J
Joe S.
Guest
QUOTE
Bush Government to Poor Voters: We Don't Want You to Vote
By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on July 17, 2007, Printed on July 17, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/56957/
State welfare offices across the country are not offering millions of
low-income Americans the opportunity to register to vote when applying for
public assistance despite a federal law requiring them to do so, according
to an analysis of a recent federal voting registration report and experts
who say the Department of Justice and states are to blame.
"It's huge. It's another area where the administration is failing us," said
Donna Brazile, chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights
Institute, speaking of the Department of Justice's oversight of the nation's
voter registration laws. "They are not pushing states to recognize their
voter registration responsibilities."
At the same time, the Justice Department's Voting Section, which enforces
voting rights and supervises elections in some states, is pressuring 10
states to do more to purge voter rolls -- or remove ineligible voters --
before the 2008 presidential election, according to letters sent to state
election officials this spring.
"We conducted an analysis of each state's total voter registration numbers
as a percentage of citizen voting age population," wrote John Tanner, the
Department of Justice Voting Section chief, in an April 18, 2007, letter to
North Carolina's top election official. "We write now to assess the changes
in your voter registration list ... and the subsequent removal of persons no
longer eligible to vote."
Cynthia Magnuson, a Justice Department spokeswoman, confirmed in an e-mail
that similar letters had been sent to 10 states, but did not list the
recipients. "The Department actively works with all states to comply with
all provisions of the statutes we enforce," she said.
Voter lists are updated because people move, die or lose their right to vote
if convicted of felonies. But because this process occurs out of public view
and without much regulation, it can be open to partisan abuse or produce
incorrect results, such as in Florida in 2000 when more than 50,000 voters
were incorrectly removed from voter registration lists.
The contrast of a Justice Department that apparently has not enforced voter
registration opportunities for poor people -- who tend to vote Democratic --
and a department that is pressuring states to more thoroughly trim voter
rolls has prompted some voting rights advocates to accuse the agency of
selective enforcement and partisan bias.
"I think it's pretty clear the Justice Department is pursing a partisan
agenda to get states to purge voters while ignoring requirements to get
states to register voters," said Michael Slater, deputy director of Project
Vote, a national nonprofit specializing in voter registration drives
targeting low- and moderate-income families.
Voting Section chief John Tanner did return a telephone call to discuss his
office's priorities and accomplishments. On Monday, July 16, the House
Judiciary Committee announced it was postponing a hearing scheduled for
Tuesday, July 17 "because the Department refused to make Voting Section
chief John Tanner available to testify," its press release said.
However, Hans A. Von Spakovsky, a former assistant attorney general who
served four years as a top Civil Rights Division lawyer overseeing the
Voting Rights Section discussed accusations of changing "the enforcement
direction of the department" in a June 29, 2007, letter to the Senate Rules
Committee. He became a federal elections commissioner in December 2005, and
his appointment is under review.
Von Spakovsky's 18-page letter is a detailed defense of some of the
department's most controversial recent rulings, such as approving a Texas
congressional redistricting plan and a Georgia voter I.D. law that later was
blocked in court as a violation of the Constitutional amendment barring poll
taxes. Nowhere in the often-technical letter is any mention in section 7 of
the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which is intended to help poor
people vote by requiring state welfare agencies to offer the chance to
register.
Instead, Von Spakovsky defended an aggressive stance with enforcing the
NVRA's voter purge provisions, which fall under section 8 of the law. "The
division could not willfully ignore the list maintenance requirements of the
NVRA," he wrote. "It is the responsibility of DOJ to enforce these laws."
While the national media has followed the department's firing of U.S.
attorneys who, in some cases, did not pursue voter fraud cases -- another
priority of longtime GOP lawyer-activists like Von Spakovsky -- the
department's oversight of the nation's voter rolls has mostly gone
unnoticed. The potential impact on the 2008 election could be enormous,
however, especially if millions of disenfranchised people registered and
voted.
A just-released federal voter registration report reveals the stakes. In
late June, the Election Assistance Commission issued a biennial voter
registration report to Congress for 2005 and 2006. The report found that
16.6 million new registration applications were received by state motor
vehicles agencies while only 527,752 applications came from state public
assistance offices -- a 50 percent drop from 2003-2004. The report also
found 13.0 million voters were purged nationwide and 9.9 million were put on
"inactive" status, meaning these people have to provide identification
before receiving a 2008 ballot.
The potential number of public assistance recipients who could register runs
into the millions. According to the Health Resources and Services
Administration's FY 2008 budget, federally subsidized "health centers" will
serve an estimated 16.3 million patients, a population where "91 percent are
at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, 64 percent are from
racial/ethnic minority groups and 40 percent are uninsured." This is the
same population who typically seek a variety of federally subsidized public
assistance, from food stamps to fuel assistance to welfare.
Another indication of how many poor people could register is Tennessee,
whose elections are federally supervised. From 2005-2006, Tennessee
registered 120,992 people at public assistance offices -- nearly a quarter
of the national total, the EAC reported. Tennessee registered more voters
than the combined totals of welfare office registrations from California,
Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and
Washington.
