Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog Voting Matters

By Nathan Henderson-James

Just yesterday we noted the right way to report on charges of voter fraud and the wrong way to go about it. We explained how the news media had been gamed by people with a partisan interest in the outcome of elections to gin up hysteria to engage in voter intimidation and voter disenfranchisement efforts.

Well, the partisans are back at it in Wisconsin, but this time the press is following the lead of Virginia journalists and scrutinizing the claims rather than simply reprinting the press release.

Here’s the backstory. The community organization ACORN has recently completed a voter registration drive in Milwaukee aimed at historically disenfranchised populations like low-income folks and African-Americans. The drive assisted voters complete some 35,000 cards. So far so good.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns and Nathan Henderson-James

We spend a lot of time in these news updates showing how charges of voter fraud are used to discredit voter participation efforts and prime the pump for voter suppression efforts, such as the passage of voter ID bills, pushing for proof of citizenship, engaging in draconian voter purge efforts, and imposing sever restrictions on voter registration drives. We have also spent a lot of time carefully delineating the politics behind these efforts, starting with our March 2007 report The Politics Of Voter Fraud and continuing on in these diaries to name but two venues.

This is a cross post from DU:

http://www.democraticunderground.com...

In sum- he went to vote, but the judges refused to accept an approved form of ID, and refused to read a copy of the state voter ID requirements the voter took with him-----

Cross-posted at Project Vote's Voting Matters Blog

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

In 2000, Florida’s disastrous effort to purge former felons from voter rolls resulted in the disenfranchisement of hundreds if not thousands of legitimate voters and clearly influenced the outcome of the presidential contest in that state. History may repeat itself this November with states taking potentially reckless and unlawful measures to clean voter rolls before Election Day.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

In light of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold Indiana's voter ID law, the state-by-state battle to pass similar legislation has escalated with politicians seeking partisan gain furiously pushing laws that hinder access to the ballot. However, lawmakers seeking to dismantle barriers to electoral participation are just as committed to election integrity and protecting the voting rights of potentially millions of voters by calling out voter ID laws as "sheer political posturing." Meanwhile, positive measures to increase participation through Election Day Registration (EDR) are gaining ground in several states even as Iowa prepares to test-drive its new EDR law in the June 3 primary.

By Nathan Henderson-James

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters.

Today the Dallas Morning News editorialized on the recent attempts by the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbot, to find any evidence of widespread voter impersonation fraud or illegal voting by non-citizens. Project Vote reported on his failure to find any evidence of organized or widespread fraud earlier this week.

The Republicans in Missouri are trying to put up another barrier to keep poor people from voting.  In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision allowing Indiana's voter ID law, they have pushed a ballot initiative that would amend the Missouri constitution so that they could require people to prove they were citizens before they could register to vote.

Even worse, the issue will be on the primary ballot, so a lot fewer people will be voting, since the presidential primary has already happened. Once a constitutional amendment is passed, the legislature can write it into law, my understanding is that just having it in the constitution would not in itself change how people registered until there was legislation to back it up.

That may be our saving grace.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

The battle  to protect the voting rights of low income and minority citizens was marked by several victories last week. In addition to the "three key battles" on voting rights outlined by Steven Rosenfeld last Friday - Missouri's controversial voter ID defeat, Arizona's agreement to comply with federal voter registration law, and voter ID crusader, Hans von Spakovsky's withdrawal from his Federal Election Commission nomination– on Monday Kansas governor, Kathleen Sebelius vetoed a voter ID bill citing "I cannot support creating any roadblock to prevent our citizens from adding their voices to the democratic discourse that makes our nation great," she said.

By Nathan Henderson-James

Reports out of Texas over the past month show a pattern familiar to voting rights groups: top law enforcement officials engaged in deeply politicized efforts to push prosecutions and policies that disenfranchise low-income and minority voters. Steve Rosenfeld, writing in the Texas Observer, lays out the the whole story in detail, but the general gist feels a lot like the politicization scandal the US Department of Justice brought to light over the course of 2007.

UPDATE (6:00PM CDT): VICTORY!

No Voter ID (barring a special session in the summer)!

As some of you may have heard, we have a constitutional amendment that may come up in the Missouri Senate today. The amendment is titled HJR48 and you can read it here.

The bill is high on the calendar.

And you can listen along by going here and clicking on "Senate" under "Live Debate"

Under the fold, some helpful notes to help you make some sense of "Missouri Senate Radio"

By Nathan Henderson-James

Partisan efforts to keep up to 300,000 eligible Missouri citizens, mostly progressive-leaning voters from elderly and low-income demographics but also including such large blocks as married women, permanently off the voting rolls are coming to a head in the Missouri Senate today as the Legislature prepares to adjourn. Measures not passed by that time will die, pending the Governor calling a special session.

