…Or if you’re brown, white, poor, or appear to be a Democratic voter, Ohio and Wisconsin (swing states) have now enacted laws that put serious barriers between you and the voting booth. North Carolina is worse, now, than either Ohio or Wisconsin. Some laws have already kicked in. Some may not start skewing the vote to the right and far right until the next presidential election.
Don’t look to the Supreme Court for justice in voting.
Last year, the Supreme Court struck down a central provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The decision allowed a number of mostly Southern states to alter their election laws without the prior approval once required from the Justice Department. A few weeks later, free of the mandate and emboldened by a Republican supermajority, North Carolina passed the country’s most sweeping restrictions on voting.
The law did away with same-day voter registration and a popular program to preregister high school students to vote. It cut early voting to 10 days from 17, mandated a strict photo identification requirement that excluded student and state worker IDs and ended straight-ticket party voting, all of them measures that are expected to hurt Democrats, election law analysts said. The Supreme Court decision also cleared the way for Texas to institute its strict photo identification requirements. …NYT
Meanwhile, Republicans continue to cry “fraud” but, as the Times points out, have never been able to come up with proof. Democrats are ramping up efforts to modernize the voting process and make voting more accessible to the legitimate voter, filing “a spate of federal and state lawsuits to combat the measures, including Justice Department lawsuits against North Carolina and Texas. A state lawsuit is expected soon in Ohio, where Democrats are also gathering signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot this November that would reverse some of the restrictive voting measures.”
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In Wisconsin, the local Dunn County News reports on some details of Republican Governor Scott Walker’s and other Republicans’ effort s to exclude minorities from elections.
Clearly Republican legislators don’t need to discourage voting. They have created legislative districts that should assure GOP legislative majorities through 2022. Walker has won two statewide elections under the existing election rules. He has name identification and lots of campaign cash already on hand.
Republicans also have championed legislation to limit the hours and days for absentee balloting, something that also could reduce the overall voter turnout in Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee and Madison. That would also help assure Walker wins a second term as governor.
The voter suppression is different than when Tommy Thompson was the Republican governor. Then there was a bipartisan consensus that government should encourage voting.
Is there more to the Republican efforts than just trying to put a thumb on the scales of democracy before the November election?
Talk-show remarks by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, hinted at racially insensitive attitudes among conservatives. He said that there’s a “tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working or learning the value and the culture of work.”
That touched off a firestorm of criticism, and Ryan retreated saying he was “not implicating the culture of one community.” ...DunnCountyNews
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The same racism turns up throughout Republican efforts to prevent Democrats from voting. Dave Weigel, at Slate, reports on Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, to exclude minorities from polling places.
The 2012 election went incredibly smoothly in Wisconsin. Starting on Oct. 21, two weeks before the end of the election, voters could show up to early-voting sites and be done with their annual civic duty. Not registered? You could do that in person. Busy all week? Show up on Saturday or Sunday. The ease of the thing helped push Wisconsin turnout to 73.2 percent of eligible voters, up from 72.4 percent in 2008, the second-highest in the country. (Damn your eyes, Minnesota!)
This was clearly a problem, and it had to be fixed.
You bet. And, with the help of a friendly legislature, it was fixed.
Wisconsin’s Republican legislature, which was strengthened by a 2011 gerrymander, has played a useful game with Walker. It’s proposed balloting restrictions that go further than he likes, such as a ban on same-day registration. But when he’s met them halfway, he’s rolled back voting access beyond what’s recommended by the Presidential Commission, and recommended by experience. …Slate
Oh, right. The gerrymander.
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But then there’s the effort to nail the clear racism in North Carolina’s efforts to restrict voting.
Any race-related emails that North Carolina Republicans may have sent in connection with the voter restrictions they passed last summer could soon be public, thanks to a ruling by a federal judge.
Before the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act, simply demonstrating a discriminatory impact could be enough to overturn a discriminatory law. Now, in order to have North Carolina’s voting law struck down, civil rights groups and the Justice Department have to demonstrate that state lawmakers deliberately engaged in racial discrimination against voters.
The sweeping law requires voters to show certain forms of photo identification, eliminates same-day registration and reduces early voting — all measures which voting rights advocates say are intended to make it harder for Democratic-leaning minorities to vote.
The emails sent by legislators are crucial to proving racial motivations played some role in the legislation.
North Carolina wanted to keep legislator emails secret. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Joi Elizabeth Peake ruled Thursday that the state couldn’t withhold all the emails. She did, however, say that North Carolina might be able to argue that emails only between legislators and their staffers could be kept private.
Of course, if legislators have nothing to hide about the motivations for passing the restrictive laws, they can individually waive their legislative immunity, as Peake noted. …HuffPo