Rose Sanderson, on trumpet cornet, demonstrates with other suffragists in February 1913.
The triangular pennants read "Votes for Women."
This week in the war on voting is a joint project of Joan McCarter and Meteor Blades
• Chris Christie blasts same-day registration and voting in Illinois: The New Jersey governor, who is chairman of Republican Governors Association chairman, visited the campaign headquarters of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner and critiqued Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn.
“He will try every trick in the book,” Christie said of Quinn. “I see the stuff that’s going on. Same-day registration all of a sudden this year comes to Illinois. Shocking,” he added sarcastically. “I’m sure it was all based upon public policy, good public policy to get same-day registration here in Illinois just this year, when the governor is in the toilet and needs as much help as he can get.”
•
Houstonians without voter ID are mostly black and poor:
Texas' Voter ID law -- which requires that voters show election officials an approved and up-to-date photo ID in order to cast a ballot -- has long been a point of contention. Since the Lege passed a voter ID requirement in 2011, many of its opponents have questioned whether the law unfairly singles out minorities. [...]
[Geography professor Gerald Webster has produced some maps to see if this is true.] The maps that Dr. Webster compiled are broken down by demographics in Houston (and in every other Texas metro area), from minority neighborhoods to areas with little access to transportation. If you compare those maps to the one showing where residents are less likely to have photo ID, the pattern is pretty astounding. [...]
More on the war on voting below the orange gerrymander.
• DEMOS shows how "proof-of-citizenship" laws blocks legitimate voters:
Doesn’t Everyone Already Have Proof of Citizenship?
No. Many eligible voters lack documentary evidence of their citizenship sufficient to satisfy state proof-of-citizenship laws. Those most likely to be affected by these laws are students, the elderly, the disabled, low-income individuals, the homeless, and naturalized citizens. Aside from these narrow populations, across the board, Native Americans, African Americans and members of other historically disadvantaged and disenfranchised groups are also less likely to have, or have ready access to, documents that will satisfy documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements.
Birth certificates, the most widely recognized documentary evidence of citizenship, pose a number of problems for many individuals. Many elderly people and those born at outside of hospitals may never have had a birth certificate and may be unable to obtain one, as seen in the case of Ms. Lewis. Young people and many low-income people often do not have a copy of their birth certificates at home. Birth certificates can usually be obtained from vital records offices in the state of the voter’s birth, but a fee typically applies. In addition, given America’s highly mobile work force, many individuals do not live in the city or state in which they were born, and most vital records offices require individuals to appear in person or to already have another form of government-issued identification to order a birth certificate online or by telephone. Even those who do have a birth certificate may not be able to use it to establish their citizenship. For example, many married women do not have a birth certificate that reflects their current name.
Likewise, both Kansas and Arizona will accept a U.S. Passport, but only about 39% of U.S. citizens nationwide have a passport. Worse, this percentage is much lower among those who lack other forms of proof of citizenship.
•
Federal judge gives go-ahead to case regarding absentee voting by blind citizens:
The organization contends Maryland is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act because it fails to safeguard the guaranteed right to privacy when voting.
The plaintiffs contend that blind voters currently can't even be sure if another person will record their vote as they wish. They said the ballot-marking system assures them their intended vote had been recorded. They also said the ballot-marking system enables blind and disabled voters to vote privately and independently, without having to make their vote known to an elections judge or family members.
•
Franita Tolson: More attention should be paid to the Constitution's Voter Qualifications Clause. The article is soon to be published in the Boston College Law Review. Here is the abstract:
The Voter Qualifications Clause of Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution makes federal voting rights dependent upon participation in state elections. This Article argues that Article I incorporates both state constitutional law governing the right to vote and the democratic norms that existed within the states at the founding as the basis for determining the qualifications of federal electors. The democratic norms governing political participation can be traced to founding-era state constitutions that preserved the fundamental right of citizens to alter or abolish their governments at will, which was similar to the right of revolution exercised by the colonists against the British during the Revolutionary War. It is this understanding of the right to vote in federal elections, parasitic upon the robustly democratic notion of participation that existed at the state level and enshrined in state constitutional alter or abolish provisions, that the framers of the Constitution endorsed in the Voter Qualifications Clause of Article I. Contrary to this provision, the caselaw has divorced state and federal elections, resulting in excessive judicial deference to state regulations that govern the right to vote. As this Article shows, the Voter Qualifications Clause requires that states aggressively safeguard political participation in order to protect federal voting rights, which suggests that courts should apply a higher level of scrutiny in assessing the constitutionality of state election laws.
•
UN Committee on Racial Discrimination in US makes voter law recommendations:
The Committee recommends that the State party take effective measures to:
(a) Enforce federal voting rights law throughout the State party in ways that
encourage voter participation, and adopt federal legislation to prevent the
implementation of voting regulations which have discriminatory impact in light of the
Shelby County v. Holder decision;
(b) Ensure that indigenous peoples can effectively exercise their right to vote
and address their specific concerns;
(c) Ensure that all states reinstate voting rights to persons convicted of
felony who have completed their sentences, provide inmates with information about
their voting restoration options, and review automatic denial of the right to vote to
imprisoned felons regardless of the nature of the offence; and
(d) Provide for the full voting rights of residents of Washington, D.C.
•
Mark Ambinder: Why internet voting is such a dangerous idea.
• Lyle Denniston examines two constitutional provisions in the conflict on who has the right to vote.