[xvii] State of Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona.
[xviii] The Constitution states that Congress has the ultimate authority over federal elections and the purpose of NVRA was to facilitate registration by providing more venues for it--"to register, not purge voters," especially those not likely to take the initiative to register on their own. See GGPP, page 211. Registration, according to this law, did not require proof of citizenship.
[xix] That is, the Commission on Federal Election Reform. Their report Building Confidence in U.S. Elections was published on September 19. See GGPP, pages 156-58. Brad Friedman sheds more light on the origins of the commission. It was set up by the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), a hastily and secretly organized "voting rights" advocacy group to represent EI, after its one week of existence, at a House hearing "What Went Wrong in Ohio?" Convened by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), co-sponsor of HAVA, the first meeting was boycotted by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell in Washington, DC, before he attended the second meeting in Columbus, Ohio. Who set up ACVR? A close consultant of both Bush-Cheney campaigns, Mark "Thor" Hearne. The hearing turned into a joke, the countless foul-ups and debacles in Ohio's Election 2004 blamed on Kerry-Edwards and black voters for not showing up until late afternoon to vote. For more on this trampling all over democracy or, more accurately, battle against democracy, see GGPP pages 145-47. The main point of all of this backgrounding is that ACVR organized the Carter-Baker Commission in order to spread and legitimize the idea of the importance of voter IDs, Brad Friedman, "Obama Calls for Another Presidential Voting Commission--But Will It Mirror the Sham Baker/Carter Election Commission After 2004?" February 12, 2013, http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9865. According to another source, the organizer of the commission was the Center for Democracy and Election Management of American University, Pastor, Santos, Prevost, and Gueorguieva, "Voter IDs Are Not the Problem: A Survey of Three States" (see above for full citation). It is, to my mind, no coincidence that Indiana's photo ID requirement appeared the same year--July 1 (P.L. 109-2005, www.in.gov/legislative/pdf/acts_2005.pdf; Georgia's similar law had been passed in March 2005, New Mexico's in mid-October 2005, and Washington state's in July 2005--see GGPP, page 158 ), just as, several years later, the minute section 4 of the Voting Rights Act was gutted by SCOTUS in 2013 (Shelby County v. Holder), a slew of discriminatory legislation was passed by some of the states with the historically most racist behaviors toward black voters, Texas and North Carolina among them. Section 4 had required the most racist-leaning states to preauthorize ("preclear") with the Department of Justice any election-related actions they planned. Once the preclearance requirement was dropped, Jim Crow scratched himself and stretched, ready to roll again. See GGPP, chapter 6, for more on the spread of voter ID requirements throughout the country, like a rash once the 2010 election painted this country red and the GOP took office in 2011. What a year! For more, see below.
[xx] According to Pastor, Santos, Prevost, and Gueorguieva, "Voter IDs Are Not the Problem: A Survey of Three States" (see above for full citation), the Carter-Baker report "concluded . . . that the concerns of ID proponents and opponents were both legitimate. A free election requires that voters identify themselves in a manner that leaves no doubt that they are the ones registered, and it should not be implemented in a way that limits access to voting. The Commission sought to bridge the partisan divide by recommending a uniform voter ID, based on the 'Real ID Act of 2005,' coupled with an affirmative role by states to provide free voter ID cards for any citizen who does not have one, and to do so by sending mobile units out to register more voters. In addition, it suggested a five-year transition period before full implementation."
[xxi] Is it mere coincidence that Carter, co-chair of the commission, is a native of Georgia, where he still resides? In this case, according to Pastor, Santos, Prevost, and Gueorguieva, "the U.S. Department of Justice, when it cleared Georgia's 2005 voter ID law under the Voting Rights Act, contended that the number of voters without the required ID was 'extremely small,' and blacks were more likely to have ID cards than whites."[!] Recall that at this time the DoJ Voting Section of its Civil Rights Division was controlled by a group that outspokenly favored the voter ID requirement (see GGPP, pages 160 and following). I read elsewhere that in a recent election it was claimed that after the imposition of the requirement in Georgia, the number of black voters increased--but the minority population in Georgia has also increased and is still on the rise. Between the 2000 and 2010 U.S. Census reports, this "nonwhite" population increased by 1.2 million, or 81 percent, April Hunt, "Is Most of Georgia's Population Growth from Minorities?" AJC PolitiFact Georgia, June 17, 2014, www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2014/jun/17/stacey-abrams/most-georgias-population-growth-minorities. See also below, Chapter 6, note 48, for a more detailed discussion of a discussion of this subject, between Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and Hans von Spakovsky, formerly of the DoJ and the Federal Election Commission, at a Senate hearing.
