From the Suites to the Streets

President and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. was quoted in a recent puff piece in the Politico saying, “We have to be able to move politics from the hood to the Hill and from the suites to the streets.”

Damn, why didn’t I think of that?

According to Politico, Rev. Yearwood has also been pounding the DC pavement in lobbying Congress on a variety of pieces of legislation including prisoner reentry programs, tackling climate change, and funding for a one-day voter registration drive.

Now dats what I’m talking about.

A Skeptical Court Hears Voting Rights Act Case

Yesterday, a skeptical U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that requires certain states and localities with a history of voting discrimination submit changes in voting procedures, or gain “pre-clearance,” by the federal government for approval.

The case involves a municipal utility district in Texas that wants to sidestep needing to comply with the provision because it claims the kind of discrimination that it once deterred no longer exists. Board member elections in the utility district require pre-clearance since the entire state of Texas falls under the jurisdiction of Section 5.

The case is called Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder.

Adam Liptak’s summary in the NYT of yesterday’s oral argument was spot on, especially his description of Justice Kennedy’s hostile line of questioning. And if his questioning is any indication, which in this case I think it is, Kennedy will likely write the majority or controlling opinion as he did in the Section 2 case earlier this year and erode much of Section 5, while of course noting that racial discrimination “is not ancient history.”

Perhaps, the real question here is how badly the Court will gut Section 5 and if it will introduce or demand that Congress create a more precise and less far reaching standard in determining which states and jurisdictions should be covered and why, even if in 2006 it reauthorized the Voting Rights Act only after it held 19 hearings and reviewed thousands of pages of testimony and documents.

Plus, a very curious exchange between Justice Scalia and Debo Aegbile from LDF during yesterday’s oral arguments.

Scalia actually suggested that simply because the VRA was cleared both chambers of Congress by wide margins, even if both houses and the Oval Office were controlled by Republicans at the time, we should be skeptical of its validity. In other words, we should be skeptical of the law, which has been reauthorized repeatedly by Congress, because it got too much support. Huh?

If we applied that same line of thinking to other laws enacted by Congress such as the American Disabilities Amendments Act that passed this fall and signed by a Republican president, then I suppose we should consider them invalid too. Or maybe we should consider the unanimous opinions like in Brown v. Board of Ed invalid because they also had too much support.

What happened to judicial modesty and due deference to legislative bodies that conservatives love to spout?

Here’s the exchange:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Adegbile, what was — I read it in the briefs, and I forget what it was. What was the vote on this 2006 extension — 98 to nothing in the Senate, and what was it in the House? Was -

MR. ADEGBILE: It was — it was 33 to 390, I believe.

JUSTICE SCALIA: 33 to 390. You know, the — the Israeli Supreme Court, the Sanhedrin, used to have a rule that if the death penalty was pronounced unanimously, it was invalid, because there must be something wrong there. Do you ever expect — do you ever seriously expect Congress to vote against a reextension of the Voting Rights Act? Do you really think that any incumbent would — would vote to do that?

MR. ADEGBILE: Well -

JUSTICE SCALIA: Twenty-five years from now? Fifty years from now? When?

MR. ADEGBILE: Justice Scalia, I think some members of Congress did of course vote against the Act.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Thirty-three members of the House and nobody in the Senate.

MR. ADEGBILE: Thirty-three members of the House, indeed. But I think the — the reason that they voted for it is what’s more important. Congress did not assume that section 5 was necessary. It took a very careful examination to see how it was operating, and the determination was that in the absence of section 5, because of the repetitive violations, because of 620 objections — there was evidence that approximately 60 percent of those show some evidence of intentional discrimination.

If you take away the prophylaxis, the discrimination will return in a way that we don’t need to revisit. The history has been that voting discrimination manifests itself through repetitive efforts and…..

Besides Texas, eight other states are covered by the provision, including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Most of Virginia and parts of California, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota are also covered.

Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to eliminate discriminatory voting practices by state and local governments. The law has been renewed and amended several times since it was passed, most recently with a 25-year renewal in 2006 where it cleared the Senate by a 98-0 and the House 390-33.

Reforming the Prison System

Senator Jim Webb will introduce legislation aimed at reforming the prison system during upcoming session of Congress. According to the Washington Post, Webb wants to reform law enforcement’s efforts targeting low-level drug actors instead of more influential players in the drug trade, policies incarcerating ex-convicts for technical parole violations, and laws depriving or curtailing the voting rights of ex-offenders.

