This week in the war on voting is a joint project of Joan McCarter and Meteor Blades
A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Friday gave Wisconsin the go-ahead to implement its voter ID law that a federal district court in April had ruled in Frank v. Walker violated the Constitution and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Included in the appeal court's order:
After the district court’s decision, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin revised the procedures to make it easier for persons who have difficulty affording any fees to obtain the birth certificates or other documentation needed under the law, or to have the need for documentation waived. Milwaukee Branch of NAACP v. Walker, 2014 WI 98 (July 31, 2014). This reduces the likelihood of irreparable injury, and it also changes the balance of equities and thus the propriety of federal injunctive relief. The panel has concluded that the state’s probability of success on the merits of this appeal is sufficiently great that the state should be allowed to implement its law, pending further order of this court.
Rick Hasen, a professor of law who runs the highly respected Election Law Blog,
wrote that this move is big mistake right before an election.
Making changes in election rules as voting gets underway (think of overseas and military voters, for whom the process starts 45 days before election) is likely to create a great deal of confusion and uncertainty. It is hard enough to administer an election with set rules—much less to change the rules midstream. [...]
[T]here will be a flood of people needing id for this election AND training of personnel and others for how to implement the new id laws. This is untested and I agree with the ACLU that implementing it now would be a disaster.
As Hasen also notes, the panel's order is a strong indication that the 7th Circuit will overturn the lower court's decision.
Gov. Scott Walker announced Friday the implementation of a new no-fee procedure will allow people without birth certificates who seek to verify birth information so they can obtain state identification cards to vote. Cost of obtaining a voter ID has been one of the major complaints about the new law.
There is more on the war on voting below the butterfly ballot.
• Brennan Center releases its 2014 Student Voting Guide: Ever since the 18-year-old vote became law with ratification of the 26th Amendment 43 years ago, college students have run into flak when they have tried to vote in the communities where they are attending school. This is so even after the Supreme Court in 1979 summarily upheld a lower court ruling in Symm v. U.S. that overturned the use of a residency questionnaire that sought to restrict voting by student in a Texas community.
All kinds of tricks have been tried, including outright lying by state and local authorities. For instance, students have been warned that they may jeopardize their eligibility for financial aid, their parents' ability to claim them as dependents on their tax returns and their right to be covered by their parents' health insurance. All bogus claims with the intention of suppressing the student vote.
The Brennan Center on Justice at the NYU Law School has posted an interactive Student Voting Guide where a click will educate students what they need to know about the law in the state where they intend to vote. The guide includes a review of voting regulations, registration deadlines, residency requirements, ID policies, absentee voting rules, and early voting information.
All that should be a big help for activists seeking to turn out the vote in the midterm elections.
• Right-wingers in Montana want to get rid of Election Day registration: Election Day registration has been the law in Big Sky Country for eight years. Some 28,000 people have used it to cast a ballot on Election Day who couldn't have if they couldn't register right at the polls. Half of them were under 30.
Efforts to persuade the legislature to repeal the law have failed, so Republican lawmakers got a measure to do so on the November ballot.
Montana youth are fighting back. Forward Montana, whose goal is to train the next generation of state leaders, is working to get out the vote to defeat the repeal measure. Katje Booker, CEO of the non-profit group, said:
Ending same day registration is a cynical attempt to manipulate our elections by decreasing the diversity of people who cast their ballots. But this isn’t just a Montana issue. Similar initiatives are being pushed in state after state across the country. What makes us different? In Montana, the people will decide. This time, the voter suppression is not behind closed doors in the legislature or the courts—it’s on the ballot for voters to decide. Because the people will be speaking directly, it is critical that we succeed and and that those voices send a message to those who would suppress our vote so that they know this is not only a losing strategy, it’s a dangerous one.
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New restrictions disenfranchised more than 450 voters in North Carolina: Ari Berman reports at
The Nation that Democracy NC the votes of 454 North Carolinians didn't count in the 2014 primary because the state legislature dumped same-day registration as part of a package of new voting restrictions. One of the disenfranchised was Craig Thomas:
[He] registered to vote before he deployed to Afghanistan with the US Army. After serving abroad for eighteen months, he went to vote early in the state’s primary on April 30. He returned from Afghanistan to the same house, in the same precinct, but was told at the polls that there was “no record of registration” for him.
In the past, Thomas could’ve re-registered during the early voting period and cast a regular ballot under the state’s same-day registration system.
Not surprisingly, Democrats got hit hardest. Of the total, 57 percent of those who lost out on voting because of the same-day registration repeal were Democrats even though only 44 percent of all voters in the primary were Democrats. And 39 percent of those whom the new law disenfranchised were black, even though only 19 percent of voters who cast ballots in the primary were black.
• 24,000 transgender people in 10 states could be disenfranchised by voter ID laws: In a new white paper, "The Potential Impact of Voter Identification Laws on Transgender Voters in 2014 General Election," Jody Herman at the Williams Institute concludes that in 10 states, six of them part of the Old Confederacy, some 24,000 transgender people may not have adequate ID for the coming election. The paper used data from National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality.
° The paper notes that 27 percent of transgender citizens who have transitioned reported having no identification documents or records listing their correct gender. "If that rate holds true for the current U.S. population," Herman wrote, "about 126,000 transgender citizens who have transitioned have no updated identification or records."
° No surprise that the NTDS found transgender people of color, the young, the poor, the disabled and students, were more likely than other Americans to have no updated identification documents or records.
° Forty-one percent of transgender people reported that when presenting ID that did not accurately reflect their gender they were harassed, 15 percent said they were asked to leave the place where they presented the I
d and 3 percent said they had been were attacked.
• America is a democracy. So why do we make it hard for certain people to vote?: Steven W Thrasher at The Guardian writes:
Does America really care about making voting a serious and accessible right for all? Given the obsessive focus on voter ID initiatives aimed at minority communities in the absence of evidence of widespread voter fraud, and the myriad ways in which we make it difficult for the very young and the very old, the poor, the transient, those who served their time in our nation’s disgusting prison pipeline, the non-white, those who don’t speak perfect English and even members of the armed forces serving overseas (and their families) to vote, the answer, it seems, is no.
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EPIC files lawsuit over Department of Defense's on-line voting information:
EPIC has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain test reports about an online voting program promoted by the Department of Defense. The records sought relate to the functionality and security of electronic voting systems. The California Secretary of State, Members of Congress, and voting rights advocates have tried to obtain these documents, but DOD has kept them secret even after promising public disclosure in 2012. Computer scientists have long warned about the risks of electronic voting systems. In the complaint, EPIC states that “it is absolutely critical for the documents sought in this matter be disclosed prior to further deployment of e-voting systems in the United States.” The case is EPIC v. Department of Defense, No 14-1555 (D.D.C. filed 9/11/2014). For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. DOD – E-voting Security Tests.
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6th Circuit Court denies Ohio request for stay of lower court's early voting decision.
• Dahlia Lithwick: Voter ID laws may produce voter fraud.
• Georgia fraud investigation condemned as an attempt to suppress the vote.