This November, people who care about enhancing democratic principles have a few things to feel good about. But, in the toxic political environment that passes for “democracy” these days, no good deed goes unpunished. So, there’s bad news, too. Here’s the rundown:

Maine’s Clean Elections Initiative
On the hopeful side, Maine voters have approved Question 1, by a margin of 55 to 45 percent. The measure, designed to strengthen Maine’s previously enacted Clean Elections Act, includes the following provisions:

-Increasing funding for the Maine Clean Elections Fund from $2 million to $3 million by eliminating $6 million in “low-performing, unaccountable” corporate tax exemptions, deductions, or credits “with little or no demonstrated economic development effect”;

-Upping penalties for violating campaign finance disclosure rules;

-Adjusting political ad disclosure rules to require the disclosure of a campaign’s top three funders; and

-Allowing candidates to qualify for additional funds.

Summing up the intent of the new provisions U.S. Senator Angus King [I-ME] said that it ensures that “candidates throughout Maine can run for office without being reliant on special interests and big money donors.”

Seattle’s “Democracy Vouchers”
By a vote of 60 to 40 percent, Seattle voters passed a sweeping measure to enact public financing of the city’s elections. Huffington Post describes the initiative this way:

The measure will create a first-of-its-kind system of publicly funded “democracy vouchers” to be distributed to citizens to donate to candidates participating in the public funding system. Each citizen will be able to distribute four $25 vouchers to participating candidates. This goes along with a raft of other campaign finance, disclosure, ethics and lobbying reforms also included in the initiative.

The passage of these two measures is a good sign. Maybe voters are wising up to the disaster that is Citizens United, which enabled big money—via unlimited campaign spending by corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.

NJ Gov. Chris Christie vetoes automatic voter registration
Unfortunately, the Republican war on voters [specifically Democratic-leaning voters] continues. Earlier this year, the Democrat-controlled New Jersey legislature did the right thing by passing a bill to automatically register people who apply for drivers’ licenses or state ID’s. It also would have created two weeks of in-person early voting, and would have added on-line voter registration. The bill would have added an estimated 1.5 million new voters to the state’s rolls.

Unfortunately, Republican Gov. Chris Christie, after sitting on it for five months, vetoed the bill last week. It was the second time he vetoed a voting-rights-related bill in three years. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, Christie has previously said that he does not support making it easier for residents of his state to vote.

“In New Jersey, we have early voting that are available to people,” he said in June. “I don’t want to expand it and increase the opportunities for fraud.”

[Of course, study after study and investigation after investigation have concluded that voter impersonation is a rarity. The true fraud is the one being perpetrated on the people who should be eligible to vote without restrictions.]

New Jersey currently ranks 39th in the country in both percentage of eligible voters who are registered and percentage of voters who actually case a ballot, according to New Jersey Working Families. The state does not allow in-person early voting, but requires citizens who want to cast an absentee ballot early to apply for one at an election official’s office. New Jersey also does not permit online voter registration, something that is allowed in 33 other states.

It is incredible that a Governor would actively veto a law that would make the defining activity of democracy more available to citizens of the state. But apparently, rigging elections is more important than democracy, just as saying no to virtually anything associated with President Obama or other Democrats has become the modus operandi in many state legislatures and Governor’s mansions—at the expense of the citizens who are ostensibly being represented.

Wake up, people. We are at risk of permanently losing what’s left of our democracy–one vote-rigging law–and one vote-rigging Governor–at a time. Kudos to states and cities that are trying to turn the tide back in the propoer direction.

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In their incessant quest to find ever more creative and nasty ways to suppress the vote, Florida Republicans have come up with a doozy. Not only will voters have to wait in long lines, they won’t be able to use a bathroom during the wait! [I’m sorry, but that deserves an exclamation point.] As you may remember, in 2012, voters in Florida’s Miami Dade County—whose early voting options were severely curtailed by new rules—stood in lines at polling places as long as six hours. This time around, under the newer, more insane and inhumane rules, the long wait could become even more unpleasant, because there will be no potty breaks.

Here’s the full story, as told by Reader Supported News:

Earlier this year, the Miami-Dade County Elections Department quietly implemented a policy to close the bathrooms at all polling facilities, according to disability rights lawyer Marc Dubin. Dubin said the policy change was in “direct response” to an inquiry to the Elections Department about whether they had assessed accessibility of polling place bathrooms to those with disabilities.

“I was expecting them to say either yes we have or yes we will,” Dubin said.

Instead, he received a written response announcing that the county would close all restrooms at polling places “to ensure that individuals with disabilities are not treated unfairly,” a January email stated. “[T]he Department’s policy is not to permit access to restrooms at polling sites on election days,” Assistant County Attorney Shanika Graves said in a Feb. 14 email.

