Big news on the voting rights front this week courts have blocked voter ID laws in Wisconsin and Texas.
John Nichols at The Nation explains:
With a decision to block implementation of Wisconsin’s controversial voter ID law for the 2014 election, the United States Supreme Court has opted for common sense and democracy over chaos and disenfranchisement.
After a wild judicial ride that saw the Wisconsin law rejected by a federal judge, approved by an appeals court panel, wrangled over by the full appeals court and then finally moved toward an unexpected and rapid process of implementation in time for the state’s high-stakes November 4 election, the Supreme Court pulled the brakes. In an emergency ruling, the High Court’s 6-3 decision vacated the appeals court ruling, preventing the law from going into effect before it can be reviewed. (The only dissents came from rigidly conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.) [...] For civil rights and voting rights activists, however, it a striking victory. They welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling as recognition of a reality stated by League of Women Voters of Wisconsin executive director Andrea Kaminski: “Clearly there was not enough time for election officials to educate voters, prepare new materials and implement the law in the short time before the November 4 election.”
The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel editorial board agrees:
If allowed to stand, this burdensome, unnecessary law likely would have prevented some of the state's residents from casting their ballots. And given the short window to educate voters and the fact that absentee balloting already has begun in the state, implementation for this cycle was a remarkably bad idea. The law was a recipe for confusion at polling places during an already contentious election season. [...] We oppose voter ID because we think it's a solution in search of a problem. Voter fraud is exceedingly rare, and what fraud there is would not be stopped by photo identification. Voting is a substantial right of citizenship that should not be infringed, and yet that is exactly what voter ID does for certain prospective voters.
The Washington Post's
Philip Bump breaks down the latest study proving that voter ID laws negatively affect turnout:
In response to a request from a group of Democratic senators, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office analyzed the effect of voter ID laws in Kansas and Tennessee on 2012 turnout. Their findings? Turnout dropped at least 1.9 percentage points in Kansas and 2.2 percentage points in Tennessee thanks to the laws. By our calculations, that's 122,000 fewer votes.
The 200-plus-page report looks at several issues related to laws aimed at tightening rules around voting. The GAO compiled detailed data on various demographic groups in states that changed their laws, reviewed past studies on the effects of new laws on turnout, and attempted to gather data on instances of voter fraud, the rationale usually provided for changing voting rules. Democrats counter that the laws are thinly veiled efforts to reduce the number of their supporters that vote, by adding additional obstacles to black and young voters.
The GAO report suggests that, intentional or not, that's what happened in Kansas and Tennessee.
More on this and the day's top stories below the fold.
Make sure to read this piece by Lisa Mascaro at The Los Angeles Times. She analyzes the Democratic response to the Republican attempt to limit voting rights:
Already, more Americans than ever will face new polling restrictions in November as 15 states — some featuring the closest midterm races in the country — begin implementing laws banning same-day registration, requiring photo IDs or shortening the period for early voting.
Less anticipated, however, was the robust and sometimes creative backlash that has followed from Democrats and their allies, who are launching a spirited counteroffensive that strategists say could end up benefiting party turnout on election day.
One final note on the topic of voting:
Google just unveiled a really neat voter information tool that helps people find out how to vote in their state. Give it a try.
Turning to the other big story, Ebola, Zoë Carpenter at The Nation reminds us who's holding up Ebola aid:
A Republican senator is urging his colleagues to hold up the $1 billion the White House has requested to combat the Ebola virus in part because the plan “focuses on Africa.”
“I ask you to oppose fully allowing the additional $1 billion in reprogramming requests until previously requested additional information is available for members of Congress to be fully briefed,” Louisiana Senator David Vitter wrote in a letter to members of the Senate Appropriations and Armed Services committees. The $1 billion that the administration has requested would be redirected from funds from the war operations budget to pay for the construction of medical facilities, supply distribution, medical training and for military and civilian personnel. Most of the money has been held up for nearly a month, as Republicans on key committees demand more details from the administration.
While Vitter criticized Obama for not fully presenting a plan, he apparently knows enough about it to be concerned that it “focuses on Africa, and largely ignores our own borders.”
Speaking of Ebola,
Michael Schuman at TIME examines the economic costs of the outbreak:
As the disease spreads, people will become more likely to postpone business trips or cancel family vacations. And that ultimately could have serious economic consequences. Nothing of course is more tragic than the human cost of the Ebola outbreak. But as the crisis persists, economists are beginning to look at what the toll might be for the global economy as well. In a world still climbing out of the financial meltdown of six years ago, we can hardly afford any new disruptions to investment and consumer spending that could further drag down growth.
That, however, is exactly what a sustained Ebola epidemic could do. We can get a pretty good idea of what can happen from looking at the impact of SARS in East Asia in 2003.
Ryan Cooper at The Week writes an insightful piece on why bipartisanship is overrated:
An ill-fated tilt towards bipartisanship was at the core of Abraham Lincoln's greatest mistake.As the Civil War ground on through 1863 and the presidential election in 1864 approached, Republicans thought restoring the Union under terms of generous reconciliation was a high priority. Thus, Lincoln and the Republican Party nominated Democrat Andrew Johnson to be his running mate under a Union Party ticket, ditching previous running mate Hannibal Hamlin, a reliable anti-slavery Republican.
The idea, of course, was to lend some broad legitimacy to the postwar reconstruction process. But when Lincoln was assassinated by a Confederate terrorist in 1865, that decision turned from dubious to an absolute catastrophe. We should remember Lincoln's mistake today, as centrists browbeat movements on both sides of the aisle for not seeking reconciliation. Sometimes, reaching for compromise is a terrible move. [...]
So for today's organizers, politicians, and activists, don't fret if centrist scolds wring their handkerchiefs about a lack of bipartisan support for some policy or the other. Sometimes marshaling one's strength and steamrolling the opposition is the right way to go.
Peter Weber, meanwhile, looks at hypocrisy and discrimination in the open carry movement:
Sometimes police arrest black open-carry marchers while leaving their white marchers alone, as apparently happened with mixed-race open-carry group Hell's Saints in Detroit last month. And while there are no reliable statistics on police homicides, it's pretty clear that police shoot and kill black people at significantly higher rates than Latinos or whites, and more of those fatalities are under suspicious circumstances.
The conclusion is almost inescapable: It's much safer for white people to legally carry loaded weapons in public than black people. And because the most high-profile open-carry activists are white Southern conservatives, it's easy to jump to the inference that white open-carry activists like it that way.
The New York Times examines global economic malaise:
Large parts of the world seem to be on the verge of a recession. In many countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America, economic growth has already stalled.
Yet many finance ministers and central bankers who are meeting in Washington this week are unwilling or ill prepared to respond. In Europe, for example, officials from Germany continue to insist that countries that use the euro meet restrictive fiscal rules, and they are trying to prevent the European Central Bank from buying government bonds. Officials in Japan, meanwhile, have hurt that economy by raising a sales tax too fast.
Finally, in case you missed the news this morning, Pakistani child education activist Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian child rights campaigner, have
won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Maria Golovnina at Reuters takes a look at how Malala is "idol to the world, outcast at home":
Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, is hailed around the world as a champion of women's rights who stood up bravely against the Taliban to defend her beliefs.
But in her deeply conservative homeland, many view her with suspicion as an outcast or even as a Western creation aimed at damaging Pakistan's image abroad.