The effects of the proliferation of failed criminal justice policies and enforcement strategies have been well documented. Despite having only five percent of the world’s population, the U.S. has a quarter of the world’s prison population. The 2.3 million behind bars are not only disproportionately black and Latino, but also amounts to one percent of the U.S. adult population, according to the Pew Center on the States.

In 2004, Latinos and African Americans  inmates made up 19.4  and 43.4 percent of those population state penitentiaries, respectively. Yet the 2006 U.S. Census Bureau estimates that Latinos and African American only 14.8 and 12.8 percent of the U.S. population.

Approximately, one in 106 white men aged 18 or older are in prison, compared to one in 36 Hispanic men and one in 15 for black men in the same age group. More strikingly, one in 9 black men between 20 and 34 are in prison, according to Pew.

(Source: Hamilton Project)

For some, Webb seems an unlikely figure champion of progressive criminal justice, since his biography has all the makings of a law and order conservative. But the one time Republican and highly decorated Marine captain, Vietnam war veteran and former Reagan Naval Secretary, had what he described as an “eye opening” experience as a journalist reporting on how the Japanese prison were run.

In a speech at the National Press Club, Senator Webb said he was struck by how Japan in the early 1980’s managed to have only 40,000 people in prison in a society with more than 100 million. By contrast, the U.S. incarcerated about 780,000 people in a society of more than 200 million at that time, according to Webb in his speech.

He was also impressed with how the Japanese, unlike the their U.S. counterparts, separated offenders in prison by the type of offense they committed instead of lumping together violent felons with non-violent ones. And he also took notice of the overall focus on the readmission of inmates in the greater society with marketable skills. In other words, the Japanese authorities actually invested in rehabilitating people in their correctional facilities.

As a freshman Senator, Webb joined a growing number of policy experts and lawmakers advocating for alternatives to incarceration. Webb co-sponsored the Second Chance Act in the U.S. Senate, which Illinois Congressman Danny Davis helped conceive, and signed into law by President Bush in April 2008. The measure provides more than $360 million in federal funding to help ex-0ffenders reintegrate into society by providing substance abuse treatment for those who need it, assistance in obtaining identification cards, which is critical to landing a job, job training, and financial incentives for employers willing to hire ex-felons.

The goal of the bill was to reduce the recidivism rate, which has skyrocketed in recent years along with state spending supporting incarceration policies. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Annual criminal-justice expenditures for police, prisons, probation and courts have risen to more than $200 billion from $36 billion in 1982.”

Meanwhile, state correctional spending is gradually edging out other priorities such as higher education, as evidenced by the graph below. States such as Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon spend just as much on corrections as they do on higher education.

But in addition to reentry programs lawmakers should reconsider the variety of policies supporting the failed war on drugs too. For starters, Congress should direct its attention to correcting the disparities in sentencing guidelines for crack and power cocaine. Despite the fact that we now know that they pharmacologically induce the same effects, 5 grams of crack – less than two sugar cubes, carries a mandatory minimum of five years in prison. The same penalty applies to those with power cocaine if they are caught with 500 grams. That’s a 100 to 1 disparity. Interestingly enough, about 75 percent of crack cocaine defendants are only low level offenders, not the major king pings and traffickers that are truly profiting from the drug trade.

During the last 25 years or so, drug arrests have tripled, thereby creating a 1100% increase in drug offenders in prisons and jails since 1980. The U.S. went from imprisoning 41,100 in 1980 to nearly half a million on drug charges alone according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice reform advocacy group.

The same organization also found that while African Americans constitute 14 percent of regular drug users and yet they are still 37 percent of arrested for a drug offense in state prison.

On the change.gov website, Obama’s agenda includes not only eliminating the crack-cocaine disparity, but also the expansion of drug courts, since they are more effective at reducing recidivism, drug use and other forms of criminal activity.

States and the federal government should also reconsider jailing and imprisoning ex-convicts for mere technical violations of their parole, since they are nonviolent offenses. It needlessly enlarges the prison population and impedes the reintegration of people who deemed threats to public safety simply because he missed an appointment, failed a drug test, or lost a job. Such routine violations indicate a greater need for counseling and other forms of intervention rather than incarceration.