…Dubin said he was “shocked” at this response, and not just because it suppresses the vote for everybody. The Americans with Disabilities Act also requires entities to make “reasonable accommodations” to those with disabilities. For those with a number of conditions, including diabetics and those taking diuretics, closing the restroom will make standing in that line impossible, and thus discriminate against disabled voters.

So, they’re doing under the guise of “not discriminating against disabled voters,” while, coincidentally and simultaneously making it even more difficult for anyone to vote? Gee, that’s thoughtful. I’m sure there are many puns to be made around this ridiculous new twist in voter suppression, but I’m not going to make them, because this is an outrage that defies humor.

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They may not have needed photo ID to cast their ballots, but in the 2013 city election, New York City voters would have done well to bring along high-powered magnifying lenses. That’s because, in some precincts in New York City, the names of candidates were printed in tiny, 6-point type. [I would have liked to include a paragraph, here, written in 6-point type, but my blog format doesn’t allow me to go smaller than 8 point. What does that tell you?

Here’s what the actual six-point ballot looked like in November 2013:

Why would an election board print its ballots with such minuscule type? The New York Daily News explains:

The [New York City] Election Board took a beating over the eye-straining six-point typeface on last year’s general election ballots from a legion of elected officials and watchdog groups who said the print was preposterously small.

The 2013 problem arose because of the number of languages — as many as five in some pockets of Queens — into which the ballots had to be translated.

Now the Board will do what some say it could well have done last year: Print no more than three languages on any single ballot, which will boost the type size to 10 points.

The agency insisted it had no choice but to microsize the print citywide last year because providing ballots with varying type sizes might trigger accusations of discrimination and possibly lawsuits.

New York City has 5,369 election districts, according to the Board.

Of those, just 194 — all located in polyglot Queens — have enough qualifying voters to require ballots in four languages.

And in only 79 districts — also all in Queens — must the Board provide ballots in all five languages it offers: English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Bengali.

In those 79 spots, pollsites will be equipped with three sets of ballots, each printed in English and Spanish plus one of the other three Asian languages.

Xenophobes and English-only zealots would probably argue that it would be a lot simpler if ballots were printed only in English, and that, if you want to vote, you should be able to read “our” language. Those arguments may have some merit–but it’s no longer a matter of preference.

According to the New York Times, Section 203 of the federal Voting Rights Act

…requires ballots, forms, pamphlets and signs to be translated wherever 5 percent of the local population — or more than 10,000 voting-age citizens — speak the same native language and have limited proficiency in English.

As of the 2010 census, states with new populations covered by the law are Alaska, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Washington.

A positive side effect of multi-language ballots is that they are a powerful signal of inclusiveness, and they encourage political participation by newer Americans.

“It is often a source of community pride and a signal that it is a large enough group for political mobilization,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political science professor at the University of California, Riverside, who directs a national survey of Asian-American voters.

So, it’s nice to know that the New York City Board of Elections is trying to ameliorate the tiny-type situation. They’re increasing the type size to 10 points. That’s still rather small for us older folks. But it’s a sign that the Board wants to encourage voters, not turn them away–as has been the trend in too many other political jurisdictions.

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In a trend that adds a nice dose of fairness to election laws, 22 states now allow citizens who will be 18 years old on or before a general election to vote in their party’s corresponding primary or caucus. Illinois, for example, allows 17-year-olds who were born on or before Nov. 4, 1996, to register and cast ballots in this year’s March 18 party primary election, as the teens will be 18 and able to vote in the Nov. 4 general election.

Where 17-year-olds can vote in primaries and caucuses:

States that currently allow 17-year-olds [who will be 18 by the date of the general election in November] to vote in primaries and caucuses are: -Alaska–Connecticut–Hawaii–Illinois–Indiana–Iowa–Kansas–Kentucky–Maine–Maryland–Minnesota–Mississippi–Nebraska–Nevada–North Carolina–North Dakota–Ohio–Oregon–Virginia–Vermon–and Washington.

Of course, when things like this are done state-by-state, there are always some quirky, local variances. In Alaska, Kansas, North Dakota and Washington, 17-year-old Democrats may caucus, but 17-year-old Republicans cannot participate in their party’s caucus.

To check on your voting status in your state, go to Vote411.org

The rationale for “Suffrage at 17” is simple. Fair Vote, a voting-rights advocacy group, puts it this way:

A notable portion of citizens who have the right to vote in the general election in November currently do not have a voice in determining who will be on that general election ballot. Granting voting rights in primaries and caucuses to these 17-year-olds is only fair and will increase their political engagement through participation.

