Welcome to the latest edition in our war on voting series. This is a joint project of Meteor Blades and Joan McCarter.
The primaries this year uncovered plenty of problems across the country, from California counties inconsistently and incorrectly handling vote-by-mail to the insane lines in Maricopa County, Arizona, to New York's missing voters and missing machinery and misinformation and confusion everywhere new voting laws and restrictions are in place. That leaves plenty of voting advocates concerned about November.
“We are at a crossroads in our democracy. This is a moment that really requires that states and elected officials to explore ways to make voting easier,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
The nationwide Election Protection voter hotline has taken more than 21,000 calls since February, Clarke said, about anything from issues with voter ID requirements in Texas, to North Carolina eliminating early voting opportunities to Georgia, where one polling location in a majority black neighborhood was nearly moved to a sheriff’s office, Clarke said.
“There’s always reasons that are particular to each state,” said Jonathan Brater, counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program about the issues that spring up.
He noted that a complicating factor this year are the 17 new states that have implemented voting restrictions: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
It won't shock you to learn that seven of the 11 states with the most restrictive new laws had the highest percentages of African-American voters in 2008. Oh, and "eight of the 12 states that have seen the largest Hispanic population growth between the years 2000 and 2010 also have new restrictions." What a coincidence, huh?
The news isn't all bad. Oregon, California, West Virginia, Vermont and Connecticut all have automatic voter registration now for eligible voters getting driver's licenses. Illinois will join them soon. If there's good news in the rest of it, it's that there's time between now and November to mobilize, and to fight to overcome all the problems the primaries uncovered.
Below, you'll find some briefs on what's happened this week in the war on voting.
- Want to help fight voter suppression? Election Protection, a coalition of advocacy organizations, is one place to start. Go to their website, ourvote.org, to find out what's happening in your state, to volunteer for election protection, or to donate to their efforts. You can also call your local Democratic party office and volunteer to help with voter registration and education drives.
- In the ongoing saga of would-be voters in Kansas, the worst person in the voting world, Kris Kobach, gave in at the last moment to a federal court ruling that required some 18,000 voter registration applications that didn't include proof of citizenship be processed. Up until two minutes before the court-ordered deadline, Kobach refused to say whether he would comply with the court order.
- In the key swing state of Ohio, Gov. John Kasich finally vetoed legislation that is essentially a poll tax. The legislation would have required voters or groups who petition judges to keep polling places open late on election day pay a cash bond. Yes, Ohio legislators wanted people who want to vote pay for the privilege. Not that Kasich is totally opposed to the idea. He vetoed it because judges already have the option of requiring this cash bond from petitioners.
- Also in Ohio, Secretary of State and committed voter suppressor Jon Husted giveth and taketh away, opening up online registration to reach as many as 2.3 million eligible voters who aren't registered. That comes with a purge, however, of possibly more than 400,000 voters who haven't updated their registration if they moved within the state, or have not cancelled a registration from another state.
- In Wisconsin, legislators finally decided that they had to fund a voter education effort—as the new, restrictive law requires—to explain to voters all the changes. The law was passed in 2011, but has been tied up in the courts until this year. There are still two challenges to the ID part of the law, to create a process for people who have difficulty getting IDs to vote, and to expand the acceptable forms of ID.
- Three counties in Montana have spent more money defending a 2012 lawsuit to expand voting options for Indians than it would have cost to create alternative voting sites.
- Virginia's Supreme Court will take up a challenge next month to Gov. Terry McAuliffe's order restoring voting rights to more than 200,000 felons. Republican lawmakers brought the suit. I don’t know how much sway public opinion might have with the court, but a large majority—65 percent—of voters support Gov. McAuliffe on this one.