Karen Lynn Dyson, EAC Research director, said there were several reasons why
many states have not made voter registration more available through public
assistance agencies. First, the NVRA was passed in 1993, and many state and
county election officials have been paying more attention to newer federal
election mandates and transitioning to new voting machines. Moreover, many
state welfare agencies don't see voter registration in their job
descriptions -- despite the federal law. The same factors were also cited by
Project Vote's Michael Slater, who emphasized that low-income people tend to
move more often than better-off Americans.
"Our organization exists to correct the problem that voting is skewed toward
upper-income folks," he said. "We are trying to make voting more
representative of the population."
Justice Department spokesperson Cynthia Magnuson cited two department
enforcement actions concerning increased voter registration; suing New York
in 2004 because its state universities did not "offer voter registration
opportunities at those offices serving students with disabilities," and the
department's 2002 suit against Tennessee, which led to federal oversight of
its elections. The New York suit is still pending.
Scott Novakowski, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a centrist public policy
group based in New York that has followed this issue for several years, said
it was ironic the Justice Department cited Tennessee because that state's
welfare office registrations reveal how many potential voters could be
involved if the department enforced the law.
"This is not a lot of numbers until you see Tennessee," he said. "We have
looked at how many people can feasibly get on the rolls and it is enormous.
Tennessee is under a court order and is doing it right. If you look at the
number of people who go through public assistance offices, in some states it
is in the millions."
The public interest groups that have tracked this issue -- Demos, Project
Vote, ACORN and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law -- have
issued reports citing a steady downward trend in these voter registrations
and met with Justice Department officials in 2005 to present their findings
and concerns.
"In January 2005, we had a 10-year report, which documented the 59 percent
decline from 1995 through 2004," Novakowski said, adding follow-up letters
cited violations from Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts,
Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. "John Conyers
(now the House Judiciary Committee chairman) and 29 other representatives
asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to look into this, and there was no
response."
This spring, after learning of Voting Section letters to North Carolina and
Kentucky pressuring those states to more aggressively purge their voter
lists, the same coalition called on the House and Senate Judiciary
committees to investigate the "selective enforcement" of voter registration
laws.
"We are concerned that the Justice Department's Voting Section is ignoring
the primary purpose of NVRA to "establish procedures that will increase the
number if eligible citizens who register to vote in elections for federal
office."" it wrote in a May 8, 2007, letter. "Instead, the Voting Section is
concentrating its NVRA enforcement priority on pressuring states to conduct
massive purges of their voter rolls."
http://www.alternet.org/rights/56957/
END QUOTE
Bush Government to Poor Voters: We Don't Want You to Vote
By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on July 17, 2007, Printed on July 17, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/56957/
State welfare offices across the country are not offering millions of
low-income Americans the opportunity to register to vote when applying for
public assistance despite a federal law requiring them to do so, according
to an analysis of a recent federal voting registration report and experts
who say the Department of Justice and states are to blame.
"It's huge. It's another area where the administration is failing us," said
Donna Brazile, chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights
Institute, speaking of the Department of Justice's oversight of the nation's
voter registration laws. "They are not pushing states to recognize their
voter registration responsibilities."
At the same time, the Justice Department's Voting Section, which enforces
voting rights and supervises elections in some states, is pressuring 10
states to do more to purge voter rolls -- or remove ineligible voters --
before the 2008 presidential election, according to letters sent to state
election officials this spring.
"We conducted an analysis of each state's total voter registration numbers
as a percentage of citizen voting age population," wrote John Tanner, the
Department of Justice Voting Section chief, in an April 18, 2007, letter to
North Carolina's top election official. "We write now to assess the changes
in your voter registration list ... and the subsequent removal of persons no
longer eligible to vote."
Cynthia Magnuson, a Justice Department spokeswoman, confirmed in an e-mail
that similar letters had been sent to 10 states, but did not list the
recipients. "The Department actively works with all states to comply with
all provisions of the statutes we enforce," she said.
Voter lists are updated because people move, die or lose their right to vote
if convicted of felonies. But because this process occurs out of public view
and without much regulation, it can be open to partisan abuse or produce
incorrect results, such as in Florida in 2000 when more than 50,000 voters
were incorrectly removed from voter registration lists.
The contrast of a Justice Department that apparently has not enforced voter
registration opportunities for poor people -- who tend to vote Democratic --
and a department that is pressuring states to more thoroughly trim voter
rolls has prompted some voting rights advocates to accuse the agency of
selective enforcement and partisan bias.
"I think it's pretty clear the Justice Department is pursing a partisan
agenda to get states to purge voters while ignoring requirements to get
states to register voters," said Michael Slater, deputy director of Project
Vote, a national nonprofit specializing in voter registration drives
targeting low- and moderate-income families.
Voting Section chief John Tanner did return a telephone call to discuss his
office's priorities and accomplishments. On Monday, July 16, the House
Judiciary Committee announced it was postponing a hearing scheduled for
Tuesday, July 17 "because the Department refused to make Voting Section
chief John Tanner available to testify," its press release said.
