This week in the war on voting series is a joint project of Joan McCarter and Meteor Blades.
Montgomery Advertiser Editorial Board blasts Alabama policies on voting rights: In memorandums of understanding, the U.S. Department of Justice and Alabama officials reached a settlement over the the state’s failure to comply with the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. Those officials had stubbornly ignored the law’s mandate that citizens be given the chance to register to vote when they get a driver’s license.
Under the settlement, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency and secretary of state must now take immediate action. ALEA employees must do as the law requires: Ask all driver’s license applicants if they want to register to vote, provide forms for doing so, and deliver the completed forms to the state Board of Registrars in a timely way. They must also implement an electronic registration system linked to drivers’ licenses and other kinds of identification. The editorial board stated:
Given Alabama’s reprehensible history on voting rights, the stern federal requirements are entirely justified.
It’s hard not to think state agencies’ decades-long intransigence in implementing Motor Voter goes beyond mere incompetence into the arena of voter suppression. [...]
Just as important [as the settlement] is a push by congressional Democrats, including sponsor Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, to restore the federal government’s ability under the Voting Rights Act to screen voting regulations in states such as Alabama with a vile record of discrimination against minorities at the polls. [...]
None of Alabama’s Republican congressional delegates have signed on so far, however, greatly to their shame.
In other words, the editors said officials suppressed the vote intentionally and that the state’s Republican congressional delegation is in no hurry to reduce the chances of that to keep happening in Alabama and other states.
• Officials, activists in two Michigan counties seek to block bill barring straight-ticket voting: A bill—S.B. 13—in the Michigan state Senate would get rid of straight, party-line voting on ballots. Currently, the state’s voters can choose a box on their ballots allowing them to vote for all candidates running from one political party. Genesee County Clerk John Gleason labeled the bill an "attack" on the Democratic Party in bigger cities such as Flint, Saginaw, and Detroit. "This is an insidious attack kicking major cities throughout Michigan," said Gleason. "We want to extinguish any momentum this legislation has gained."
He said that, on average, 40 percent of the ballots cast in the county are straight-party votes. More than twice as many of those votes go to Democratic candidates as to Republicans. Saginaw County Clerk Susan Kaltenbach said: ”The thing that bothers me about this is that voters twice previously said they wanted the option of straight-party voting. I would agree that it would be wonderful if everybody knew all of the candidates on the ballot."
• Ari Berman is interviewed about the impact of the first presidential election in nearly 50 years that will be without full coverage of Voting Rights Act: Berman’s book—Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America—came out in August.
• Notorious vote suppressor steers Koch spy operation exposed by Politico: Mike Roman heads up the Kochs’ so-called “competitive intelligence” operation against the billionaire brothers’ real and perceived political enemies. As the Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch notes, he ran “the most egregious case of race-baiting voter fraud hucksterism in recent years.”
In 2008, Roman released a video, in which billy club-carrying New Black Panthers were accused of intimidating white voters at the polls and the Obama Justice Department of failing to do anything about it, proving it was biased against whites:
Roman made a name for himself by releasing the video, which showed two New Black Panther Party (NBPP) members holding billy clubs outside a Philadelphia polling place, on his voter fraud-peddling “Election Journal” website. He then worked with Republican vote fraud conspiracist J. Christian Adams to try uncovering evidence that voters were intimidated–which they could not find. But that didn’t stop Roman, along with Fox News and the conservative echo chamber, from conjuring up a vast racist conspiracy inside the Obama administration, a theme that continues today.
• Ranked-choice voting question certified in Maine for November 2016 ballot: Enough signatures on petitions to put a citizen initiative on the ballot to implement ranked-choice voting have been authenticated by the secretary of the state of Maine. More than 70,000 signatures from registered voters were submitted in October. If the measure passes, it would make the Pine Tree State the first in the nation to fully use a ranked-choice ballot system for elections. The method lets voters rank candidates in order of preference. This creates an “instant runoff” in contests where no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote total. Under this approach, when no candidate hits the 50 percent +1 vote threshold, the candidate with the lowest number of top vote choices is eliminated and an instant runoff takes place among the remaining candidates. Second-place votes and if necessary third-place votes are then counted to see which candidate has the most votes overall.
• Kansas lawyers seek class-action status in case about tossing incomplete voter registration forms: At issue are more than 36,000 voter registration forms that were submitted but incomplete because the would-be voter did not have proof of U.S. citizenship with them, something Kansas requires for registration but that the federal government does not. Proof of citizenship requires a passport or birth certificate, something many native-born Americans do not have immediate access to. Many of those who could obtain the documents with some effort simply don’t return to finish their registrations.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach imposed an administrative rule last month to toss such incomplete voter registrations forms after 90 days. The lawsuit’s attorneys take the position that the 90-day rule violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and due process rights. Some foes of the rule have called this a voter purge, but Kobach says it’s not because the individuals affected by it are not yet registered voters. Catch-22.