Lastly, felons should be allowed to vote after completing their sentence and parole.  Felon disenfranchisement laws date back to the Jim Crow era and were engineered to suppress minority voting. Today, the ACLU estimates about 5.3 million people are affected by laws barring those with criminal records from voting.

Webb seems to understand the importance of it all when he said, “If you have paid the price that your community, through its government, has decided you should pay for the crime that you have done, then you should be made whole. I don’t think that’s a difficult concept.”

Hopefully, the new administration and new Congress will move forward with these reforms while they have they still have the political momentum on their back rather fear the next campaign attack ad calling them soft on crime because they were smart on policy.

Voter Suppression and Provisional Ballots

CNN is reporting “six Republican election board workers in Philadelphia were told to leave their polling precincts” since they lacked authorization such as a court order to work at that particular polling precinct. Apparently, some in the McCain-Palin campaign might respond by taking legal action. Campaign officials are even publicly suggesting that it’s part of an effort to intimidate Republicans in a part of the state where they don’t predominate.

Bill Porritt a campaign spokesperson told CNN “Election board officials guard the legitimacy of the election process and the idea that Republicans are being intimidated and banned for partisan purposes does not allow for an honest and open election process.”

Historically, its been the GOP who has led efforts to intimidate and suppress voter turnout, especially in neighborhoods filled with people of color, naturalized immigrants, and poor people. Coincidentally, 45 percent of the city is African American, 10.5 percent is Hispanic, nine percent is foreign born, and 21 percent lives below the poverty line, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau.

Nevertheless, certain Republican figures, such as former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton are propagating this ridiculous notion of “reverse intimidation” directed at GOP lawyers and officials.

Check it out.

Part of the GOP’s suppression strategy is to challenge votes, or dispute someone’s right to vote on technical grounds, at the polling sites, which inevitably extend wait times on lines. This often results in people having to cast provisional ballots, not regular ballots.

So what’s wrong with provisional ballots? Well, the Brennan Center explains:

In part because of their novelty, in many states, provisional ballots generated confusion before, during, and after the 2004 election. A number of states did not plan for provisional balloting until shortly before the election, and the rules kept changing up until the last minute. Not surprisingly, this led to widespread problems at the polls and afterward.

A report of the Election Protection Coalition found that provisional ballot problems were among the top five complaints registered on its 1-866-Our-Vote hotline. Most of the reported incidents consisted of complaints that provisional ballots were not available at polling sites, that poll workers did not offer or refused to allow voters to cast provisional ballots, and that poll workers were confused about provisional balloting procedures and rules.

Problems in administering provisional ballots may have disenfranchised many eligible voters. For example, where provisional ballots were not available or not offered, eligible voters were turned away from the polls as before HAVA. And provisional ballots also created problems that did not exist before. For example, reports from poll sites across the country suggest that many voters who should have been entitled to cast regular ballots were given provisional ballots—which had a lower chance of being counted—instead.

In addition, in part because of cumbersome procedures, provisional ballots led to delays at many polling places; the resulting long lines peeled off a not insubstantial number of voters.

Polling Still Trending in Obama’s Direction

Now while most political observers fully expect the race to tighten up in the next few days nationally and in certain battleground states, the most recent polling spell nothing but doom for John McCain. Obama has the lead in two different polls in Florida and the same is true of Indiana.  He is also leading in at least one poll in Montana, and continues to lead by double digits in several different Ohio and Pennsylvania polls, and is up by a whopping 22.3 points in Michigan.

Take a look.

Though Nate Silver concedes much of this is good news for the Obama campaign, he cautions Obama supporters against reading too much into the recent polling.

To find good news for McCain, you have to go South — to the deep South — where new polling in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana suggests that those states have yet to become competitive.

As a result of all of this, there is now no perceptible rebound for John McCain; in fact, the race may still be trending toward Obama, although the safer assumption is that it’s flat. Meanwhile, Obama’s electoral position appears as strong as ever. John McCain’s chances of winning the election have dwindled to 3.7%, down from 6.5% yesterday.

Today’s article in the Washington Post on the recent polling summarized the implications of the findings:

What all the polls, battleground and national, point to is that Obama now has multiple routes to 270 electoral votes, the winning number, while McCain has to win virtually everything that is competitive. Pollster.com lists seven tossup states. All were won by President Bush four years ago.