“Suffrage at 17” advocates say that one of the prime benefits of allowing 17-year-olds to vote in primaries is that it encourages civic engagement at an earlier age. Voting when young starts a lifetime habit, they contend. That’s good for political parties, too, goes the argument, because once someone has voted in a particular party’s contest, that young person may vote for that party for decades–if parties are important to you.

Opening up primary voting and caucus participation to 17-year-olds taps into a large market of potential new voters—a significant demographic. In 2008, there were more than four million 17-year-olds in America. Young eligible voters (18 to 29 year-olds) have traditionally voted at the lowest rates because they are not prepared for participation. Advocates say that the “Suffrage at 17” policy puts  more young people on the voter rolls and prepares them to participate in the general election.

[As an aside, for some, the notion of “Suffrage at 17” doesn’t go far enough. A few years ago, a group of Massachusetts teens launched an initiative to lower the voting age to 17–for school-board and local elections. Their rationale was that school boards make decisions that directly affect teenagers, and that they should have a say in those elections. To me, that argument has some merit–and to those who worry about “immaturity” at the polls, I’d say that young people are no more likely to engage in irrational voting and immature behavior than older voters, who demonstrate a lot of stinkin’ thinkin’ at the polls during every election cycle.]

“Suffrage at 17”  makes sense. It doesn’t do anything drastic, like officially lowering the voting age for everyone [we did that in 1971, when the legal voting age went from 21 to 18]. It’s logical–especially in a world where primaries and caucuses reign supreme in determining who will be on general-election ballots. And it’s a welcome example of a voting-rights expansion at a time when too many state legislatures are going in the opposite direction.

[By the way, we really need a whole new system for presidential primaries. Read more about this issue here.]

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Sorry, vote suppressors: Missouri–yes, deep red Missouri–is offering a granule of good news on the voting -rights front. Secretary of State Jason Kander [a Democrat] has announced that Missouri citizens can now register to vote, or change their voting address, via the internet. Hooray, the 21st century is beginning to dawn in my state! By doing this small, but vital, good deed, Kander is bucking the alarming trend toward increased voting restrictions that has been sweeping the states in the past few years.

Under the new procedure, Missouri voters can fill out registration forms on a computer, and the secretary of state’s office will complete a preliminary review. The forms then will be printed and mailed to local elections officials to check for completeness and validity. The on-line voting site is here.

Before the change went into effect in late December 2013, Missouri voters could print out a voter registration form from the secretary of state’s site, but then they would have to mail the document to the appropriate jurisdiction.  [That’s a significant hurdle, by the way. It’s inconvenient. Plus, knowing who oversees voting in your area requires a level of awareness that, sadly, is not universal.] The new procedure puts the state staff in charge of seeing that the registration ends up in the right place. According to recent news reports, 193 people registered on-line at the new site within the first 24 hours of its launch.

According to Kander’s office, 15 other states–including Missouri’s neighbors Kansas and Indiana– currently have online tools for voter registration, and five others are developing them.  Interestingly, Arizona was the first enact on-line voter registration– in 2002. According to the National Council of State Legislatures:

Arizona  reports cost savings by eliminating the data entry process for state and county employees that a paper-based system requires, as well as increased accuracy in its voter rolls. The costs associated with a paper registration were 83 cents, while the cost of an online registration was 3 cents, according to the 2010 report, Online Voter Registration: Case Studies in Arizona and Washington.

Online voter registrations require a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number, and the inclusion of these data in all online registration allows for quick and accurate checks for duplicate records. For more details on online voter registration, see the June 2011 issue of NCSL’s elections newsletter, The Canvass

Where does your state stand? Here’s a chart of the current status, from the National Council of State Legislatures.

States with Online Voter Registration

(a) In Delaware, people who register to vote in person at a DMV office experience an electronic, paperless process. Also, voters who register from other locations and have access to their own digital signature can submit their application online. However, voters who do not appear in person at a DMV and do not have access to an electronic copy of their signature must print the registration form, sign it, and return it by mail to election officials before their registration process is complete.
(b) In New Mexico and Ohio, a registered voter can update an existing registration record online, but new applications must still be made on paper.

(c) In New York, the registration system is not fully paperless.  Voters can submit a voter registration application online, but paper is exchanged between the motor vethe system and the statewide database. This creates a paperless experience from the voter’s perspective, but administrative processes are still paper-based.

(d) In Michigan, an online system permits voters to change their address for both their drivers license (or personal ID card) and voter registration at the same time. Michigan law requires that the same address be on record for both.