Voting rights and progressive activists, led by Missourians for Fair Elections are fighting back and report an extremely tough but increasingly winnable fight against what the Kansas City Star is calling a "real deception...being perpetrated by legislators, whose claims of fraud are driving what appears to be a political agenda".

Robin Carnahan, Missouri's Secretary of State, and an opponent of the measure, HJR 48 - which would amend Missouri's constitution to require proof of citizenship to register and vote, will be holding a press conference today in Kansas City to point out the partisan agenda behind this measure.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

Requiring proof-of-citizenship in order to register to vote is the latest addition to voter suppression arsenal. Spurred by Arizona’s 2004 implementation of proof of citizenship requirements and the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold Indiana's strict voter ID law, proof of citizenship bills - often coupled with voter ID - are gaining traction across the country. With more than 13 million Americans lacking ready access to citizenship documentation and scant evidence of voter registration fraud by non-citizens (or any voter for that matter) leading to illegal votes, proof of citizenship requirements could have a significant impact on the electorate. Wasting no time after the high court's decision, the neighboring states of Kansas and Missouri have swiftly moved forward with efforts to pass such legislation that could take effect in the November election.

I offer more wage suppression, with employers gouging more unions and driving down wages in this country.

For more than two months, 3,600 United Auto Workers (UAW) members have walked picket lines in Detroit, Three Rivers, Mich., and upstate New York. The strike at American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM), a major supplier of truck and sport-utility axles for General Motors (GM), is shaping up as a line-in-the-sand campaign for the embattled union.

After watching geriatric nuns get turned away from the polls in Indiana last week, because they lacked a photo ID, one would think that the movement for voter ID laws might be slowed down.  Apparently, not in Pennsylvania:

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld Indiana's law requiring voters to present photo identification, state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe wants to enact the same kind of law in Pennsylvania.

...

But Mr. Metcalfe said his bill is needed "in order to bar corrupt politicians, special interests and any other integrity-deficient individuals from executing unfair, criminal influence at the ballot box."

Never mind the lack of proof of such voter fraud.

Right up front, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Democratic Presidential primary.

No, what this is about is a rigged playing field when it comes to our elections, and how this strategy of "playing defense" - being reactive to the latest republican election crime and looking forward all while the republicans are already on to the next way to disenfranchise millions of voters who are highly unlikely to vote for them in the first place.

Missouri lawmakers this week are working to rush legislation that would prevent up to 240,000 Missourians from voting. The proposed legislation would make Missouri one of the toughest states in the country for eligible citizens who want to vote by requiring voters to present a government-issued photo ID at the polls. If passed, these changes could be in place by the November general election.
Joint Resolution 48 passed the Missouri House yesterday on a party-line 88-69 vote and now awaits action in the Senate. If passed, it would place a referendum before the voters in August which, if approved, would go into effect for the November 2008 election.

This resolution is superfluous for Missouri, where proponents have yet to show a single case of voter impersonation from recent elections, yet imposes high burdens on eligible voters to comply, as noted by Denise Lieberman, a lawyer and voter protection advocate with Advancement Project in Missouri.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns and Nathan Henderson-James

Project Vote normally uses this update to give news roundups on voting rights-related stories from the past week. However, with the reverberations from the Supreme Court’s Crawford vs. Marion County voter identification decision just starting to filter down into statehouses across the country, we felt it was necessary to spend this update concentrating solely on voter ID, giving progressives a concise summary of the problems associated with it and offer some framing devices to help fight against it.

How harmful was the Supreme Court's decision last week to allow Indiana to implement burdensome photo ID requirements for its voters?

This harmful, stupid and ridiculous:

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."

There's more nonsense than that:

[A] group of voting rights advocates that established a separate hot line reported receiving several calls from would-be voters who were turned away at precincts because they did not have a state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

One newly married woman said she was told she couldn't vote because her driver's license name didn't match the one on her voter registration record, said Myrna Perez of the Brennan Center Justice at New York University's law school, coordinator of the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hot line. Another woman said she was turned away from casting her first-ever ballot because she had only a college-issued ID card and an out-of-state driver's license, Perez said.

"These laws are confusing. People don't know how they're supposed to be applied," she said.

People who think photo ID requirements are innocuous aren't paying attention to their impact on the ground.  This is the first of many stories you'll be seeing.