Ezra Klein has a
great column, pointing out that finally Republicans have found voting restrictions they don't like.
Rick Perry said the laws were “among the most onerous in the nation,” and possibly even unconstitutional. Newt Gingrich compared their impact to Pearl Harbor. Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum were so intimidated that they simply slunk away without a fight.
Social Security? Obamacare? Dodd-Frank? Nope. Virginia’s ballot-access laws. Of the seven candidates still in serious contention for the Republican nomination for the presidency, only two of them — Mitt Romney and Ron Paul — will be appearing in the Virginia primary on March 6. [...]
But other Republicans — and most of the candidates — have turned their fire on Virginia. Ken Cuccinelli, the state’s attorney general, was particularly unsparing about the access laws. “Virginia won’t be nearly as ‘fought over’ as it should be in the midst of such a wide open nomination contest,” he wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “Our own laws have reduced our relevance. Sad. I hope our new GOP majorities will fix this problem so that neither party confronts it again.”
He hopes, in other words, that Virginia will make it easier for Republican candidates to get on the ballot, so Virginia’s voters are better able to participate in the election. It’s a noble goal, and one many Republicans share. But it runs counter to the efforts Republicans have mounted in dozens of states to make it more difficult for ordinary Americans to participate in the 2012 election.
The point being, of course, that it's not such a noble goal when it's only Republican candidates with ballot access and Republican voters who are eligible to vote for them, as is the case in seven states which have passed strict new voter ID laws, and another 27 states which are trying to pass them.
One of those seven states with new, restrictive laws, is Texas.
The bill, which Perry fast-tracked by designating it as “emergency” legislation, enforces a photo ID requirement that can be met by a concealed handgun permit but not by a student ID from a state university. And under the law, only a Texas citizen who has passed a mandatory training program can register voters.
That would be the same Perry who is now challenging Virginia’s rules. But the differences between the law Perry signed and the law he’s challenging are instructive.
Perry is an experienced politician who has hired a professional staff for the express purpose of navigating the logistical hurdle of ballot access. And he still failed to make the Virginia ballot, despite the fact that the rules were well-known and unchanged since the last election.
In Texas, however, Perry has sharply changed the rules, changed them on people who do not have a staff dedicated to helping them vote, and in fact made it harder for outside groups to send professionals into the state to help potential voters navigate the new law.
Somehow, one suspects Perry wouldn't see the parallel here.
In other news:
- Meteor Blades had this week's must-read take down of Heritage "scholar" Hans Van Spokovsky's assertion that nearly 90,000 disenfranchised voters in South Carolina is an "insignificant" number and calling the Justice Department's blocking of the law that would take away their votes "racial paranoia."
The shorter version: Spakovsky's claims are bullshit. Suppression of the votes of vulnerable citizens—the poor, the elderly, students, historically discriminated against people of color—is an ongoing, relentless campaign of right wingers. If one thing doesn't work, they try another. Attorney Gen. Holder has justifiably slipped a stick into their spokes. It's no surprise to hear them squealing about it.
- Last fall, a secret donor stepped in just before the election to bankroll the effort to suppress the vote in Maine, donating $250,000 to fight against the restoration of same-day voter registration to the state. We now know who was behind that donation, and it's the usual suspects.
[T]he entire $250,000 worth of late money came from a single source: the American Justice Partnership.
The AJP is a conservative legal organization based not in Maine, but in Michigan. On their website, the group states they are fighting against “the scheming George Soros money machine” which is “trying to sabotage your right to vote,” a claim apparently made without a hint of irony. Though the AJP doesn’t disclose where its funding comes from, the Bangor Daily News notes that it has partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the past, a group that has been instrumental in the proliferation of voter ID laws across the country.
- Another elderly woman in Tennessee has lost her vote because of new voter ID restrictions the state has enacted. We've heard about 96-year-old Dorothy Cooper and 91-year-old Virginia Lasater. Now they're joined by 93-year-old Thelma Mitchell, who has no birth certificate, and who had even been accused by a DMV worker of being an illegal immigrant because she couldn't produce it. To really put the cherry on top, Mitchell has an old state employee ID, that the state is now rejecting. She has that ID because she cleaned the state capitol building for 30 years.