However, Hans A. Von Spakovsky, a former assistant attorney general who
served four years as a top Civil Rights Division lawyer overseeing the
Voting Rights Section discussed accusations of changing "the enforcement
direction of the department" in a June 29, 2007, letter to the Senate Rules
Committee. He became a federal elections commissioner in December 2005, and
his appointment is under review.
Von Spakovsky's 18-page letter is a detailed defense of some of the
department's most controversial recent rulings, such as approving a Texas
congressional redistricting plan and a Georgia voter I.D. law that later was
blocked in court as a violation of the Constitutional amendment barring poll
taxes. Nowhere in the often-technical letter is any mention in section 7 of
the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which is intended to help poor
people vote by requiring state welfare agencies to offer the chance to
register.
Instead, Von Spakovsky defended an aggressive stance with enforcing the
NVRA's voter purge provisions, which fall under section 8 of the law. "The
division could not willfully ignore the list maintenance requirements of the
NVRA," he wrote. "It is the responsibility of DOJ to enforce these laws."
While the national media has followed the department's firing of U.S.
attorneys who, in some cases, did not pursue voter fraud cases -- another
priority of longtime GOP lawyer-activists like Von Spakovsky -- the
department's oversight of the nation's voter rolls has mostly gone
unnoticed. The potential impact on the 2008 election could be enormous,
however, especially if millions of disenfranchised people registered and
voted.
A just-released federal voter registration report reveals the stakes. In
late June, the Election Assistance Commission issued a biennial voter
registration report to Congress for 2005 and 2006. The report found that
16.6 million new registration applications were received by state motor
vehicles agencies while only 527,752 applications came from state public
assistance offices -- a 50 percent drop from 2003-2004. The report also
found 13.0 million voters were purged nationwide and 9.9 million were put on
"inactive" status, meaning these people have to provide identification
before receiving a 2008 ballot.
The potential number of public assistance recipients who could register runs
into the millions. According to the Health Resources and Services
Administration's FY 2008 budget, federally subsidized "health centers" will
serve an estimated 16.3 million patients, a population where "91 percent are
at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, 64 percent are from
racial/ethnic minority groups and 40 percent are uninsured." This is the
same population who typically seek a variety of federally subsidized public
assistance, from food stamps to fuel assistance to welfare.
Another indication of how many poor people could register is Tennessee,
whose elections are federally supervised. From 2005-2006, Tennessee
registered 120,992 people at public assistance offices -- nearly a quarter
of the national total, the EAC reported. Tennessee registered more voters
than the combined totals of welfare office registrations from California,
Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and
Washington.
Karen Lynn Dyson, EAC Research director, said there were several reasons why
many states have not made voter registration more available through public
assistance agencies. First, the NVRA was passed in 1993, and many state and
county election officials have been paying more attention to newer federal
election mandates and transitioning to new voting machines. Moreover, many
state welfare agencies don't see voter registration in their job
descriptions -- despite the federal law. The same factors were also cited by
Project Vote's Michael Slater, who emphasized that low-income people tend to
move more often than better-off Americans.
"Our organization exists to correct the problem that voting is skewed toward
upper-income folks," he said. "We are trying to make voting more
representative of the population."
Justice Department spokesperson Cynthia Magnuson cited two department
enforcement actions concerning increased voter registration; suing New York
in 2004 because its state universities did not "offer voter registration
opportunities at those offices serving students with disabilities," and the
department's 2002 suit against Tennessee, which led to federal oversight of
its elections. The New York suit is still pending.
Scott Novakowski, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a centrist public policy
group based in New York that has followed this issue for several years, said
it was ironic the Justice Department cited Tennessee because that state's
welfare office registrations reveal how many potential voters could be
involved if the department enforced the law.
"This is not a lot of numbers until you see Tennessee," he said. "We have
looked at how many people can feasibly get on the rolls and it is enormous.
Tennessee is under a court order and is doing it right. If you look at the
number of people who go through public assistance offices, in some states it
is in the millions."
The public interest groups that have tracked this issue -- Demos, Project
Vote, ACORN and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law -- have
issued reports citing a steady downward trend in these voter registrations
and met with Justice Department officials in 2005 to present their findings
and concerns.
"In January 2005, we had a 10-year report, which documented the 59 percent
decline from 1995 through 2004," Novakowski said, adding follow-up letters
cited violations from Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts,
Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. "John Conyers
(now the House Judiciary Committee chairman) and 29 other representatives
asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to look into this, and there was no
response."
This spring, after learning of Voting Section letters to North Carolina and
Kentucky pressuring those states to more aggressively purge their voter
lists, the same coalition called on the House and Senate Judiciary
committees to investigate the "selective enforcement" of voter registration
laws.
"We are concerned that the Justice Department's Voting Section is ignoring
the primary purpose of NVRA to "establish procedures that will increase the
number if eligible citizens who register to vote in elections for federal
office."" it wrote in a May 8, 2007, letter. "Instead, the Voting Section is
concentrating its NVRA enforcement priority on pressuring states to conduct
massive purges of their voter rolls."
http://www.alternet.org/rights/56957/
END QUOTE
