Suppressing the Vote
New ID laws combat an imaginary crime wave.
By Roger Bybee
In These Times
August 12, 2011
http://www.inthesetimes.org/
this imaginary crime still serves to justify a wave of
onerous new voter registration laws-often requiring a
state-issued photo ID-that Republican legislators have
rapidly spread across the nation. The implications for
the 2012 elections are huge.
"The overall idea is pretty obvious," says Frances Fox
Piven, author of three books outlining America's
unusually harsh and restrictive voting laws. "Both
parties expect close elections in 2012, and if you peel
off just a couple percentage points, you can determine
the outcome."
Piven points to Wisconsin, where protests over a law
passed earlier this year rendering public-employee
unions toothless were followed by the imposition of a
restrictive voter ID law by Gov. Scott Walker and
Republican majorities in the state legislature. "We saw
labor protests of unprecedented size and intensity over
limiting their voice as workers," Piven says. "And then
[protesters] were greeted with a law to limit their
power electorally, too."
With the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC) promoting voter identification, eight
other states also passed restrictive new laws this year,
bringing the total number of states with such laws to
30. Another 16 states have seen similar ID laws
introduced in 2011. Only a veto in June by New
Hampshire's Gov. John Lynch (D) prevented the passage of
a law using residency requirements to diminish the
voting of, as the state's House Speaker William O'Brien
(R) described them, "liberal" students.
On its website, ALEC-whose funders include billionaires
David and Charles Koch (Scott Walker's second-largest
source of direct contributions)-describes how a 2008
U.S. Supreme Court decision makes it easy to impose new
restrictions on voting rights: There "was no requirement
that Indiana show prior evidence of impersonation fraud
in Indiana to justify a voter ID law."
Indeed, such evidence is nonexistent. Federal records
"show that only 24 people were convicted of or pleaded
guilty to illegal voting between 2002 and 2005,"
according to "The Politics of Fraud," a Project Vote
report written by political scientist Lorraine Minnite.
Similarly, the Brennan Center for Justice concluded,
"It's more likely that an individual will be struck by
lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at
the polls."
But Republicans have dismissed the absence of evidence
and instead are striking with lightning-like speed to
ram through stringent new requirements for voting. The
Wisconsin law, which requires state-issued voter IDs,
voter signatures, longer residency requirements and
other procedural barriers to voting, was described by
Common Cause State Director Jay Heck as "the most
restrictive, blatantly partisan and ill-conceived voter
identification legislation in the nation." The new law
will make it much harder for those who lack driver's
licenses, which includes 23 percent of elderly
Wisconsinites, 59 percent of Latina women and 78 percent
of African-American men ages 18 to 24. These people will
need to acquire state-issued photo identification to
vote. Existing photo IDs for students fail to meet the
new standard.
Wisconsin State Sen. Timothy Carpenter (D-3rd District)
has already heard from senior citizens who have
encountered difficulty while presenting the proper
documents to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV),
which is supposed to issue free voter IDs. "It's a
passion for senior citizens to vote, but a lot of people
are being slapped back," he said.
Genevieve Winslow, an 83-year-old widow in frail health
living with her son Jeffrey in Milwaukee, Wis., spent 90
minutes at a DMV office in July and came away
exasperated. "She came with her Social Security card in
the name of Genevieve, her Medicare card in the name of
Genevieve, a certified copy of her marriage certificate
from 1948 in the name of Genevieve . and perhaps most
important, an expired passport issued in 1987 in the
name of Genevieve," recounts her son. But because her
birth certificate featured the Polish version of her
name, she walked away without a new ID.
"The easiest thing for mom would be to get a new
passport, which would be quite expensive [$135]. But we
live on her Social Security payment," Jeffrey Winslow
says. "It's not a happy situation, but she's determined
for them not to take away her vote."
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