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

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

Last week, we wrote about how some reporters have stopped playing into the hands of voter suppression operatives and suddenly acted like journalists by actually investigating partisan claims of voter fraud in relation to voter registration drives. Until the Virginia press corps showed how it should be done, this kind of every-day feat of journalism had been as rare as voter fraud itself.  But, if this is August of an election year, then this must be voter suppression season.

.... On May 5, the department led by James B. Peake issued a directive that bans nonpartisan voter registration drives at federally financed nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and shelters for homeless veterans. As a result, too many of our most patriotic American citizens — our injured and ill military veterans — may not be able to vote this November.... The department offers two reasons to justify its decision. First, it claims that voter registration drives are disruptive to the care of its patients. This is nonsense. Veterans can fill out a voter registration card in about 90 seconds.

Second, the department claims that its employees cannot help patients register to vote because the Hatch Act forbids federal workers from engaging in partisan political activities. But this interpretation of the Hatch Act is erroneous. Registering people to vote is not partisan activity.

If the department does not want to burden its staff, there are several national organizations with a long history of nonpartisan advocacy for veterans and their right to vote that are eager to help, as are elected officials like me.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

As we ride a relatively optimistic wave to Election Day, fueled by reports of massive registration of new democrats this election year, its easy to forget the biggest hurdle is yet to be overcome, vote suppression.  

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.

The Republicans have known for some time that their program only appeals to a minority of the voters. So one of their most effective tactics for continuing to squeeze out electoral victories had been to suppress and disenfranchise those voters deemed most likely to vote Democratic in an election. In the past this tactic has focused on racial minorities and the poor. Another demographic that seems to be breaking more reliably against the Republicans in recent years is the young. Can we help counter the Reoublicans' tactics by lowering the voting age by a significant account—say, to 15? And is it reasonable to think that people in that newly enfranchised age group would be mature enough to make responsible decisions when voting?

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

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

Reports and exits polls this entire political season have built a narrative of tremendous, even record-breaking voter participation, pushing us to believe that voter turnout in November will exceed all expectations.

Maybe.

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.

I just finished one of the most interesting discussions of my college years.  Although the topic left me fuming, it raised some interesting questions which I thought I might bring here to get some more input on this idea.  

•    "The Shame of Postville, Iowa," an editorial in Sunday’s New York Times, calls attention to an essay written by Erik Camayd-Freixas.  Mr. Camayd-Freixas is a professor and court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of last month’s ICE raid on the Postville community.  He was disgusted when he saw the injustice in the legal system that the workers were subjected to; instead of being deported immediately, over 260 workers were charged with serious identity fraud crimes and sentenced to 6 months in prison:

What is this world coming to? I always thought that if only two things in this world were certain, they were these:

1. It's the members of the Democrat party that flip-flop

2. Ron Paul will always vote against spending money that was stolen by force by the Government from innocent freedom-loving Americans.

Yet today, my beliefs have been cruelly torn asunder. Ron Paul joined the Democrat party in stealing our money, and the Republicans flip-flopped on taking more of our money for the Socialist Medicare program.

I am very, very upset.

I am voting for you.  

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

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns and Nathan Henderson-James

Massive voter registration drives, recent passionate immigration debates, and the contested presidential primaries are finally bringing one of the nation's fastest growing populations into the democratic process, despite decades of low voter participation rates and recent voting rights attacks based on anti-immigrant rhetoric. Recognizing their rapidly increasing voting power - which is catching up with their "raw demographic power," particularly in the closely contested states of Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada - both presidential candidates are actively pursuing Latino voters. However, advocates caution a powerful lesson must be learned from voter suppression schemes executed in recent elections in order to ensure this former "sleeping giant" of electoral participation will have access to the polls in November, and most importantly, have their votes counted.

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

In the aftermath of the presidential primaries, stories of unprecedented voter registration and turnout are drifting to the back burner. But with an exceedingly imbalanced electorate, the fight to create access to the voting rolls and enforce the voting rights of all Americans continues. With historic voter registration drives underway and a preview of the types of problems that could occur in November, the focus of the media is beginning to shift towards the less sexy, but crucial elements that work to maximize voter participation while ensuring eligible voters can cast their ballots and have them counted. In Project Vote’s view, this is a welcome development since many of the potential issues require more time to sort out than is available if problems are noted only weeks in advance of the election. This week, election officials, advocates and a presidential candidate worked to assist in or restore voting rights for hospitalized veterans in Connecticut, minority citizens in Georgia, and former felons in Tennessee.

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

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

Despite growing political interest among Americans, this November millions of people who "live, work and raise families in our communities" will be denied the right to elect our next president  as a result of a past felony conviction. Felon disenfranchisement has raised concerns among advocates and legislators that such laws further perpetuate disparities not only in the electorate, but also in society.

For those of you who are familar with my diaries you know I'm very carefull about calling a person a racist. I find it's more like to end conversations then to start them. But I find this story from the NYT is loaded with politics and racism masked as concern. I have developed a deep loathing for the word CONCERN in politics. More often then not it's a code word, because it's never elaborated on. Concern about what?  Concern usually masks racism, sexism, politics, or homophobia. The reasons expressed for this concern always seem flimsy.

In this case the CONCERN is over the large number of black people registering to vote in Louisiana. You see the Democrats’ Vote Drive in Louisiana Stirs Concern. Why is it stirring concern?

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

Much like Steve Soto, I did not find yesterday’s rejection on the Military Commissions Act a shining act of the good America ultimately triumphing yet again, but rather a depressing, disturbing sight of four fanatical Supreme Court Justices desperately holding up some tablets of bloody authoritarianism in their defiant dissent.  

Despite everything that has gone wrong with countries in ruins, hundreds of thousands dead for nothing but lies, millions of American lives wrecked from economic ruin on a warming planet these utterly impervious men still resolutely resolve to cast aside the most precious tenets of our Democracy at their mere stupid and twisted whims, the roaring howls of human pain and suffering deafening to us just meaning nothing to them.

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

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

"Someone needs to the tell the VA that veterans don't check their citizenship rights at the door when they enter a VA facility," editorialized the Sacramento Bee on Sunday, referring to the continued refusal of the Department of Veterans Affairs to assist with voter registration. The Calif. publication urged the VA  to change a policy restricting voter registration drives before October registration deadlines for the 2008 presidential election.

Hillary has been arguing for months that she wouldn't quit the race because she was in it for the countless ninety-year-old women that came to see her and urge her on, because they had been deprived of the right to vote when they were younger.