[xxii] Crawford v. Marion County, 2005. See Chapter 2, note 106. The constitutionality was based on the concern to avoid voter fraud, even though not one case had ever surfaced in the Hoosier State (as corroborated in Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita or other states; see Minnite, pages 98 and following and page 129, note 23). Justice Scalia concurred with the decision, though adding that it was up to the individual states to regulate this category of voting requirement. The ID law in Indiana applied only to voters who came to the polls, not to absentee voters, and allowed for the former to fill out provisional ballots if they did not have the required form of ID with them. These votes would be counted if within ten days the voters appeared at the office of the circuit court clerk and filled out an affidavit. In his concurring opinion, Scalia further states that the Supreme Court should not get involved in "local election law cases," "Crawford v. Marion County Election Board," click here.
[xxiv] See Chapter 2, note 143.
[xxv] Votelaw: Edward Still's Blog on Law and Politics, "Indiana: LWV challenges voter ID under state constitution," http://www.votelaw.com/blog/archives/005920.html. On September 17, 2008, the Indiana Court of Appeals pronounced Indiana's voter ID law unconstitutional "because it does not apply uniformly to all voters. The three-judge panel unanimously held that the requirement that voters present government-issued photo identification at the polls runs afoul of the Indiana Constitution's 'Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause,' which provides: 'The General Assembly shall not grant to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens. . . . '" http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6573808, quoting from the (pay-to-view) http://www.indystar.com/article/20090917/NEWS05/909170487/Court+knocks+out+state+voter+ID+law. The debate persists into 2014; see Patsy Hoyer, "Guest Column: Why We Oppose Indiana's Voter ID Law," Lafayette Journal & Courier, August 17, 2014, http://www.jconline.com/story/opinion/readers/2014/08/17/guest-column-oppose-indianas-voter-law/14131341/.
[xxvi] Brennan Center, in Citizens without Proof: A Survey of Americans' Possession of Documentary Proof of Citizenship and Photo Identification, November 28, 2006, www/brennancenter.org/analysis/citizens-without-proof. SCOTUS's logic for its 2009 decision in favor of the voter ID requirement? "The theory is that people might think there is voter fraud and thus be discouraged from voting if there were [sic] not onerous requirements," Frederick A. O. ("Fritz") Schwarz, Jr., "Is American Democracy Always Resilient?" in Democracy & Justice: Collected Writings 2010 (New York: Brennan Center for Justice, 2011), page 15, click here. Voting as a Constitutional right is a moot question according to some. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia brought up the point during the Bush v. Gore hearings in late 2000 that the Constitution nowhere guarantees the right to vote. Along with Ranking House Judiciary Committee member Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) attempted to pass legislation to amend the Constitution to guarantee this right, but could never acquire sufficient support from his colleagues. According to John Nichols, "The amendment proposal, introduced in each new Congress through the 2000s, would eventually attract more than fifty co-sponsors. But it never gained real traction or more than cursory attention," Nichols, "Time for a 'Right to Vote' Constitutional Amendment," The Nation, March 5, 2013, http://www.thenation.com/article/173200/time-right-vote-constitutional-amendment#. The torch was taken up by Reps. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Mark Pocan (D-MN) in 2013, click here.
The argument that voting is indeed a Constitutional right has been asserted simply because it is assumed in the body of the document. Election of members of Congress by the people "by the People of the several States" is one subject of Article I, section 2, as well as in the Bill of Rights, where it is the subject most frequently mentioned, seven times; see GGPP, page 254. See also the debate in the New York Times surrounding the article "A Voting Rights Amendment Would Guarantee Democratic Principles," updated November 4, 2014, which includes responses by experts Richard L. Hasen of the University of California, Irvine, and Heather Gerken, Yale University, both of whom oppose the efforts at amending the Constitution, www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/11/03/should-voting-in-an-election-be-a-constitutional-right/a-voting-rights-amendment-would-end-voting-suppression. Compare election law attorney and activist Paul Lehto's take: "Even the Bush v. Gore supreme court [sic] recognized that as soon as a legislature decides to use elections as its method to determine electors for the Presidency (as every state has since just after the Civil War) the federal constitutional right to vote attaches to the presidential election."
"Why open up a can of worms where there is hardly even a debate? If you go looking for your most fundamental rights in the writings of government, one will never be a liberty-loving citizen, one will end up as a good, even if reluctant, obedient nazi [sic] whenever the government is corrupted by something like Nazism," email to Democracy Table discussion group, December 14, 2012. You'll read this often, too: the issue was too complicated for the founding fathers, so they left it to the individual states to determine the particulars of the individual's right to vote.
[xxvii] According to Pastor, Santos, Prevost, and Gueorguieva, "Voter IDs Are Not the Problem: A Survey of Three States," table 6.
[xxviii] According to Pastor, Santos, Prevost, and Gueorguieva, "Voter IDs Are Not the Problem: A Survey of Three States," table 6.
[xxix] According to Pastor, Santos, Prevost, and Gueorguieva, "Voter IDs Are Not the Problem: A Survey of Three States," table 6.
[xxx] According to Ari Berman, between 2000 and 2015, only one case of voter impersonation had been discovered out of 22.4 million votes cast in Alabama, "Alabama's Controversial Voter-ID Law Is Challenged in Court, The Nation, December 2, 2015, www.thenation.com/article/alabamas-controversial-voter-id-law-challenged-in-court.
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