time off from their jobs to vote without penalties or reductions in their pay, personal leave or vacation time," Eric Black, "Why Is Turnout So Low in U.S. Elections? We Make It More Difficult to Vote than Other Democracies," MinnPost, October 1, 2014, http://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2014/10/why-turnout-so-low-us-elections-we-make-it-more-difficult-vote-other-democrac (unfortunately, this URL doesn't work, but googling the author and title will access this excellent article. It is important to note that the various democratic governments throughout the world that issue free voter IDs are not necessarily federal; often governments of smaller municipalities handle this. In some countries other than ours, voting is compulsory and voters are fined for not showing up. Four of these countries, Italy, Belgium, Greece, and Australia, boast a large voter turnout; three other countries have compulsory turnouts. Canada and eleven other democracies allow felons to vote from prison, as do Maine and Vermont (which, by the way, have the largest percentage of white voters in the country, Christopher Uggen and Sarah Shannon, "State-Level Estimates of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 2010," July 2012, http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/fd_State_Level_Estimates_of_Felon_Disen_2010.pdf). Voting for felons who have paid their debt to society is riddled with complications in this country and four states forbid it altogether. All of the above information is cited and quoted from Eric Black, "Why Is Turnout So Low in U.S. Elections?" Information above that deals with compulsory voting and what follows is taken from a study of 31 democracies, in S. L. Taylor, M. S. Shugart, A. Lijphart, and B. Grofman, A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014). See also T. W., "Where Is It Compulsory to Vote?" The Economist, September 19, 2013, http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/economist-explains-10.
[ii] Additionally, according to John Nichols, --Democracies around the world--old democracies, new democracies--have in their constitutions an affirmative right to vote. It's remarkable to me that the United States does not have that guarantee in our Constitution. I think a lot of our problems come back to this issue," "Time for a 'Right to Vote' Constitutional Amendment," The Nation, March 5, 2013, http://www.thenation.com/article/173200/time-right-vote-constitutional-amendment#; and "at least 135 nations--including our fellow North American countries, Canada and Mexico--explicitly guarantee citizens the right to vote and to be represented at all levels of government," ibid.
[iii] Another advanced technique already used in other countries for the purpose of ID is biometrics, "anything from retinal scans to the thumbprint-imaging technology used to access smartphones, Susan Montoy Bryan, "Voter ID Debate Does High-Tech with New Proposal," Santa Fe New Mexican, January 23-24, 2015, http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/legislature/voter-id-debate-goes-high-tech-with-new-proposal/article_013a717c-d852-536c-b24e-efaf63ea075d.html. New Mexico Senate Minority Whip William Payne is sponsoring a proposal for a feasibility study of this method that might "take some of the 'venom' out of the argument that requiring photo identification would lead to voter suppression. . . . We're not talking cutting-edge stuff. This is already commercially applicable. . . . It has to do with the county clerks buying the right equipment, having it in place and certifying that it's working," ibid. The secretary of state's office said that if the measure passed, they would be happy to consider it, ibid.
[iv] For the origins of the voter ID requirement, see note 12 below.
[v] In Georgia, a Republican general assembly had been voted in in 2004; the Republican governor, Sonny Perdue, had been elected in 2002, succeeding the Democratic Roy Barnes. Indiana's governor Joseph E. Kernan (2003-2005) was replaced by Mitch Daniels, a Republican, in 2005. In 2004, both houses of the state legislature became dominated by the GOP, forming a trifecta for the next two years. The composition of Arizona's state government in 2004, by the way, included the Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano, and a Republican-dominated bicameral state legislature.
[vi] The Myth of Voter Fraud (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010), page 153 and note 76. Between 2009 and 2011, Democrats held only one out of seven Congressional seats and one out of two Senate seats, "Louisiana State Legislature," en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_State_Legislature. And so there is no reason to assume that the Bayou State trended Democratic, given its red state legislative makeup. Between 2009 and 2011 also, the governor was Republican, ballotpedia.org/Louisiana_State_Legislature#Partisan_balance-1992-2013. [update: I came across information that Louisiana first attempted a photo ID law in 1994, which was denied preclearance by the DoJ until required changes were incorporated into it, so that initially the law was passed under a Democratic president, Clinton, and a Democratic governor, Edwin Edwards, Meg Kinnard, "South Carolina Voter ID Law: Justice Department Blocks Controversial Legislation," Huffington Post, December 23, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/23/south-carolina-voter-id-law_n_1168162.html]. Obvious reasons for the DoJ to demand alterations in the initial attempt was that photo IDs would distinguish between whites and African Americans, stimulating prejudicial behaviors, Debo P. Adegbile, "Voting Rights in Louisiana: 1982-2006," Review of Law and Social Justice 17:2, p. 440, http://www.law.usc.edu/why/students/orgs/rlsj/assets/docs/issue_17/04_Louisiana_Macro.pdf and reference there ]. Washington state was close to solidly blue during 2009-2011. Partisanship varies in its history before then, though the Democratic strength was evident; but in 1932 and previously it was nearly solidly red--to be sure a far different shade of it than currently prevails.
