K
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
Guest
As the Washington Post detailed on Tuesday, the Supreme Court this
term will decide a set of voter identification cases which could well
determine the outcome of the 2008 election. In a narrow legal sense,
the cases will address the constitutionality of new voter ID laws in
Indiana and other states. But more important, the Roberts Court will
decide whether to rubber stamp an essential tactic in the all-out
Republican war to suppress the votes of minority - and likely
Democratic - Americans.
The combined cases to be argued on January 9th, Crawford v. Marion
County Election Board and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, have
their genesis in the wave of draconian new voter identification laws
passed by Republican majority statehouses around the nation. As the
Post noted, Indiana joined Georgia, Missouri and Arizona in enacting
stringent new photo ID requirements for voters, despite a complete
absence of polling place fraud in these or any other state:
The state's Republican-led legislature passed the law in 2005
requiring voters to have ID, even though the state had never
prosecuted a case of voter impersonation...
....Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita (R) said voter fraud was
something he was asked about "almost daily" by constituents. "At the
Kiwanis Club, the chamber of commerce groups, people would say, 'Why
aren't you asking who I am when I vote?' " Rokita said.
The state law he and the legislature came up with requires voters to
show a government-issued photo ID that has an expiration date, such as
a driver's license or a passport. Nondrivers can receive an
identification card from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
To date, the courts have agreed with Rokita. The Seventh Circuit
Court of Appeals upheld the Indiana law by a 2-1 margin.
Unsurprisingly, the Court's two Republican appointees blessed the
Indiana Republican tactic. Reagan appointee Judge Richard Posner
proclaimed, "It is exceedingly difficult to maneuver in today's
America without a photo ID." But Clinton appointee Terence Evans in
his dissent stated the obvious motivation and desired outcome of the
Hoosier State GOP gambit:
"Let's not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a
not-too-thinly veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by
certain folks believed to skew Democratic."
Which is exactly right. As I detailed just before the 2006 mid-terms,
the Indiana, Georgia and other similar laws are an essential
ingredient of the Republican strategy of "Divide, Suppress and
Conquer" which aims to drive down the participation of potential
Democratic and independent voters through unprecented redistricting,
curbs on registration, onerous new ID requirements, and polling place
eligibility challenges:
Not content to prevent the enfranchisement of new voters, the GOP is
committed to blocking their exercise of the right to vote. At the both
the state and federal level, the GOP in the name of battling fraud has
put up a raft of new roadblocks and barriers to voting with burdensome
voter identification requirements.
The fact that voter fraud in the United States is virtually non-
existent doesn't derail Republicans in their quest to block access to
the ballot box. Just this year, the U.S. Election Assistance
Commission issued a report refuting the myth of fraud at polling
places. "There is widespread but not unanimous agreement," the report
concluded, "that there is little polling place fraud, or at least much
less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, "dead" voters,
noncitizen voting and felon voters."
The result is a host of new state laws advanced by Republicans with
the transparent aim of suppressing the potential Democratic - and
especially black - vote. As Perrspectives reported previously,
Georgia's onerous new voter ID card program requiring voters to visit
one of the state's limited number of offices, would have trimmed up to
150,000 people (primarily African-Americans and the elderly) from the
rolls. (The bill's sponsor, Augusta Republican Sue Burmeister
explained that when black voters in her black precincts "are not paid
to vote, they don't go to the polls.") Versions of the Georgia law
have been ruled unconstitutional twice by federal judge Harold Murphy.
And while Indiana's new voter ID law and the milder version in Arizona
have to date withstood judicial scrutiny, another measure in Missouri
similar to that in Georgia has been blocked during the 2006 elections.
In his rebuke to the state of Missouri, Judge Richard Callahan deemed
the right to vote "a right and not a license."
Voter suppression has been a centerpiece of the Karl Rove Republican
electoral strategy in both the states and within the Bush
administration. (While supporting the new voter ID laws, the Bush
administration's only prosecution for violations of the 1965 Voting
Rights Act was against the African-American head of the Democratic
Party in Noxubee County, Mississippi for using coercion and
intimidation to prevent the white voters from going to the polls.)
Voter suppression, after all, was the primary objective of Alberto
Gonzales' purge of United States attorneys. As I wrote in March:
Simply put, the Bush White House planned to systematically drive down
the turnout of Democrats and independents at the ballot box through an
unaccountable campaign against "voter fraud"...
....While former White House counsel Harriet Miers first raised the
specter of replacing all of the prosecutors in early 2005, it was
President Bush himself who emphasized the importance of supposed voter
fraud to Attorney General Gonzales:
Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R.
Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors
were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said
Monday. Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, was among
the politicians who complained directly to the president, according to
an administration official.
The case of Seattle prosecutor John McKay illustrates the Republicans'
preoccupation with voter fraud. Washington State Republicans,
including Congressman Doc Hastings, were furious at McKay over what
they claimed was his inaction on vote fraud in the wake of Democrat
Christine Gregoire's 129 vote margin of victory (out of almost
3,000,000 votes cast) in the twice recounted 2004 gubernatorial
campaign. On July 5, 2005, Tom McCabe of the Building Industry
Association of Washington wrote to Hastings, blunting demanding,
"please ask the White House to replace Mr. McKay. If you decide not to
do this, let me know why."