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A classic country/western song says: “If you want to play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band.”  Well, if you want to vote in Texas on November 5, 2013, you gotta have a photo ID in your hand—a photo ID with your “up-to-date legal name” on it. That’s the new specification for Texas photo IDs, and it’s designed to disenfranchise the class of people who are most likely not to meet that standard: women.

As many as 34 percent of women voters in Texas lack a photo ID with their current name on it. The reason, of course, is that so many women change their names when they get married or divorced, but don’t get around to changing their drivers’ licenses until the next expiration date. Ninety-nine percent of men have their up-to-date legal names on their documents, because they never change their names.

And just to make the hurdle for women even higher, according to The New Civil Rights Movement:

Texas law now requires women to show original documents of the name change: a marriage certificate, a divorce certificate, or a court-ordered name-change certificate—and no photocopies are allowed. This leaves women in Texas either scrambling to gather the proper paperwork and get their ID in order before the registration cut-off, or leaves them unable to vote.

Think Progress adds:

Getting approved copies of these documents is often expensive or difficult for many, especially low-income women, to obtain.

…In the absence of original documents, voters must pay a minimum of $20 to receive new copies. Due to inflexible work schedules and travel expenses, voters often opt to have their documents mailed, incurring additional costs.

Similar to how poor, minority, and elderly voters in Pennsylvania had trouble getting to the DMV to obtain a state ID or driver’s license before the election, women in Texas are having trouble getting an acceptable photo ID that matches their most current name.

Just to put all of this into the real world, let me ask you this question: If you’re married or divorced, how quickly could you put your hands on your original marriage certificate, or your original divorce papers?

Why now?

The timing of this discriminatory voter ID law is not an accident. It comes as a direct response to the rising popularity of Texas State Senator Wendy Davis—a Democrat in the Republican-dominated legislature—whose 11-hour filibuster of anti-choice legislation catapulted her into the limelight. She is now running for Governor against Republican Greg Abbott, and she is galvanizing women voters in the state. The Texas Republican party is running scared, so, rather than try to win an election fair and square, they’re doing what Republican legislatures are doing all over America–rigging the election system to disenfranchise “undesirable” voters. It’s a sickening trend. First it was African-Americans, then it was Hispanics, then it was poor people, then it was anyone whose name sounded “foreign.” And now it’s women. After they exclude all of these groups, who will be left to vote? Oh, wait, that’s their point, isn’t it?

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For many years, the federal voter-registration form used in virtually all states has required that the person filling it out swear that he/she is a citizen, under penalty of perjury. But apparently, that’s not enough for Kansas and Arizona. Those two states have filed a suit in federal court to allow them to require proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, to register to vote.

Is that a big deal? Yes, it is. It’s a lot like requiring proof of identity at the polling place—via a birth certificate, passport or other government-issued ID: a deliberate obstacle to voting, especially for minorities, poor people and the elderly. It may even be worse than the voter ID ploy, because it takes the disenfranchisement gambit further back in the process—making it even harder even to register to vote. Apparently, the cynical quest to prevent politically “undesirable” people from voting against you has been moved upstream—under the fraudulent guise of preventing voter fraud by non-citizens.

The lawsuit comes as a response to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that knocked down a proof-of-citizenship law passed in Arizona in 2004. Kansas’ more recent proof-of-citizenship requirement for new voters took effect on Jan. 1, 2013.

Here’s the background, according to Daily Kos:

The suit stems from a 7-2 Supreme Court decision in the case of Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc. The ruling affirmed that a provision of the National Voting Rights Act of 1993 requires states to “accept and use” a specific federal form for voter registration. That form requires individuals to state they are a citizen and at least 18 years old. But it does not require proof of citizenship. In 2004, Arizona voters approved a law that does require that proof before anyone can register.

The law was challenged on the grounds that federal law overrides state law because of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The Supreme Court affirmed that judgment, noting that not only the Supremacy Clause but the Elections Clause trumps state law. In other words, federal elections law will always supersede state elections laws.

Unfortunately, the majority opinion in the Supreme Court—written by arch-conservative Antonin Scalia—left a window slightly open:

The Court also ruled that states could ask the federal Election Assistance Commission to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the form. And that if the EAC refused, they could bring suit against it.

So, Arizona and Kansas jumped right in.

The American Civil Liberties Union opposes the proof-of-citizenship requirement. The ACLU says that the citizenship declaration that new voters sign at the bottom of the federal registration form  “has been acceptable for scores of years, and there is no problem of voter-citizenship fraud.” According to the ACLU, there is no evidence that non-citizens are falsely signing those citizenship declarations.

