Plutocracy in America by Ronald P. Formisano

Author:Ronald P. Formisano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2015-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

THE ASSAULT ON VOTING, CONTINUED

In the wake of the 2012 election embarrassments, legislators of both parties in ten states introduced bills to improve the ability for eligible citizens to register and vote; during the next two years, fifteen states made voter registration easier. Even Florida’s Republican governor called for remedies, and in May the state legislature increased the number of early-voting days from eight to fourteen and provided many more sites that could be used as polling places. The secretary of state, however, announced that his office would resume efforts to review and purge voter-registration rolls, using a federal database to identify noncitizens illegally registered to vote. Nearly 12 million vote in Florida elections. Yet a scrutiny of registered voters in 2012 identified 207 possible noncitizens on the rolls, and only 39 of them had actually voted.30

Still, the nationwide Republican assault on voting continued unabated, aided significantly by the five-man conservative and partisan majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. In June 2013, in a suit brought by Shelby County, Alabama, the Roberts Court struck down a provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required nine states and certain counties in other states, all with a history of discriminatory practices, to “preclear” any new voting restrictions with the U.S. Department of Justice or the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Both the Mississippi and Texas legislatures enacted strict voter ID laws within twenty-four hours of the Supreme Court’s decision. Before and after the ruling, legislators in thirty-three states introduced ninety restrictive bills, and by the end of the year, nine states enacted new restrictions on voting, with others pending throughout the country. North Carolina’s harsh new law, challenged by the Department of Justice, required all voters to have a photo ID, cut down the early-voting period, eliminated same-day registration during early voting, and placed restrictions on which provisional ballots could be counted.31

These restrictive laws, passed largely by Republicans, aim directly at reducing minority and African American voting. Political scientists at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, analyzed laws enacted between 2006 and 2011 and found their “proposal and passage … highly partisan, strategic, and racialized.” Legislatures with increased numbers of Republicans or in states with a newly elected Republican governor tended to enact restrictive measures. Strikingly, these states also had larger African American and noncitizen populations, and higher minority and low-income turnout in 2008. On The Daily Show (a satirical late-night television program), Don Yelton, a precinct chair in Buncombe County, North Carolina, succinctly revealed the motivation behind such legislation: if that state’s new voter ID law “hurts a bunch of lazy blacks,” then “so be it.” Yelton candidly added that the new law “is going to kick the Democrats in the butt.”32

The new “voter fraud” law in Texas is one of the most severe and went into effect the day early voting began for the state’s November 5, 2013, elections. It requires Texans to show one of a limited number of government-issued photo IDs to vote. Acceptable IDs include expired gun licenses from out of state, but not social security cards and student IDs.

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