Lewis Black Says f#%! voter suppression at a photo shoot with
ACLU’s Voting Rights Project Director Dale Ho. See the video below.
This week in the war on voting is a joint project of Joan McCarter and Meteor Blades.
It's been a big week for court rulings on state voting laws, with two victories and a defeat for voters and their advocates. Let's start with Texas:
U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos issued a permanent injunction against the state's strict voter ID law on the grounds that it places too great a burden on African American and Latinos. She also said it was imposed with an unconstitutional purpose, violates the Equal Protection clause, is a poll tax and a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Gonzales' 147-page ruling might normally go to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals whose conservative leanings make it likely the decision would be overruled. But Texas attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott has said he will appeal immediately to the Supreme Court. Either way, it seems possible the photo ID law could be restored in time for the election this year.
The Texas law was passed in 2011 but blocked initially when the civil rights division of the Department of Justice took the matter to federal court under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Under that provision, Texas was one of states required, as a result of past discrimination under its Jim Crow regime, to pre-clear with the DOJ any changes in its voting laws. The District Court of the District of Columbia ruled against the Texas law. But the Supreme Court overturned Section 4 of the VRA in 2013, making Section 5 moot. That meant Texas officials were free to reinstate the voter ID law, which it did. But foes dragged it into court again, this time under Section 2 of the VRA.
Gonzales' ruling came after a two-week trial in Corpus Christi.
“We are greatly encouraged by today’s decision,” stated Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAACP and an attorney with PotterBledsoe. “This decision vindicates what African American and Latino leaders have been saying since this law was first proposed, that it discriminates against minority voters and was designed to do just that.”
Below the orange gerrymander you'll find analysis of the other court decisions and other war on voting news.
One way to help improve turnout is to choose Democrats as state secretaries of state who will do what they can to increase rather than suppress the vote. You can help us do that by chipping to support five SOS candidates Daily Kos has endorsed.
Voting by mail is convenient, easy, and defeats the best of the GOP's voter suppression efforts. Sign up here to check eligibility and vote by mail, then get your friends, family, and coworkers to sign up as well.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court shot down the terrible ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that gave Wisconsin the go-ahead for its strict voter ID to be implemented for this election. Judge Frank Easterbrook's reasoning in the appeals court decision is truly a wonder to behold. He conceded that the law would be burdensome on minorities, the poor and the young and might, as plaintiffs argued, mean a fairly large percentage of Wisconsin voters might not be able to cast ballots this year as a consequence. And then he dismissed this as a reason to stay the voter ID law.
Since all parties now have 90 days to respond to the Court's 6-3 decision—Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented—the law will not be in force for this election cycle.
As Rick Hasen at the Election Law Blog points out, however, the decision is not an indication that those who oppose the law will ultimately win on the merits. On the contrary, the ultimate outcome is likely a 5-4 ruling in favor of the Wisconsin law. But not in time to change things before November.
The Supreme Court's emergency Wisconsin decision seems predicated on principles from the 2006 Purcell v. Gonzalez ruling. In short, that precedent states:
“Court orders affecting elections can themselves result in voter confusion and consequent incentive to remain away from the polls. As an election draws closer, that risk will increase."
In a 7-2 ruling the Supreme Court went the other way in North Carolina Wednesday. It
overruled a
decision by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to block two provisions of the state's new voter law, one of the strictest in the nation. As a result of the Supreme Court's ruling, North Carolina will not have to continue same-day registration nor will it have to count ballots cast in the wrong precinct.
The decision also seems grounded in the Purcell principle that changing the rules so close to an election causes voter confusion.
• Rock the Vote's #TURNOUTFORWHAT video:
• ElectionLineWeekly posts snapshots of the 24 states choosing secretaries of state this cycle. After corralling all that data, they had some advice:
Editor’s Note: We had to look at a lot of campaign websites for this piece and just a couple of suggestions to the candidates: One, make sure you actually have a website. Two, if you aren’t an incumbent, do what you have to do with Google to make sure your campaign website is the first thing that pops up in a search under your name. And last, but not least, while using website templates from campaign tools like NationBuilder is great, try to make that template your own and make sure it doesn’t look like the other guys!
•
Oops! Early voting in Burlington, Vermont, turns into beta testing. Early voting has begun in several states. But the process ran into a snag in Vermont when it was discovered that 5 of the 15 Republican candidates for justice of the peace had been left off the ballot in Burlington. Ballots will have to be reprinted at the cost of $10,000. City election officials said 422 early and absentee voters had already been given ballots. These will be replaced. The city's vote-counting machines will not accept the old ballots.
• Perhaps a million provisional ballots will be cast this year, and a quarter of them may not be counted: Voters are asked to cast provisional ballots in a number of states if they don't have proper ID when they come to polls, show up in the wrong jurisdiction or election workers can't find their name on the rolls. As is the case with other voting matters, the rules for provisional ballots vary widely in the states that have them. Around the country this fall, more than a million provisional ballots will likely be cast. And in the past, at least a quarter of these provisional votes won't count.
• GAO report confirms strict voter ID cuts turnout of minorities and youth:
GAO’s evaluation of voter turnout suggests that turnout decreased in two selected states—Kansas and Tennessee—from the 2008 to the 2012 general elections (the two most recent general elections) to a greater extent than turnout decreased in the selected comparison states—Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, and Maine. GAO’s analysis suggests that the turnout decreases in Kansas and Tennessee beyond decreases in the comparison states were attributable to changes in those two states’ voter ID requirements. GAO found that turnout among eligible and registered voters declined more in Kansas and Tennessee than it declined in comparison states—by an estimated 1.9 to 2.2 percentage points more in Kansas and 2.2 to 3.2 percentage points more in Tennessee—and the results were consistent across the different data sources and voter populations used in the analysis.
There's more analysis
here.