Welcome to the latest edition in our war on voting series. This is a joint project of Meteor Blades and Joan McCarter.
This week we found out that Wisconsin has joined Texas in flouting judges' rulings and continuing to disenfranchise voters. Ari Berman, writing for The Nation, broke the story with the case of this voter:
Madison, WI— Zack Moore, a 34-year-old African-American man, moved from Chicago to Madison last year. He worked at a car wash and then a landscaping job before breaking his leg and becoming unemployed. After staying with his brother, he’s now homeless and sleeping on the streets of Madison.
On September 22, he went to the DMV to get a photo ID for voting, as required by Wisconsin’s strict voter-ID law. He brought his Illinois photo ID, Social Security card, and a pay stub for proof of residence. But he didn’t have a copy of his birth certificate, which had been misplaced by his sister in Illinois, so the DMV wouldn’t give him an ID for voting. “I’m trying to get a Wisconsin ID so I can vote,” Moore told the DMV. “I don’t have my birth certificate, but I got everything else.”
Under Wisconsin law, the DMV should’ve given Moore a credential he could use for voting within six business days. But that never happened. They told him to “drive down there [to Illinois] and get [a birth certificate] and come back.” That would cost Moore money he didn’t have. If he entered what the state calls the ID Petition Process (IDPP), it would take six to eight weeks for him to get a voter ID and he most likely wouldn’t be able to vote by Election Day.
“I’m disappointed in the government,” Moore said after leaving the DMV. “I guess they’re trying to keep people from voting.”
That’s exactly what they’re doing, Mr. Moore. The story, which was accompanied by one in the Milwaulkee Journal Sentinel, is the result of the hard work of VoteRiders, a group opposed to voter ID laws that also helps people get IDs. VoteRiders sent people to 10 DMV offices to see if they were complying with the law, and “DMV employees gave the visitors answers ‘all over the board’ regarding how long it would take to get an ID.” Mr. Moore got three different answers from three different DMV employees, one telling him he couldn’t get any kind of ID or credential at all without a birth certificate, a second one telling him he could do it without the birth certificate, but “there was no way to know how long it would take,” and the third saying it would take six to eight weeks, not in time for the election. The correct answer would have been to give him his credential then and there so he could take advantage of early voting, which has started in Wisconsin.
As a result of this reporting, a federal judge has ordered the state to investigate this incident to determine if it has been violating his order from last July requiring the state to make sure there was a “safety net” in the form of these credentials. The state has one week to investigate and report back. So Mr. Moore might get to vote after all.
For more on this week in the war on voting, head below the fold.
- Want to help fight voter suppression? Election Protection, a coalition of advocacy organizations, is one place to start. Go to their website, www.866ourvote.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 Kansas, thousands of "voters will be allowed to cast regular ballots in local, state and federal elections in November without providing proof of citizenship under an agreement forged by the American Civil Liberties Union and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach." He finally had to give in on this one, or face a contempt of court hearing in front of judge Julie Robinson, who in May had ordered Kobach to ensure that people who registered to vote at the DMV could vote in November. His attempts to circumvent that ruling have apparently played out.
- Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted is only slightly less odious than Kobach, by virtue of the fact that he's contained his bigotry to Ohio. Anyway, he's on a tear against the federal government which wants to make sure that the Ohio elections system hasn't been hacked. Off my turf, he's telling the feds, which is apparently a larger issue to him than whether his state could be hacked.
- A loss in Illinois, where a judge blocked same day registration at polling sites. The law had required that polling locations in counties that have more than 100,000 people and which have electronic books to record voter registration allow same-day registration. Smaller counties and counties not using electronic registrations would have to provide same-day registration at a separate location from polling sites. It was struck down because it "created one set of rules for cities and another for rural areas."
- It's ACORN all over again in Indiana where state Republicans are attempting to smear a voter registration organization—the Indiana Voter Registration Project—with allegations that it's forging registrations. The state has even gone so far as to involve the cops.
In their investigation, police detectives arrived unannounced at the homes of get-out-the-vote activists to interrogate them about their voter registration work, according to voting organizers. One of the canvassers that I spoke with felt that police had attempted to badger her into giving a statement against the IVRP, and even asked her to submit to a polygraph test about her registration work.
It's a good reminder that it's not just voting they're fighting. This is big story, so we'll keep following it.
- You don't hear a lot about voter suppression in California because it's not a systemic problem there. But it's a local one.
The plainclothes officer was on Dollarsai Yurgh’s property with an assault rifle to “audit the vote,” he said. But the scene looked more like a stickup.
“Show me your hands!” the officer allegedly yelled, pointing his gun at Yurgh. When he finally left Yurgh’s property, it was with a warning: If Yurgh tried to vote at his current address, police would arrest him for voter fraud.
Yurgh is a member of the Hmong community in Siskiyou County, California. The rural area could have been a haven for the Hmong people, hundreds of whom settled there as refugees after the Vietnam War, some with their children who were born in the United States. But instead of refuge, the Hmong community says it’s facing a new kind of discrimination. In a new class action suit, Siskiyou’s Hmong people say they’re the targets of a massive voter suppression scheme at the hands of a racist sheriff’s office that wants to drive them out of town.
- A new lawsuit in Alabama is challenging "a provision in the state's constitution that permanently disenfranchises some felons."
- And it's positive news from Georgia:
Tens of thousands of voters whose registrations were canceled will be restored to the voter rolls before the November election after the Georgia secretary of state agreed Friday to suspend a longtime practice of canceling registrations that the state NAACP had filed suit to stop.
In a letter to U.S. Senior Judge William O'Kelley, Secretary of State Brian Kemp agreed to suspend his practice of canceling registrations unless they were an identical match—in a character for character comparison—to information in the state drivers' license and Social Security databases—and would-be voters had not corrected mismatches within 40 days. Kemp agreed not to reinstate the practice without specific instructions from the judge.
- In many of these cases, we're seeing lower courts aggressively reasserting the judiciary's role in protecting voting rights. That might have something to do with the sea-change we're likely to see on the Supreme Court. And with that in mind, thank you for saying it, Linda Greenhouse:
Would it be unseemly to suggest that only Justice Scalia’s death has preserved democracy in North Carolina?
There, I just did.