The Supreme Court's decision [pdf] on the issues of 'corporate personhood' and campaign dollars presented in Citizens United v. FEC hands unprecedented power to big business, and may provoke the most drastic shift in American politics in more than a decade.
Gov. Gregoire signed a bill restoring the right to vote to people living with criminal records, and eliminated the requirement that people pay all fees and fines, plus hefty surcharges and interest, before becoming eligible to vote. 'Simply put, the right to vote should never hinge on one's wealth or economic status,' says Erika Wood, Director of the Center's Right to Vote Project. 'The Voting Rights Restoration Act now eliminates this modern-day poll tax in Washington.'
Another major civil rights organization hits the Obama administration today.The first 100 days of the Obama administration presented a historic opportunity to restore the Constitution after the Bush administration’s systematic attempts to dismantle it, right by right, while ignoring international human rights standards. Yet, despite several strong steps, the Obama presidency has failed to live up to its promises in many areas of critical importance, including human rights, torture, rendition, secrecy and surveillance
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law is a non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on fundamental issues of democracy and justice. Our work ranges from voting rights to redistricting reform, from access to the courts to presidential power in the fight against terrorism.
For those Americans who do not want to see voting end up like navigating a DMV phone-answering tree, the Brennan Center this fall put forth the idea of universal voter registration.
Worth a read; here's a summary:
In a universal voter registration system, it would be the government's obligation to ensure that every eligible citizen was registered to vote.
Individual citizens could opt out if they wished, but the registration process itself would no longer serve as a barrier to the right to vote.
Here are some of the important ways that federal policy can and should encourage the states to improve on the current voter registration system:
- Mandate that the states put systems in place that would phase in universal voter registration, while preserving the states' ability to experiment with different systems.
- Require states to immediately implement permanent registration, so that voters wouldn't have to re-register if they moved within a state.
- Require states to implement Election Day registration, as a fail-safe mechanism for eligible voters missing from the voter rolls for any reason.
- Provide the funding that states would need to ensure that every eligible voter is registered.
In Wisconsin this morning, Judge Maryann Sumi dismissed all claims in a case brought against the state's elections agency by the Wisconsin Attorney General. We've written about this case before, and why it was troubling: if the court hadn't thrown out the Attorney General's case, it could have put between 53,000 and 200,000 Wisconsin Voters at risk of having to vote provisional ballots. And, historically, as few as 30%of provisional ballots cast in Wisconsin actually get counted.
In rejecting the Attorney General's arguments, the court correctly reached two important conclusions (among other reasons for tossing the case). First, it rightly concluded that nothing in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires states to condition a voter's eligibility to vote on a successful database match - an argument we pressed in our amicus brief. Second, the court concluded that denying a voter's right to have their ballot counted because of a typo or data entry error made by a government clerk violated Section 1971 of the Voting Rights Act, the so-called 'materiality provision.' (A federal court relied on that law, which provides that no voter can be denied the right to register or vote based on a mistake that's not material to determining the voter's eligibility, in striking down Washington State's strict no match, no vote law when we challenged it in 2006. More recently, we argued that the materiality provision prohibited rejecting an Ohio voter's request for an absentee ballot just because the voter failed to mark a superfluous check-box.) Although the Attorney General has said he'll appeal the court's ruling, the decision was absolutely correct on the merits, and we are hopeful that the appellate courts won't waste any time before affirming the dismissal. That way Wisconsin election officials will be able to get back to the important business of ensuring a smooth election.
... that Acorn managed to register some 1.3 (million) low-income (read: Democratic-leaning) voters over the past two years. The rest is, pretty much, just made up. ... Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of 'Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states' as seen on Fox News and even the once-respectable CNN, none of it's trueThe fact that the GOP is simply engaging in another political lie (that shouted loudly and often enough may get to be heard) is known, but the media feels obligated to repeat GOP propaganda. Writes Friedman:
Acorn verifies the legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable in other ways, they flag that form as problematic('fraudulent', 'incomplete', et cetera). They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming 'Acorn is committing fraud' know all of the above but don't bother to share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent votes.
And where (the GOP) can, they'll parlay it all into new photo ID restrictions at the polls (knowing full well that some 20 million, largely Democratic-leaning voters don't own the type of ID they'd need to jump over that next Republican hurdle.)
A provisional ballot is a second-class vote. The voter leaves the polling place not knowing whether his or her vote will count. He or she will only find out by calling a toll-free number or checking a website. If the answer is that the vote was not counted, the voter will be given a reason, but by then it will be too late to correct. That voter will have been directly and absolutely deprived of the right to vote without a meaningful remedy.Seven civil rights and public interests groups submitted their amici curiae brief in support of the Wisconsin General Accountability Board's (GAB) motion to dismiss the Attorney General's legal petition endorsed by the Wisconsin Republican Party.
