Republicans Escalate War on Voting Rights

Why Is It So Hard to Vote In America and What Can We Do
to Fix It - Brennan Center for Justice

Having eviscerated critical provisions of the Voting Rights Act in 2103, (Shelby County v. Holder, Cornell), Republicans across the nation are targeting voting rights through state legislation.

This is a continuation of the years-long multi-state, Republican-led attack on voting.

Federal litigation against two swing states' anti-voting rights laws show the Republican efforts to make voting as difficult as possible, akin to navigating the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) if a voter can find a local office open.

Ohio 

"For the second time in two weeks, a judge in Ohio has struck down provisions of the state’s voting laws. Federal district court Judge Algenon Marbley said two laws passed in 2014 violated the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection with laws that made it too easy for provisional ballots to be thrown out for 'trivial' errors," come reports from Ohio (see Graham, The Atlantic).

Wisconsin

From Wisconsin: U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman rejected Republicans' motion (made through the Wisconsin Dept. of Justice), to halt judicial consideration of the restoration of voting rights for citizens who have difficulty obtaining the Republican-crafted range of acceptable voter IDs, another Republican-imposed pre-condition to vote (WBAY-TV News, AP).

Republican suppression strategy on voting rights is to pass laws making voting as difficult as possible for disfavored classes of voters, then oppose and seek to stall all litigation seeking to secure voting rights for the targeted classes of voting.

This is what is being addressed in the federal cases, Ruthelle Frank, et al. v. Scott Walker and One Wisconsin Institute v. Nichol.

The Republican strategy comes as Scott Walker and legislative Republicans have changed the administrative law process of rule-making into a Republican-Party political operation.

An effective method to stop Republican-disfavored Wisconsin voters is to make obtaining necessary voting IDs conditioned on the whim of the state Department of Motor Vehicles personnel.

In Wisconsin, residents who literally die waiting on the DMV to issue acceptable voter IDs have engaged in "customer-initiated cancellation," (Opoien, The Capital Times).

The successful ACLU response to the Wisconsin Republicans' DoJ's June 6 motion in Ruthelle Frank, et al. v. Scott Walker, et al. is reproduced below.

Republicans sought to stay (halting a trial or other legal proceeding), the voting rights advocates' work to prevent "vulnerable voters from being disenfranchised in the rapidly-approaching elections on August 9 and November 8, 2016."
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ACLU response to the Wisconsin Republicans' DoJ's June 6 motion in Ruthelle Frank, et al. v. Scott Walker, et al

 June 6, 2016

via ECF (Electronic Case Files]

The Honorable Lynn Adelman
362 United States District Courthouse
517 East Wisconsin Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53202
Re: Ruthelle Frank, et al. v. Scott Walker, et al., Case No. 11-cv-1128

Dear Judge Adelman,

We represent Plaintiffs in the above-captioned case, and we write in opposition to Defendants’ letter filed today.

This Court should deny Defendants’ last-minute request to stay this case, which has been pending for five years and was filed four years before the One Wisconsin case.

Plaintiffs will soon be filing a motion for preliminary injunction to prevent vulnerable voters from being disenfranchised in the rapidly-approaching elections on August 9 and November 8, 2016.

The motion will provide sufficient time for the Court to rule, and for any necessary changes to be implemented in advance of those elections.

Defendants’ remaining requests related to discovery scheduling issues should be addressed after Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction is resolved—that is, after the imminent, irreparable harm to Wisconsin voters has been addressed (and prevented).

The outcome of Plaintiffs’ motion may greatly impact how remaining discovery is structured, to the extent that any is even necessary.

Defendants lastly raise various substantive arguments in the letter that can be addressed in the context of Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction.

Plaintiffs intend to seek class certification in conjunction with their motion for a preliminary injunction, at which point Defendants can respond.

Defendants’ opposition brief can also fully address their latest attempt at evading constitutional liability, the new administrative rule Wis. EmR1618, in response to Plaintiffs’ motion. As Plaintiffs expect to demonstrate, this “new” rule is unlikely to alleviate the unreasonable burdens faced by Plaintiff class members. After five long years of DMV involvement, it is now clear that a bureaucracy designed to regulate driving has no business being the gatekeeper for our democracy.

This Court should deny Defendants requests and, Plaintiffs respectfully request, act quickly on Plaintiffs’ imminent motion for a preliminary injunction. [links added]

Respectfully,

s/ Sean J. Young
Sean J. Young
Attorney for Plaintiffs
American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, Inc.

Social Scientific Evidence in Federal Civil Rights Cases

University of Washington political science
professor Matt Barreto's social scientific
evidence is used across the nation in federal
civil rights litigation

Those following the civil rights challenges to Wisconsin's photo voter ID law saw clearly in the November 2013 federal trial the strategy of the plaintiffs—present a mountain of social scientific evidence at trial refuting the propaganda of the Republican Party.

The 2013 trial was a rout for voting rights activists, and the introduction of social scientific evidence vis a vis mere propaganda from the Republican Party on voter fraud is critical to Judge Lynn Adelman's decision and order issued in late April striking down Wisconsin Act 23 as unconstitutional under the 14th and 24th amendments and violative of the Voting Rights Acts.

Propaganda introduced as evidence in federal court.

This ought to be shocking—something we might expect from the state departments of justice of Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas, but not from the state of Wisconsin.

The trial against Wisconsin Act 23 shows just how retrograde and racist the Republican Party has become.

In today's political culture where the equivalent of a shouted Tea Party slogan passes for legal evidence in Republican Party circles, academics inheriting the use of social scientific evidence in litigation from such pioneers as Alma Taeuber, Karl Taeuber (housing and school discrimination experts) and the late Kenneth Clark are in great demand today.