Many analysts have long predicted that the race could stay close until the end but that it could pop open in the final weeks — and if that happened, it would most likely go in Obama’s direction.

(H/T: FiveThirtyEight.com)

Voter ID Silliness

I simply do not understand how photo voter ID advocates can push for more restrictive laws as a means of preventing undocumented immigrants from swaying close elections. If you are in the country illegally why in the world would you show up at the polls? Too many immigrants are afraid to go to the hospital much less show up at the polls to cast a ballot.

That would be the last place I would go.

Plus, actual U.S. citizens are the ones who bear the brunt of these laws whether are foreign or native born. Access to or affording to pay for a birth certificate or a passport or some other type of government issued identification document to obtain a photo ID card may in fact be too expensive for some people, particularly if they have to renew those IDs often. The elderly, the poor, people of color and immigrants will be disproportionately affected by these voter ID laws.

According to the Brennan Center, “as many as 7 percent of U.S. citizens do not have ready access to citizenship documents.” The same study also found “citizens earning less than $25,000 per year are more than twice as likely to lack ready documentation of their citizenship as those earning more than $25,000.”

The New York Times is also found that since Arizona adopted Proposition 200, a measure that made voting contingent upon proof of citizenship, more than 38,000 voter registration forms have been rejected even though the vast majority of the applicants swore under penalty of law that they were native born citizens. Under federal law such penalties may include jail time and stiff fines.

Meanwhile there has been scant evidence of voter fraud being a pervasive problem. In fact, after the Bush Justice Department made prosecuting voter fraud cases a top priority for more than five years only “about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted” in 2006. This is after two midterm and one presidential election where millions of people voted.

Unsurprisingly, most of those arrested were Democrats.

The partisan advantage of these laws and who they target is unmistakable. Royal Masset, a Texas GOP operative, reportedly told the Houston Chronicle in 2007 that Voter ID laws could lead to a reduction in legitimate Democratic voting and even add as much as 3 percent to the Republican column.

Score one for voter rights.

Superdelegates and Yet Still in College?

Its fair to say that most of us, whether Republican or Democrat or Independent, consider the very notion that some people within the Democratic party get to be Superdelegates rather absurd. Its just seems silly that such public servants, most of whom were elected, should hold so much sway as to who gets the nomination.

But if that wasn’t bad enough some of those Superdelegates are not even elected officials. In fact, some of them are Democratic party activists who are still in college.

Consider Lauren Wolfe of University of Detriot Mercy and Awais Khaleel of University of Wisconsin at Madison. Both of whom, by virtue of being president and vice president, respectively, of College Democrats of America, are Superdelegates.

And apparently they made an appeal to their peers for some guidance as to who they should they endorse in
a recent YouTube video.

Watch it.

Wow. College pizza looks the same everywhere. I guess thats why I only eat real pizza when I am in New York City. Just saying….

At any rate, it seems as if the coed Superdelegates got their wish….and then some. According to Threat Level at Wired, the two have been inundated by thousands of email and Facebook messages lobbying them to choose one over the other.

Jason Rae, 21, another Superdelgete still working towards completing his undergraduate degree, and Obama supporter, also wrote an open letter lobbying in an effort to persuade his fellow coeds to support the Illinois Senator. That too was done in conjunction with Students for Obama one of the many forces behind the Obama campus insurgency.

For those wondering, according to the WSJ, Wolfe, Khaleel, and Rae complete the trio of Superdelegates still in college.

Needless to say, these kids got it made. I am sure they could use some of their leverage for a nice gig in the White House or Justice Department or at least some decent pizza in New York or a steak dinner in DC.

(H/T: Sarah Lai Stirland at Threat Level)

Polarized Expectations

Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Mississippi primary 61-38 last night. But even that impressive margin of victory seems to dwarfed another statistic: she won the white vote 3 to 1 and he carried the black vote by a 9 t0 1 margin. Those stats seem to be getting as much media coverage as the outcome itself. But I can understand the desire to report that statistic. It describes a stark and powerful reality.

But this is not something unique to Barack Obama or even this election. If the media is going to report that stat there should at least provide some brief explanation regarding the history of racially polarized voting in the American south. Otherwise, we are left with two seemingly conflicting ideas.

On the one hand, Obama is just another black candidate that enjoys overwhelming support from black voters and Clinton is just the white candidate with the lion share of white voters. That of course, not that would make no sense in the larger context of this contest since Obama won convincingly in Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont and Wyoming. All of which are states in which whites are dramatically overrepresented compared to their national numbers.