[vii] Campaign finance, as of the Supreme Court decision in favor of the plaintiffs in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission early in 2010, which many, including President Barack Obama, believe increased exponentially as a result, could rival voter ID and other measures antagonistic to turnout of the underprivileged majority of voters as a roadblock to democracy. See Chapter 2 for more and below, this chapter. When Ernest Canning deftly summarized the many devices used by the GOP to stay in power into 4 categories, "massive, paid-for propaganda courtesy of Citizens United" was first among them. The second was plundering of digital election systems; voter ID and other "suppression effort[s]" ranked third and, most interestingly, a fourth category, "narrowing the window of time citizens have to vote" etc., which is usually grouped into the third category. Not only does reduced time for early voting figure in, but also insufficient numbers of voting machines in Democratic districts, and election system malfunctioning on Election Day [italics mine], Canning, "GOP Voter Suppression Shifts into High Gear . . . ," May 23, 2011, www.bradblog,com/?p=8529#more-8529.
[viii] Not so in the nineteenth century and onward, according to the foresightful election reform advocate Joseph P. Harris writing in the late 1920s for the Brookings Institution, when voter fraud, among many other election-related vices, were rampant in this Jim Crow era, which involved more than Jim Crow certainly, including recently arrived ethnic groups committed to one party or another. But Tammany Hall and other powerful organizations vying to control election outcomes are outside the purview of this volume--for magisterial accounts see, inter alios, Tracy Campbell, Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, an American Political Tradition, 1742-2004 (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005). Harris also vehemently opposed any voter ID requirement, because he felt that identity proof required in the registration process, including signature matching, was sufficient; he strongly advocated registration as a foil to election fraud. Some form of it existed in all states except Arkansas, Indiana, and Texas (Minnite, The Myth of Voter Fraud, pages 40-41). He believed that the electoral system then in place in this country was in shambles and that "scientific solutions to political problems" applied, for example, to a sound restructuring of all areas of election administration and hugely and excessively complex laws were long past due--since the founding of this country. (In Wisconsin in 2012 a conflict arose between state election law and the state constitution--how could this happen?--one example of an infinite collection; see Brad Friedman, "Mailing of Absentee Ballots for WI Recall Elections Delayed; Watch for Dirty Tricks Soon," May 16, 2012, bradblog.com/?p=9304.) According to Minnite, page 152, voter ID requirements, like registration, "are a throwback to the post-Reconstruction era when the newly enfranchised freedmen of the South were often forced to carry their registration papers with them to the polls," a practice meant to foil the exercise of voting rights. This was a category of "racial mixing" that was deplored by white supremacists. Even the language of today's "suffrage restriction movement" is reminiscent of the post-Reconstruction era, she continues, ibid. When the U.S. Election Assistance Commission assigned the issue of the validity of voter fraud to two experts to research, it was obliged to attempt to nullify the results by rewriting the paper. The main conclusion in the original was that attributions of problems to this crime were "overblown and exaggerated." The paper was entitled "Voting Fraud and Voter Intimidation," by Tova Wang and Job Serebrov, a liberal and a conservative, respectively, assuring as well as possible that the information was objective rather than partisan. It was handed in on April 9, 2007. See GGPP, pages 163-64 and accompanying notes. The "draft" can be accessed at graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20070411voters_draft_report.pdf.