Introducing social scientific evidence may appear to be a no-brainer, but only since the NAACP launched its campaign against segregation leading to Brown v. Board of Education (1954) did the introduction of social scientific evidence become central to civil rights litigation in federal court.

This trend can be expected to accelerate as the white supremacist ideology has become conventional in the Republican Party, with almost no public dissent from Republican officeholders.

In the challenge to Wisconsin's photo voter ID law—Frank v. Walker and
League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin v. Deininger—Judge Adelman concludes the "evidence at trial established that virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin. The defendants could not point to a single instance of known voter impersonation occurring in Wisconsin at any time in the recent past," (pp. 11, 12), citing the work of Lorraine Minnite, a professor at Rutgers University, among other academic work demonstrating in open court that photo voter fraud is mere propaganda, conjuring crimes for which there is no evidence.

The trial also included the testimony of Leland Beatty, a statistical marketing consultant with extensive experience in business and politics, who demonstrated that minorities more often lack the GOP-crafted range of acceptable photo voter IDs as a precondition to vote.

Matthew Barreto's (University of Washington and an expert on voting behavior, survey methods and statistical analysis), in collaboration with Gabriel Sanchez' (University of New Mexico) work is featured in Adelman's decision.

Concludes Barreto and Sanchez: "The results showed that, of 661,958 eligible voters in Milwaukee County, 9.53% or 63,085 voters did not possess an acceptable form of photo ID, and 34.1% of these voters—21,512 people—also lacked the primary documents required to get a free state ID card as a first-
time applicant." (emphasis added)

Laws such as Act 23 demanding Republican-sanctioned documentation and IDs are aimed at stopping voters perceived likely to vote against the the GOP.

Matt Driscoll has a piece in the Seattle Weekly reporting on the growing demand for Barreto and Sanchez' work as Republicans work busily to stop undesirables from voting. And Thomas Mann has an essay excoriating academics who refuse to fight the new Republicans because of fear of retaliation.

Reports Driscoll:

According to critics of voter-ID laws—which have now been pursued, in one form or another, in nearly half the states in the union—research confirms that such laws create voter disenfranchisement along racial and socioeconomic lines. These laws have proliferated in the wake of the 2013 Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder, in which the court, by a controversial 5-4 vote, struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requiring states to obtain federal preclearance before changing voting regulations or practices. With the federal preclearance hurdle removed, states that pass voter-ID laws can move quickly to implement them—and have, to the dismay of many, including the national legal arm of the American Civil Liberties Union.

ACLU Voting Rights Project staff attorney Sean Young says Barreto’s methodology and findings have been 'critical to our success' in challenging the laws. 'He’s very important to our work, and his reputation is unassailable,' Young says of Barreto. 'Certainly we expect to rely on him in the future.'

Fighting for voting rights continues anew with the same tools of the 1950s-60s-70s civil rights movement—the rule of law, evidence and justice v. hate and contrivance in the pursuit of a white power structure.

Republicans Lose Battle to Get Wisconsin Voter ID Case Tossed out of Federal Court

Bettye Stitts Jones was a life-long fighter for civil rights
whose battle has been joined. She was the lead plaintiff in
League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin et al
v. Deininger et al (Case 2:12-cv-00185) before passing away
on October 31, 2012, a life lived for justice and love.

Bettye Stitts Jones was a wonderful woman, a lifetime civil rights activist and a lead plaintiff in Wisconsin's League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin et al v. Deininger et al (Case 2:12-cv-00185).

Ms. Jones passed away October 31, 2012, so naturally Republicans tried to get the voter obstruction case tossed out of federal court on jurisdictional grounds.

The Republicans failed.

The case is now known as League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin et al v. Deininger et al (Case 2:12-cv-00185), and will proceed under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as ordered by Judge Lynn Adelman.

Bettye Stitts Jones will no longer be a named plaintiff in this civil rights action, but her work and spirit will be present in the Milwaukee court room on November 4.

Federal Trials on Wisconsin Photo Voter ID to be Held Nov. 4

The two federal cases challenging the constitutionality of Wisconsin's Photo Voter ID law have been ordered to be called to trial on November 4 by Federal District Judge Lynn Adelman.

The two federal cases are:

• Frank v. Walker, (Case 11cv1128), U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin
• Jones et al v. Deininger et al (Case 2:12-cv-00185), U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin

The two Wisconsin state cases are:

• League of Women Voters of Wisconsin v. Walker (Case 11CV4669) - permanent injunction issued on March 12, 2012 by Judge Richard G. Niess. Court of Appeals opinion reversing trial court decision (permanent injunction) filed May 30, 2013. (Appeal Number 2012AP000584 - AC)
• Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP v. Walker (Case 11CV5492) - permanent injunction order issued on July 17, 2012 by Judge David T. Flanagan

In the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin v. Walker case, a petition for review has been filed with the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

In the Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP v. Walker case, the case will be announced for oral arguments to take place after September 2013, sometime during the 2013-14 term.

The Republican Party at the Wisconsin and national levels remain engaged in their multi-year project to obstruct voters through the use of Photo Voter ID laws, as proposed by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, first reported by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

Since 2011, "an unprecedented wave of voter suppression policies were passed or proposed in a majority of states, making access to the ballot more burdensome for voters of color" and college-age citizens, as noted in the Advancement Project and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

The Republican Party has been the sole party responsible for the wave of voter suppression in an effort to keep non-GOP voting citizens from exercising their right to vote.