How do you reconcile all of this? Well, generally speaking, the more diverse the state, especially if there is a history of racial tension, the more likely it is that racially polarized voting will exist. Again, this frequently has little to do with the candidate themselves and more to do with the dynamics of voting population on the ground. This is among the chief reasons Congress reauthorized the extension of the Voting Rights Act to ensure that minorities are represented at various levels of government.

In 2005, Richard L. Engstrom, a professor of political science an expert on voting behavior, testified before Congress on the very persistence of this phenomenon:

Racially polarized voting has been a prominent feature of the political landscape in the American South, and it was a central consideration in Congress concluding previously that Section 5 needed to be extended, first in 1970, and then again in 1975 and 1982. Unfortunately, 24 years after the last extension of the provision, racially polarized voting still remains prominent in the South today. While this phenomenon conflicts with the normative values of our country, and therefore is difficult for some to admit, it remains an empirical fact.

This cleavage is a pronounced aspect of the competition between the two major political parties in the South today. But racially polarized voting is not limited to the partisan context alone. Its presence has been documented in numerous party primaries and nonpartisan elections in recent years as well. Racially polarized voting in the South is not yet a phenomenon of interest to only the historians of southern politics.

This in part is what makes this election so historic.

Obama People Don’t Fret

Jonathan Alter at Newsweek has an interesting take on the delegate crunch in the Democratic primary. According to Alter, Hillary Clinton would have to pull off a string of very convincing wins for her to even come close to Barack Obama delegate total.

So at the end of regulation, Hillary’s the nominee, right? Actually, this much-too-generous scenario (which doesn’t even account for Texas’s weird “pri-caucus” system, which favors Obama in delegate selection) still leaves the pledged-delegate score at 1,634 for Obama to 1,576 for Clinton. That’s a 58-delegate lead.

Let’s say the Democratic National Committee schedules do-overs in Florida and (heavily African-American) Michigan. Hillary wins big yet again. But the chances of her netting 56 delegates out of those two states would require two more huge margins. (Unfortunately the Slate calculator isn’t helping me here.)

So no matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February. Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people. Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal.

Read the rest here.

I should also note however, that the Hillary campaign probably already know this. But their plan is win probably to win enough delegates in the remaining contests to prevent Obama from getting the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination as opposed to trying to outright overtake him in the delegate race.

If they amass enough delegates come by the convention, then the Hillary campaign hopes to cajole as many superdelgates as possible to support her. Many of those superdelegates will probably come from the big states that she has already won such as Massachusetts, New York, California, Texas, and Ohio and New Jersey. These states have huge Congressional delegations and may in fact be decisive in Denver.

No wonder the Clinton campaign hired Harold Ickes to spearhead their superdelegate lobby efforts.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

The Burden of Voter ID Laws

Most of the coverage thus far of the challenge to Indiana’s voter ID law has centered around the partisan dimension of the dispute rather than simply voting rights as such. Of course, there have been some notable exceptions. For instance, the New York Times recently published a very informative article on how voters were turned away at the polls in the Hoosier state for failing to have a photo ID. Some others were told they could only fill out a provisional ballot and then had to return to the county clerk’s office to verify their identity before having their ballot counted. Each of the people featured in the article legitimately voted prior elections. Clearly, the state of Indiana singled out a form of identification that many people, including regular voters, do not possess.

Indiana law also states that in order to cast a regular ballot a valid photo ID should also have the current address of the voter too. This does not make sense for homeless people who want to vote or for those who live in trailers and can adversely affect poor people who tend to move often.

But even obtaining the government issued form of identification can be difficult. To get a state issued ID such as a driver’s license, for instance, one must have a copy of a birth certificate in addition to some other form of identification, which can be challenging in and of itself for many poor and elderly people who might have been born in another state or not in an hospital at all.

Interestingly enough, the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution explicitly bars imposing of poll taxes on citizens exercising their right to vote. It states:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Considering how birth certificates can cost as much as $38 dollars or more and how time consuming it is to get these IDs it is not a stretch to call these new voter photo ID laws as one federal judge did modern day poll tax. It amounts to charging a fee in order to vote in addition to levying a tax on a voter’s time. And it is in this sense that the law should be seen as an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.