[ix] Justin Levitt, The Truth about Voter Fraud, November 2007, http://www.brennancenter.org/publication/truth-about-voter-fraud; for another view pointing to the complexity of attempting to measure such instances, see Richard Hasen,"GAO Report on Voter ID Laws Finds Laws Can Decrease Voter Turnout, Finds Measuring In Person Voter Fraud Difficult," October 8, 2014, www.electionlawblog.org/?p=66509. According to many, the by-far favorite venue for voter fraud is absentee voting, wide open to plagiarism at one end and the dumpster at the other end, depending on where the corruption resides. Absentee voter fraud is found in other forms as well. It is difficult and involves some expense to obtain a photo voter ID, especially one that is government-issued [and, in some instances, contains an expiration date], which more and more states are requiring. Qualifications consists of a driver's license, passport, or birth certificate if these are available, or other documentation certain categories of usually Democratic voters--poor people, people of color, college students, senior citizens, and even military--are not likely to have. It is surprising how many people, including those born at home, don't have a birth certificate or the means to purchase a facsimile (for which, in 17 states, a photo ID is required, according to Project Vote in 2011). The ways of squelching their will, in addition to photo voter ID, are many and varied, as will be enumerated below. Not surprisingly, the suppressing minority are by far most likely to consist of Republicans. See GGPP, pages 157-66 and passim. Add to this the famous dictum preached to a group of conservative Republican in 1980 by the late Paul Weyrich that the fewer citizens that vote, the better it is for them. (There is a video of part of this speech on Youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw. It's possible that Weyrich might have had in mind what President Franklin Roosevelt told union members in 1940: "There are some political candidates who think that they may have a chance of election, if only the total vote is small enough," [quoted by Kevin Donohoe, "In 22 Statehouses Across The Country, Conservatives Move To Disenfranchise Voters," Think Progress, March 5, 2011, http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/03/05/147035/state-disenfranchisement-schemes/.]) In the audience were Ronald Reagan and Pat Robertson. (Awareness of this principle was most evident when a phony group, Latinos for Reform, ads by a Republican political consultant, Robert Desposada, implored the Nevadans not to vote [the margin between then-Senate majority leader Harry Reid and his Tea Party opponent Sharron Angle was at the time minute]. The ad was pulled before airing, however, for some reason, "GOP Operative's Deceptive TV Ad Implores Latinos 'Don't Vote!'" October 19, 2010, www.bradblog.com/?cat=420&paged=7). The House majority leader of the Pennsylvania legislature, Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny) corroborated this in 2012 when he rejoiced at a time when a voter ID law was passed in his state--that would help Romney win the presidency, he opined to a cheering audience, www.salon.com/2012/06/25/penn_republican_voter_id_will_help_romney_win (an aside: an alienated and angry Jim Greer, former Republican Party Chairman charged with felony and disassociated with the GOP as of 2010, publicized some stunning revelations about conversations held in 2009 among party officials. They openly discussed repressing minority voting [which was carried out], specifically by blacks, and how "minority outreach programs were not fit for the Republican Party," Alex Brown, "Former Florida Republican Party Chair Says Republicans Actively Suppressed the Black Vote," Thing Progress, July 27, 2012, click here) The law was later revoked. But those who oppose the voter ID requirement, mostly Democrats, "cannot identify voters who did not vote because they did not have a voter ID." Moreover, in the same study that finds up to 20 million people without any acceptable form (i.e., photo) of voter ID, surveys prove that a majority of voters feel more secure with the ID requirement in place: "The NuStats survey also included a number of questions aimed to assess the public's confidence with the electoral process, trust in the U.S. election system, and support for or opposition to photo identification. Overall, more than 25 percent of respondents were not confident that their votes would be counted accurately, and only 57 percent were confident. [Among past studies, regarding added, earlier data cited later in this report: "When people believe that their votes do not matter or will not be counted correctly, democracy is in danger. A CBS/New York Times poll in December 2000 revealed that 80% of Americans thought that the methods for voting and counting the votes need to be more accurate. . . . Four years later, on the eve of the November 2004 election, another New York Times poll reported that only one-third of the American people said that they had a lot of confidence that their votes would be counted properly, and 29 percent said they were very or somewhat concerned that they would encounter problems at the polls"]. For a country with more than 200 years of elections, the lack of confidence by one-quarter of registered voters is very serious and disconcerting. . . . The perception of voter fraud is much higher among the general public than among experts. Seventeen percent said they saw or heard of fraud at their own polling place, and 60 percent saw or heard it at other polling places. (However, the category of voter fraud is not specified anywhere in this report, and in-person voter fraud is nowhere mentioned.) Steps are needed to raise the level of confidence, and the survey suggests that IDs could help. Indeed, of the three states, Indiana (with the most stringent photo ID requirements) had the highest level of confidence in the electoral system. More than two-thirds of respondents in all three states thought