The amicus brief—click here to read—explains Van Hollen's attempted purges and database matching goes beyond the intended scope of (Help American Vote Act ) HAVA. 'No other state has ever undertaken the kind of retroactive matching that the attorney general seeks,' said Wendy Weiser, director of voting rights and elections. 'It’s bad policy—a recipe for chaos, confusion and, inevitably, disenfranchisement.'Identification Not Eligibility and Removal
… does (not) include any language specifying that an unsuccessful computer match should result in the registration applicant being excluded from the rolls. It likewise does not include any language specifying that an unsuccessful match generally should result in any limitation being place on the registrant’s ability to vote. … (T)he Attorney General does not cite any such language in HAVA (demanding specific rules and actions by a given state). (pp 7-8)The brief notes that Van Hollen's complaint does not say specifically that mismatched registrants should be removed from the state registration list, but this would appear to the only "reasonable" interpretation of Van Hollen's claims. (p.7 [footnote 3])
Instead the Attorney General essentially contends that what Congress meant to say, but did not say, when it specified that ‘[the computerized [registration] list shall be coordinated with other agency databases within the State,’… and specified that matching should include use of the driver’s license and Social Security Administration databases, was that states are required to disqualify registrants (or otherwise generally limit their right to vote) if and when they are the subject of an unresolved computer match. (p. 8)
…Congress clearly understood that database matching potentially could be linked with voter eligibility, understood how to write specific language that links the two, and chose not to require such a link except with regard to a narrow group of voters (those voters who have registered by mail and have never voted for federal office). (pp 8-9)The brief also argues that the plain language of HAVA imposes specific restrictions on the authority of Wisconsin to remove persons from the registration rolls so as to ensure that persons who are eligible to vote and are registered to vote are not mistakenly deleted from the rolls, citing HAVA text reading that all states must provide “(s)afeguards to ensure that eligible voters are not removed in error from the official list of eligible voters.”
The absence of any ‘database-matching, voter eligibility’ requirement in HAVA (except with regard to the aforementioned narrow group of voters) also means that the GAB’s actions do not, under HAVA, raise any specter that persons ineligible to vote have been included in the state’s voter registration database. The Attorney General’s assertion to the contrary is simply his personal, unsupported opinion. (pp 9-10)
Simply put, the Attorney General asserts that his interpretation of HAVA‘s requirements regarding the maintenance of that list and its coordination with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation database is right, and the Government Accountability Board’s interpretation is wrong. However, it is the Board, not the Attorney General, that has responsibility and discretion to interpret and implement HAVA’s provisions. (pp 1-2)Political Implications
Update: CBS News on Voter Purging, Little-Known, Problem-Ridden Process That Could Endanger Your VoteVoter registration lists, also called voter rolls, are the gateway to voting. A citizen typically cannot cast a vote that will count unless her name appears on the voter registration rolls. [Wisconsin allows voters to register at the polls.] ... Far too frequently, however, eligible, registered citizens show up to vote and discover their names have been removed from the voter lists. States maintain voter rolls in an inconsistent and unaccountable manner. Officials strike voters from the rolls through a process that is shrouded in secrecy, prone to error, and vulnerable to manipulation.Voter Purges Findings
... Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, ... (Wisconsin's) largest business lobby, helped kick Justice Louis Butler—Wisconsin's first and only black Supreme Court Justice—off the bench. ... Moneyed groups spending millions, effectively buying seats on state judicial benches, is not just grist for John Grisham's latest bestseller, it's part of a national trend recently highlighted by a Brennan Center op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
(S)pecial interests are finding that buying up judges likely to side with them in big-dollar cases is a good investment — the real-life grist for John Grisham’s new fictional legal thriller, 'The Appeal.”'
Events this month in Wisconsin and West Virginia only deepen these concerns. On April 1, the first and only African-American member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Louis Butler, lost his seat after a nasty, racially charged campaign in which his opponent, Michael Gableman, was aided by a barrage of TV advertising, paid for by the state’s largest business lobby…
In response to such travesties, judicial reformers have stepped up their call for public financing and strict fund-raising rules for state judicial contests or a switch to a nonelective merit selection system.
But with states in no rush to make these changes, a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice smartly focuses on an effective if less sweeping antidote that would be more achievable in the short-term: persuading jurisdictions to strengthen their recusal rules.
Surely special interests would be less inclined to invest so heavily in judicial elections if they knew the recipients of their largess likely would be barred from sitting on their cases.