Another problem: The federal Election Assistance Commission currently doesn’t have any commissioners, and there’s a bill working its way through the Republican-dominated House of Representatives to eliminate the commission entirely.

In the meantime, about 12,000 registrations in Kansas are in limbo, because the proof-of-citizenship process hasn’t been completed.

Until the litigation is resolved, Kansas’ Secretary of State Kris Kobach said there will be two groups of voters in Kansas who have registered to vote since Jan. 1 — those who have documented proof of citizenship will be able to vote in all elections, and those who haven’t will be allowed to vote only in federal elections.

Since when does a state official get to make that decision?

We need state officials to concentrate more on actually governing and addressing the needs of the people they’re supposed to be serving, rather than focusing on bogus issues meant to demonstrate their conservative bona fides, fire up the base, suppress opposition voters, and keep themselves in office.

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The fallout continues. States that previously wouldn’t have dared to impose voting restrictions that disenfranchised minorities–and, of course, Democrats–are back in business. Florida is one of them. The state’s Republican Governor, Rick Scott has now revived his plan to purge Florida’s voter rolls of people suspected of not being American citizens. He tried the same tactic in 2012,  but according to Talking Points Memo, that effort was:

 … filled with errors, found few ineligible voters and prompted lawsuits by advocacy groups that argued the purge disproportionately targeted minority groups, according to the Miami Herald. Florida’s list of registered voters suspected of not being U.S. citizens shrank from 182,000 to 2,600 to 198 before the 2012 election.

“It was sloppy, it was slapdash and it was inaccurate,” Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards told the Herald. “They were sending us names of people to remove because they were born in Puerto Rico. It was disgusting.”

In the 2012 purge, eighty-seven percent of the people on the list were minorities, according to a Miami Herald analysis; 58 percent were Hispanic. According to the Miami Herald, election officials in most counties simply stopped moving to enforce the purge, saying they didn’t trust the state government’s list. (Two counties in southwest Florida have continued with the effort.) Over 500 of the 2,700 had been identified as citizens; 40 had been identified as non-citizens.  Forty.

The DOJ ordered the state to stop the purge in May [2012]. A civil rights lawyer for the DOJ argued that the effort appeared to violate both the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 law that requires a 90-day period between any voter purge and and a federal election, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, under which Florida cannot make changes that affect voting in five of the state’s counties without DOJ approval.

But that was last year, before the Supreme Court shredded the Voting Rights Act, giving states a free pass to make voting more difficult in any way they chose, even if it impacted minorities [who just happen to vote mostly for Democratic candidates]. Regarding Florida specifically, the Supreme Court decision nullified a federal lawsuit in Tampa that sought to stop new searches for noncitizen voters. On the very day that the Supreme Court handed down its decision, Scott jumped right in, vowing to renew his voter-purge efforts.

Florida, as we all remember, has a dismal record on voting rights. The 2000 election was a significant low point. The state also attempted a voter purge that year. And, in 2012. Governor, Scott joined the Republican Party in a fundraising appeal that accused Democrats of defending the right of noncitizens to vote.

Did I mention that Governor Scott is up for re-election in 2014? That fact makes this a dandy time to start disqualifying voters who might cast their ballots for someone else.

According to the Miami Herald, Scott’s top elections official, Secretary of State Ken Detzner, is now creating a new list of suspected noncitizen voters by cross-checking state voter data with a federal database managed by the Department of Homeland Security.

The whole effort is rather inane: The number of illegally registered, non-citizens is clearly small, and not enough to swing an election. One Florida commentator–Chan Lowe, of the Sun-Sentinel— questions why, in today’s anti-immigrant atmosphere, a non-citizen would take the risk of registering illegally to vote:

..if you’re living here and are not a citizen, the last thing you want to do is tick off the authorities. And that’s if you’re a legal resident. If you’re an undocumented alien, you’d have to be insane to risk getting picked up because you registered to vote, of all things. It’s hard enough to get American citizens to vote in their own elections, because you can’t convince them that their single vote matters. Why would an alien think any differently

You have to wonder: Rick Scott surely knows that his voter-purge effort is going to yield very meager results. To me, it’s beginning to look more like a right-wing, dog-whistle campaign that signals to the base that Governor Scott is tough on immigration. You’d think that would be an awkward place to be in Florida, but perhaps not with Scott’s base.

Whatever his reasons, Scott’s eagerness to disenfranchise voters bears watching. And let’s not mistake it for an UNnintended consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder. This is apparently what the conservative majority on the Roberts court had in mind, and this is what we’re getting.

[Editorial cartoon: Jeff Parker, 2012]

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