Promoted by Steven D.
Weekly Voting Rights News Update
By Erin Ferns
This an entry in a series of blogs to keep people informed on current election reform and voting rights issues in the news.
Featured Stories of the Week:
Voter ID measure dies in Senate without a vote – Associated Press
Why the Right to Vote, Without and ID, Is Worth Fighting For – Houston Chronicle
Efforts to stop `voter fraud’ may have curbed legitimate voting – McClatchy Newspapers
The brouhaha caused by Texas voter ID bill, HB 218, brought the nation to attention when the Democratic minority in the Senate banded together to fight the bill at all costs, including risking the life of a Senator who suffered complications from a recent liver transplant. But neither this risk or the witch hunt for “voter fraud” stopped him for protecting the “‘basic right to vote without undue pressure.'”
“That’s not the type of publicity I wanted. I just wanted to be the 11th vote to block the bill,” said Gallegos in this Associated Press story. Against doctor’s orders, Gallegos set up a hospital bed near the Senate chambers until the bill was declared dead, Wednesday at midnight.
“The bottom line is that voter identification proposals are about politics, not fraud,” he wrote in the Houston Chronicle. HB 218, one of about “120 burdensome voter identification proposals” across the country, is a product of a partisan plan to suppress the votes of marginalized communities. Further, “no one has documented a single case of ‘voter impersonation’ that HB 218 would solve,” he said.
“When more people vote on ‘American Idol’ than vote for president, we should make it easier for people to vote, not harder,” Gallegos wrote.
Making it easier to vote is an unusual concept, especially to 43-year-old Wisconsinite Kimberly Prude who is now in prison for voter fraud after casting her first ballot, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Prude took a job as a poll-worker and voted, but later was told by her parole officer that her vote was illegal since state law does not allow felons the right to vote until completion of probation or parole. She then tried to revoke her vote, to no avail and testified in a three-day-trial that she had made a “terrible mistake.” She is now serving a two year sentence.
“At this point, I’m not interested in voting,” she said. Another “felony offender” confused with his voting rights was charged with voter fraud. Derek Little registered and voted the same day with the only ID he had – his parolee card. “In big bold letters, it says OFFENDER, and they still let me vote,” Little said. “I thought it was their job to know the rules.”
Milwaukee U.S. Attorney Steven M. Biskupic was accused of “not being aggressive enough in pursuing voter fraud cases” and was on the “evolving list” or U.S. Attorneys to be fired. Biskupic “has repeatedly denied that his office prosecuted any voter fraud case because of White House pressure.” Little and Prude were two of 14 voter fraud cases Biskupic pursued in Wisconsin, a battleground state. Only five were convicted. One of them was Kimberly Prude.
“It is hard not to see the fingerprints of Karl Rove. A disproportionate number of the prosecutors pushed out, or considered for dismissal, were in swing states,” a New York Times editorial said.
“It is now clear that United States attorneys were pressured to act in the interests of the Republican Party, and lost their job if they failed to do so,”
While many have seen Rove’s fingerprints in creating the elaborate tale of voter fraud as a pretext for voter suppression, Greg Gordon at the McClatchy Newspapers shows some of how the politicization of the Justice Department was accomplished. In a Sunday report, Gordon shows how former Department of Justice official . Hans von Spakovsky spent much of his four years there “in a crusade against voter fraud.” Under a pseudonym, von Spakovsky wrote a law journal article about the importance of photo ID to prevent voter fraud, further saying there was “no evidence” that such ID was a burden on minorities. He has also been linked to controversial voter ID cases in Georgia and Arizona. Von Spakovsky then allegedly sped up the approval process for controversial voter ID bills in Georgia and Arizona, citing his own law journal article as support for the laws. He did this,despite objections by career staff “who believed that Georgia’s law would restrict voting by poor blacks and who felt that more analysis was needed on the Arizona law’s impact on Native Americans and Latinos.” He also attempted to influence the federal Election Assistance Commission’s research on voter fraud and voter ID laws: “A House panel revealed last month that the fraud study’s central finding – that there was little evidence of widespread voter fraud – had been toned down to say that ‘a great deal of debate’ surrounded the subject,” wrote Gordon. Von Sparkovsky has been given a recess appointment to the Federal Elections Commission and has a confirmation hearing scheduled for June 13th.
In Other News:
Florida Governor Charlie Crist signed two significant bills Monday, “eliminating electronic voting machines in favor of paper ballots and making Florida’s presidential primary among the earliest in the nation.” The new law requiring paper records won’t be in effect for the new Jan. 29 presidential primary, but is expected to be implemented for the fall 2008 elections, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Florida League of Women Voters called the bill mandating paper-based voting systems “deeply flawed” in Thursday’s Palm Beach Post. The bill was inundated with numerous “objectionable amendments” just days before the end of session, including provisions that “stifle” voter registration drives by “grassroots organizations,” an issue that is “similar to prior years’ legislation that the League of Women Voters is challenging in court.”
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner announced a new voter registration program to get young people to vote, according to the Columbus Dispatch. Under the pilot program that will reach 147 high schools in several counties, all graduates will receive a voter form and letter encouraging them to register. “The goal is to expand the program statewide next year, depending on the response, Brunner said,” hoping to register 10% or more graduates.
Wisconsin State Rep. Joe Parisi introduced legislation to fully restore voting rights of felons who have completed their sentence, a proposal Assembly Republican Scott Suder called “dead on arrival,” according to the Wisconsin Radio Network. Current law restores former felons’ voting rights after completing probation or parole.
Erin Ferns is a Research and Policy Analyst with Project Vote’s Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD).