During her presentation at a American Constitutional Society briefing, civil rights activist Julie Fernandes attacks the specious logic behind the voting fraud agenda.

Watch it.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Briefing on Voter ID laws

Cross-posted at www.civilrights.org

On January 9, in the thick of this early Presidential primary season, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments challenging the constitutionality of a controversial voter ID law enacted by the state of Indiana in two voting rights cases called Crawford v. Marion County Election Board and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita.The law in question mandates voters present a government-issued identification, such as a driver’s license or a U.S. passport to vote. In both cases, the Supreme Court will decide if the law imposes an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.

Prior to the law’s enactment in July 2005, voters in Indiana did not have to present a photo ID at the polls. As long as their digital and real signatures matched, and they filled out an affidavit attesting to their identity, they could cast a regular ballot.Under the new law, those without a photo ID can only cast a provisional ballot, which may be counted only after voters prove their identity at a county election office within 10 days after an election. The new law does not, however, address absentee ballot fraud or ballot stuffing, which are more common than in-person voter fraud.

Proponents of the law contend it is a necessary tool to deter fraudulent voting, which could illegitimately swing close elections, and to build public confidence in the voting process. Opponents of the law, however, argue that the provisions are too restrictive, since many people do not have photo IDs, including many who are disabled, a minority, elderly or homeless.

Additionally, opponents say that given how state officials have yet to prosecute a single case of in-person voter fraud in Indiana, the law is unnecessary. “Though election misconduct certainly exists, including improper purges of voters, and distributing false information about when and where to vote, there is no evidence that the in-person voter fraud that voter ID laws purports to address is anything but an anomaly,” said Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

At a January 3rd press briefing organized by the American Constitutional Society, Deborah Goldberg of the Brennan Center emphasized the potential national impact of the Supreme Court upholding the law by saying, “National studies show that between 10 and 12 percent of the American public do not have a driver’s license and only a quarter have a passport.”So far Florida, Indiana, and Georgia are the only states that require all voters to produce a photo ID at the polls.

But Capital University law professor and former Federal Elections Commissioner Bradley Smith found such facts unconvincing. After citing a collection of studies sympathetic to the voter ID agenda, Smith concluded, “…but what we have to realize here is that to err on the side of the right to vote is to err on the side of allowing the votes of legitimate voters to be diluted by the votes of fraudulent voters…When we frame it that way it does not sound nearly so appealing. Indeed, to air on the side of the right to vote may mean we need to uphold these laws.”

Former Justice Department voting rights attorney Jon Greenbaum, another panelist at the briefing, countered that illegitimate voting to steal an election requires a series of unlikely events to occur. He said that such a conspiracy would necessitate finding a group of people who would be willing to impersonate another group of registered voters, mimic their signatures, memorize their names, travel to the polling place of those voters, know whether or not those voters already voted, and still bank on not being recognized by polling officials. Plus, anyone caught voting illegitimately would risk facing hefty fines and stiff criminal penalties.

An exasperated Greenbaum then concluded, “It just doesn’t make sense.”

The Court is expected to rule on the case in June.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

NYT on the Iowa Caucuses

The New York Times Editorial blog, the Board, made a well-reasoned plea for reconsidering whether or not Iowa should remain the first in the nation. In addition to pointing out that the Hawkeye state total population is only 1 percent of the country, and that fewer than 300,000 people actually caucus, the New York Times also makes the case that it is also wildly unrepresentative of our nation’s demography.

Iowa is about 95 percent white — far whiter than the nation as a whole. Blacks, Latinos and Asians are all significantly underrepresented. Even the whites here are not representative — the state has fewer Catholics, white “ethnics” and recent immigrants than the nation as a whole.

95 percent white! Damn. I did not know that was still legal.

The same post also makes a strong case for how the caucus system disenfranchises voters too. Since there is no absentee caucusing, if you cannot make it because you are working the night shift, in the hospital, have no babysitter, or overseas fighting a war, you are out of luck. That’s not right.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Andrew Young Race Baiting Against Obama

Ambassador Andrew Young has clearly lost his mind. In a recent media interview (see below), Amb. Young told an audience “Hillary Clinton first of all has Bill behind her. And Bill is every bit as black as Barack.” He also went on to say and that “Bill has probably gone with more black women than Barack.”