that the electoral system would be more trusted if voters were required to show photo ID . . . , and more than 80 percent said they would support a national ID card if it were provided for free. . . . It is doubtful that actual fraud exists at the scale cited above, but the perception is important and worrying" [For relevant statistics, see figures 1 and 2 in the following report; not surprisingly, fewer Democrats than Republicans expressed such distrust, and fewer blacks than whites--see table 19], R. Pastor, R. Santos, A. Prevost, and V. Gueorguieva, "Voter IDs Are Not the Problem: A Survey of Three States," January 9, 2008, Center for Democracy and Election Management, American University, Washington, DC. The real category to worry about, this study recommends, is voter registration: "not enough qualified citizens register [why? Because they do not qualify for voter ID?] and, among those who are registered, too few vote," ibid. Moreover, among the report's conclusions: "registration is often a difficult exercise, and the state plays only a passive role, waiting for voters to come to them," ibid. It is not surprising that this finding is disputed. Lorraine Minnite writes that the proliferation of the voter ID requirement was politically motivated, period, "Voter Identification Laws: The Controversy over Voter Fraud," in Matthew J. Streb, Law and Election Politics: The Rules of the Game (New York: Routledge, 2013), page 89. She specifies the "fervent intensity of Republican legislators introducing, pushing, passing, and signing the laws on the one hand, and on the other, the vast public indifference toward the alleged epidemic of voter fraud the laws are said to combat," ibid. This intensity "veils strategic attempts at winning elections not simply by persuading voters but by first determining who gets to vote" (here she is quoting from a previous publication she coauthored with Frances Fox Piven and Margaret Groarke in 2009, Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters (New York: The New Press). As far as voter registration's "passivity," Michael Waldman writes that "Today's system of individualized, self-initiated voter registration was first created a century ago in an explicit effort to keep former slaves and new European immigrants from voting. It has barely been updated since," "Playing Offense: An Aggressive Voting Rights Agenda," March 18, 2013, http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/playing-offense-aggressive-voting-rights-agenda. Active intervention to remedy this has actually exacerbated the situation. See above, note 1. For a magisterial study of the many faces of "voter fraud" and the real roots of situations that are used to justify accusations of it, see Lorraine Minnite, The Myth of Voter Fraud (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).
[x] Honolulu Magazine calls the voter ID requirement "no big deal," totally irrelevant to the issues that have sprung up more recently in the continental United States and Alaska. "I don't know why the current generation feels the need to insist that the path of social justice requires the government to say, 'Yeah, we pretty much handed a ballot to anyone who walked in the door, no questions asked.'
"They're about government itself demonstrating to its citizens that it ran a clean, fair election with results that can be trusted. Voting is a members-only right, so it seems reasonable to expect government to do its due diligence in making sure elections are actually restricted to citizens," the article specifies," "Hawaii Voter ID Law No Big Deal,"Honolulu Magazine , August 2012, http://www.honolulumagazine.com/Honolulu-Magazine/August-2012/Hawaiis-Voter-ID-Law-Apparently-No-Big-Deal/#.VCMc43Lu0fQ. On the state government page, the further specification is the voter's signature on the photo ID, "Voting in Hawaii," Office of Elections, http://hawaii.gov/elections/voters/votehi.htm. RIght from its beginnings also, South Carolina required photo identification cards from voters. After this assurance about Hawaii as having the first photo ID requirement, I read a comment to an article on voter ID stating that in Hawaii a utility bill, a government document showing name and address, or a photo ID will suffice to allow a citizen who comes to the polls to vote, Moyers & company, "Who Doesn't Have Photo ID?" August 2, 2012, www.billmoyers.com/content/voter-id-who-doesnt-have-photo-id/. The moral of this anecdote? Check with the government; the Internet doesn't necessarily have all of the answers all of the time.
[xii] National Council of State Legislatures (NCSL), October 16, 2014, www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id-history.aspx. Elections expert Lorraine C. Minnite disagrees with some of the dates provided by sources: "the 'precise' date of the passage of voter identification laws in Hawaii, Delaware, Alaska, and Tennessee could not be determined," she writes. Her Table 5.1 (page 92) sets the date in Hawaii as "before 1993," "Voter Identification Laws: The Controversy over Voter Fraud." in Matthew J. Streb, Law and Election Politics: The Rules of the Game (New York: Routledge, 2013).
[xiii] Minnite,"Voter Identification Laws: The Controversy over Voter Fraud," page 89. She writes that the concept of voter ID was first articulated by Joseph P. Harris in his Registration of Voters (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1929), ibid.
[xiv] HAVA, Title III, Sec. 303(b)(2)(A)(i)(I)-(2). Title IV even provided guidelines for enforcement of the Title III requirements listed above. Nonetheless, many blue states still require nothing more than a signature, if that, to match the one on file for voting at the polls--Washington, DC, New Jersey, and New York, as well as Pennsylvania, a swing state--close relatives and/or I have resided in all of these places and so I speak from personal experience.
[xvi] See above, note 3, for partisan breakdown of the state government at that time.
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