Fake Georgia ID courtesy of plezWorld
This election has all the earmarks of a pitched battle where at certain times of the day the poll-watchers may outnumber the voters in various precincts and computer geeks may decide the results. The 2000 and 2004 presidential elections taught Democrats and the rest of the country that the GOP Counterrevolution has played a strong role in trying to discourage voter participation by certain groups.
There was a time many Americans believed the country had matured from the days of voter fraud and intimidation, but in truth 2000 and 2004 planted the idea firmly in voters’ minds that the system is as rotten as ever. In a Slate article, Richard Hasen noted, “the number of election challenges going to court has increased dramatically since the 2000 Florida debacle. The average number of cases in the 1996-99 period was 96 per year, compared with an average of 254 cases per year from 2001 to 2004.” Hasen goes on to observe that the losing party in the race is apt to think that somehow the winners cheated at the polls.
Voting rights has long been one of the more hypocritical aspects of the American Constitution. For a while people without property could not vote. It has been less than 100 years since women could vote, just about half a century since the last state finally allowed Native Americans to vote. Many Americans still recall the days when African Americans were prevented from voting by Machiavellian schemes such as the literacy test, in which individuals were subjected to indignities like trying to guess how many jelly beans were in a jar. It was only last summer that the GOP sought to scuttle one of the landmark pieces of legislation in American history: the Voting Rights Act.
The GOP has sought to discourage voting by people of color, the elderly, and the poor because they rightly fear these groups will vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates. But there is another reason as Paul Krugman so astutely observed in a column titled “Black and Blue”, “The problem with policies that favor the economic elite is that by themselves they’re not a winning electoral strategy, because there aren’t enough elite voters.” Mr. Krugman then goes on to ask, how then does the GOP stay in power?
The answer to that is simple, Republicans try to discourage those who aren’t in the economic elite from voting. In the previous voting rights post we observed how cluster technology helps them do this. But the GOP also has borrowed some ammunition from those who used to make people count jelly beans: their new weapon is voter identification. Across the country GOP legislators and officials have worked hard to require that voters bring all sorts of ID to show they are in fact “qualified” to vote. Does the script sound familiar? Just as the Dixiecrats knew it was difficult for anyone to estimate the number of jelly beans in a jar, the GOP knows that many of the poor and people of color do not have ID’s or the money to pay for them. Remember the 100,000 people who could not get out of New Orleans during Katrina because they did not have a car? How many of those people do you think had a driver’s license?
Voter ID laws have been popping up all over the country in an election version of the carnival whack-a-mole game as lawyers for the poor and people of color have tried to change these laws so they are economically neutral. Curiously the Carter-Baker Commission on electoral reform did recommend a national voter ID, but Robert Pastor, executive director of the Carter-Baker commission, made it clear that the voter-ID proposal should be enacted only as part of a package with government-funded universal voter registration, and that some Republicans supporting voter ID “are not really serious about making sure that voter ID is free for those who can’t afford it �”
The most ridiculous or tragic case, depending on your point of view has been Newt Gingrich’s home state of Georgia. Georgia has been in and out of the courts numerous times over the past year as it seeks to somehow sneak through a voter ID requirement. Less than a week after a judge struck down the state’s photo ID requirement, the Georgia election board spent $55,000 to send out 200,000 “Dear Georgia Voter” letters that implied if a voter did not have a valid state photo ID they would not be allowed to vote. Even the relatively staid League of Women Voters was up in arms. State director Jennifer Owens said, “From where we are sitting, this is one of the worst things that could happen as far as voter confusion. It certainly sends quite a clear message to those voters that they might have to show a driver’s license. And if they are not paying attention to court rulings, they are not sure what they are gonna do. It raises red flags.”
Today the Georgia state election website notes it has sent out letters correcting the mistake. It notes, voters without driver’s licenses or other IDs may obtain a free Georgia voter identification card today. How does one get such a card? Go to your county voter registrar (the same folks who once had people counting jelly beans) and bring along “a document confirming your identity.” Now where did that mole go? Iraq, anyone?
FOOTNOTE: As I post this another Counterrevolutionary attempt to limit voter participation–Ohio’s voter ID law– is headed for the Bush Supreme Court. Stay tuned. This decision could be more important in precedent terms than Bush v. Gore.
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