In 2008, the Supreme Court will decide whether or not the Republican
Party will succeed in its fraudulent campaign against mythical vote
fraud. (It does not require a crystal ball to predict where John
Roberts and Sam Alito will come down on the issue)) With the
Republican Party in danger of losing the White House and yielding even
larger Democratic majorities in Congress, the stakes for the GOP are
high indeed. The stakes for the American people and the future of
American democracy, of course, are much higher.
term will decide a set of voter identification cases which could well
determine the outcome of the 2008 election. In a narrow legal sense,
the cases will address the constitutionality of new voter ID laws in
Indiana and other states. But more important, the Roberts Court will
decide whether to rubber stamp an essential tactic in the all-out
Republican war to suppress the votes of minority - and likely
Democratic - Americans.
The combined cases to be argued on January 9th, Crawford v. Marion
County Election Board and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, have
their genesis in the wave of draconian new voter identification laws
passed by Republican majority statehouses around the nation. As the
Post noted, Indiana joined Georgia, Missouri and Arizona in enacting
stringent new photo ID requirements for voters, despite a complete
absence of polling place fraud in these or any other state:
The state's Republican-led legislature passed the law in 2005
requiring voters to have ID, even though the state had never
prosecuted a case of voter impersonation...
....Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita (R) said voter fraud was
something he was asked about "almost daily" by constituents. "At the
Kiwanis Club, the chamber of commerce groups, people would say, 'Why
aren't you asking who I am when I vote?' " Rokita said.
The state law he and the legislature came up with requires voters to
show a government-issued photo ID that has an expiration date, such as
a driver's license or a passport. Nondrivers can receive an
identification card from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
To date, the courts have agreed with Rokita. The Seventh Circuit
Court of Appeals upheld the Indiana law by a 2-1 margin.
Unsurprisingly, the Court's two Republican appointees blessed the
Indiana Republican tactic. Reagan appointee Judge Richard Posner
proclaimed, "It is exceedingly difficult to maneuver in today's
America without a photo ID." But Clinton appointee Terence Evans in
his dissent stated the obvious motivation and desired outcome of the
Hoosier State GOP gambit:
"Let's not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a
not-too-thinly veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by
certain folks believed to skew Democratic."
Which is exactly right. As I detailed just before the 2006 mid-terms,
the Indiana, Georgia and other similar laws are an essential
ingredient of the Republican strategy of "Divide, Suppress and
Conquer" which aims to drive down the participation of potential
Democratic and independent voters through unprecented redistricting,
curbs on registration, onerous new ID requirements, and polling place
eligibility challenges:
Not content to prevent the enfranchisement of new voters, the GOP is
committed to blocking their exercise of the right to vote. At the both
the state and federal level, the GOP in the name of battling fraud has
put up a raft of new roadblocks and barriers to voting with burdensome
voter identification requirements.
The fact that voter fraud in the United States is virtually non-
existent doesn't derail Republicans in their quest to block access to
the ballot box. Just this year, the U.S. Election Assistance
Commission issued a report refuting the myth of fraud at polling
places. "There is widespread but not unanimous agreement," the report
concluded, "that there is little polling place fraud, or at least much
less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, "dead" voters,
noncitizen voting and felon voters."
The result is a host of new state laws advanced by Republicans with
the transparent aim of suppressing the potential Democratic - and
especially black - vote. As Perrspectives reported previously,
Georgia's onerous new voter ID card program requiring voters to visit
one of the state's limited number of offices, would have trimmed up to
150,000 people (primarily African-Americans and the elderly) from the
rolls. (The bill's sponsor, Augusta Republican Sue Burmeister
explained that when black voters in her black precincts "are not paid
to vote, they don't go to the polls.") Versions of the Georgia law
have been ruled unconstitutional twice by federal judge Harold Murphy.
And while Indiana's new voter ID law and the milder version in Arizona
have to date withstood judicial scrutiny, another measure in Missouri
similar to that in Georgia has been blocked during the 2006 elections.
In his rebuke to the state of Missouri, Judge Richard Callahan deemed
the right to vote "a right and not a license."
Voter suppression has been a centerpiece of the Karl Rove Republican
electoral strategy in both the states and within the Bush
administration. (While supporting the new voter ID laws, the Bush
administration's only prosecution for violations of the 1965 Voting
Rights Act was against the African-American head of the Democratic
Party in Noxubee County, Mississippi for using coercion and
intimidation to prevent the white voters from going to the polls.)
Voter suppression, after all, was the primary objective of Alberto
Gonzales' purge of United States attorneys. As I wrote in March:
Simply put, the Bush White House planned to systematically drive down
the turnout of Democrats and independents at the ballot box through an
unaccountable campaign against "voter fraud"...
....While former White House counsel Harriet Miers first raised the
specter of replacing all of the prosecutors in early 2005, it was
President Bush himself who emphasized the importance of supposed voter
fraud to Attorney General Gonzales:
Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R.
Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors
were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said
Monday. Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, was among
the politicians who complained directly to the president, according to
an administration official.
The case of Seattle prosecutor John McKay illustrates the Republicans'
preoccupation with voter fraud. Washington State Republicans,
including Congressman Doc Hastings, were furious at McKay over what
they claimed was his inaction on vote fraud in the wake of Democrat
Christine Gregoire's 129 vote margin of victory (out of almost
3,000,000 votes cast) in the twice recounted 2004 gubernatorial
campaign. On July 5, 2005, Tom McCabe of the Building Industry
Association of Washington wrote to Hastings, blunting demanding,
"please ask the White House to replace Mr. McKay. If you decide not to
do this, let me know why."
In 2008, the Supreme Court will decide whether or not the Republican
Party will succeed in its fraudulent campaign against mythical vote
fraud. (It does not require a crystal ball to predict where John
Roberts and Sam Alito will come down on the issue)) With the
Republican Party in danger of losing the White House and yielding even
larger Democratic majorities in Congress, the stakes for the GOP are
high indeed. The stakes for the American people and the future of
American democracy, of course, are much higher.