Newsflash: Bill Clinton has already been president twice. If he is trying to gin up support for Hillary, then by all means do your thang. But just be upfront about it. Its fine if people want to support a candidate, but do you have to do it like this? If you are going to support a candidate at all, at least let it be one that is actually running. Senator Hillary Clinton is a formidable candidate in her own right let her stand or fall on her own merit.

But, more importantly, it is absolutely maddening to see a civil rights leader who organized voter drives in the South during the 60’s race bait against any Presidential candidate, but especially against the first viable black Presidential candidate.

Watch it.

(H/T: Black Bobby)

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Broken Windows Theory Justifies Voter ID Laws?

Voter ID proponents say the strangest things.

Take, for example, Capital University law professor Bradley Smith who tried to rationalize his support for Indiana’s onerous voter ID law by comparing it to the broken window theory.

First a little background on the Indiana law.

Prior to the enactment of the Indiana voter ID law in July of 2005, Indiana election officials verified the identities of voters by comparing photographed signatures or by satisfying other HAVA requirements which included both photo and non-photo IDs.

But under the new law, voters must present a government-issued photo ID before casting a ballot, such as drivers license or a passport. Other forms of identification even a military or a Congressional ID will not cut it. Additionally, even provisional ballots can only be counted, if a government issue ID is provided. With the sole exception of Georgia no other state voting identification requirements are as restrictive.

Now onto the broken windows theory. This theory was first articulated by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in a 1982 article in the Atlantic Monthly, where they describe the theory in the following manner:

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.

Apparently, in Bradley Smith’s mind there is a link between the pending anarchy due to rampant crime and the scant evidence of voter fraud. You can find his explanation in an online debate with law professor Edward Foley of Moritz law school. But the most striking example of his line of argument can be found in this passage:

It may be true that a voter ID law prevents very little fraud in a direct sense, though a few such cases almost certainly exist; but like fixing broken windows and cleaning up litter and graffiti, such a basic procedure may prevent fraud from growing. It sends a message that voting is serious—at least as serious as cashing a paycheck or buying cigarettes, both of which require photo ID.

The mere sense that someone is likely to ask for ID may be perceived by would-be perpetrators as increasing the odds of being caught and identified in some other type of fraud (or, we should add, voter intimidation scheme). It brings a sense of order and modernity to elections, and as such may be perceived as indicative that other forms of fraud, such as absentee ballot fraud, are also being watched and are likely to be caught. Judge Posner’s Crawford opinion may inadvertently come closest to applying the “broken windows” analogy when it briefly compared voter fraud to littering, in that both crimes are exceedingly hard to catch in the act.

NYT: Fire Tanner, Reject von Spakovsky

Today’s New York Times editorial calls for the firing of John Tanner, the current chief of the Justice Department’s voting section, and for the Senate to reject Hans von Spakosvky’s nomination to the Federal Elections Commission.  The editorial points out that this two officials while at the Justice Department joined forces to approve many of the nations stringent and burdensome voter ID laws.

There have been calls for Mr. Tanner to be removed, and he should be, but that is not enough. The Senate must refuse to confirm Mr. von Spakovsky, an anti-voting-rights advocate cut from the same cloth as Mr. Tanner, to the F.E.C. Based on his record, Mr. von Spakovsky would use the job to undermine the right to vote.

John Tanner publicly said at a gathering in Los Angeles that elderly blacks are not hurt by voter ID laws as much as elderly whites because they “die first.”  The most egregious example of this was the Georgia voter ID law, which a federal judge likened to a modern day poll tax. Since then, many officials, including Sen. Barack Obama and Rep. Artur Davis have called for Tanner’s removal. 

But the big fish to fry is Hans von Spakovsky, cheif architect of the voter ID movement and Bush’s pending nominee to the Federal Elections Commission. While at Justice, von Spakosvky amassed a controversial record, including pushing through pro-Republican redistricting plans that diluted minority voting strength and urging states to purge eligible voters from its voting rolls. But despite his record on voting rights, von Spakovsky still might get through as a part of a package deal if certain Republicans and Democrats have their way in the Senate.

The NYT editorial also calls for a legislative fix that’s been recently proposed by Sen Obama.

Congress should also pass the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, sponsored by Senator Barack Obama, which would criminalize misleading and intimidating actions used to prevent voters, particularly minority voters, from casting ballots.

I have no idea what’s in the bill but will do some reading up on it soon and report back soon.