The bastards cant win any other way...they cheat! Voting Restrictions in Context First, some perspective. The current assault on voting is highly unusual. Election rules have long been prone to politicization, but the last large-scale push to curb voting access was more than a century ago, after Reconstruction. The first stirrings of a new movement to restrict voting came after the 2000 Florida election fiasco, which taught the unfortunate lesson that even small manipulations of election procedures could affect outcomes in close races. Even so, only a handful of states imposed new restrictions over the decade that followed. That changed dramatically after 2010, when state lawmakers across the country introduced hundreds of bills to restrict voting. Although many of the new laws passed in that first year were initially blocked or weakened by courts, the Department of Justice, and citizen initiatives, states continued to press new voting restrictions in 2013 and 2014. What Explains This Sudden Shift? Partisanship plays a key role. Of the 22 states with new restrictions, 18 passed them through entirely Republican-controlled bodies. A study by social scientists Keith Bentele and Erin O’Brien of the University of Massachusetts Boston found that restrictions were more likely to pass “as the proportion of Republicans in the legislature increased or when a Republican governor was elected.” After Republicans took over state houses and governorships in 2010, voting restrictions typically followed party lines. Race has been a significant factor. In 2008, voter participation among African Americans and certain other groups surged. Then came backlash. The more a state saw increases in minority and low-income voter turnout, the more likely it was to push laws cutting back on voting rights, according to the University of Massachusetts study. The Brennan Center for Justice likewise found that of the 11 states with the highest African American turnout in 2008, seven passed laws making it harder to vote. Of the 12 states with the largest Hispanic population growth in the 2010 Census, nine have new restrictions in place. And of the 15 states that used to be monitored closely under the Voting Rights Act because of a history of racial discrimination in elections, nine passed new restrictions. Some laws are especially egregious in targeting how minorities vote. The push to shut down Sunday early voting in states where African American churches organized successful “Souls to the Polls” drives is a glaring example. Laws restricting voter registration drives are another such tactic. African Americans and Latinos register through drives at twice the rate of white citizens, and in recent years, civic groups have used drives to help close the racial registration gap—as they have for veterans, young people, and other less registered populations. Instead of embracing these efforts, Florida and several other states passed laws that make it difficult—and, before a court stepped in, impossible—for groups to help voters register. The result was a significant drop in registrations. Early Voting Cuts The push to trim early voting provides another clear example of how new voting restrictions target minorities. For more than two decades, states have been increasing early voting opportunities. In fact, most states now offer early voting, and in the last two presidential elections, a full one-third of Americans voted early. The reason for this expansion? Early voting works well—voters like it, election officials like it, and it improves the election system. It is so non-controversial that the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration recently recommended that all states adopt it to prevent long lines at the polls. Despite this consensus, after the 2008 election, support for early voting eroded among Republican legislators in the South and Midwest. What changed? For the first time, African Americans had begun voting early at high rates. In Southern states, early voting by African Americans nearly tripled between 2004 and 2008, overtaking early voting by whites by a significant margin. In North Carolina, for example, seven in ten African Americans voted early in 2008, as compared to half of white voters. And while Republicans have traditionally been more likely to vote early, in 2008 Democratic early votes exceeded Republican ones. Just as early voting has become successful among minorities and lower-income voters, it has become a target. Since 2011, eight states that saw recent increases in minority early voting usage have sharply cut back on early voting hours and days—Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Generally, the days and hours most likely to be slashed were those most popular with minorities and hourly workers, like Sundays and evenings. According to a 2008 Ohio study, 56 percent of weekend voters in Cuyahoga County, the state’s most populous, were black. Some politicians have been surprisingly candid about their motives. A Georgia state senator recently caused an uproar by criticizing local election officials for placing an early voting site in a black neighborhood, calling it a “blatantly partisan move,” and vowing to work in the next legislative session to “eliminate this election law loophole” that enabled officials to facilitate minority political participation. An Ohio official, explaining his 2012 vote to limit early voting hours, said: “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban [read: African American] voter-turnout machine.”
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 07:56:07 +0000
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