Field workers for President Obama’s campaign fanned out across the country over the weekend in an effort to confront a barrage of new voter identification laws that strategists say threaten the campaign’s hopes for registering new voters ahead of the November election.
In Wisconsin, where a new state law requires those registering voters to be deputized in whichever of the state’s 1,800 municipalities they are assigned to, the campaign sent a team of trainers armed with instructions for complying with the new regulations. In Florida, the campaign’s voter registration aides traveled across the state to train volunteers on a new requirement that voter registration signatures be handed in to state officials within 48 hours after they are collected. And in Ohio, Mr. Obama’s staff members have begun reaching out to let voters know about new laws that discourage precinct workers from telling voters where to go if they show up at the wrong precinct.
The voters who are dealing with this for the first time (Wisconsin!) are more vulnerable than voters in Ohio, because conservatives have been periodically changing the voting rules in Ohio since 2006. We’re on round three in Ohio, so we’re used to them setting up ever-higher and constantly changing barriers for the voters they disfavor to jump over. Right now they’re going after early voting in Ohio because God forbid we should extend the window where people might actually get in and cast a ballot. A single Tuesday in November is apparently a magical day of increased “integrity” and “ballot security” to conservatives, no matter that election officials have MORE time to check the validity of a submitted ballot with early voting, not LESS time. But, none of this voter fraud bullshit ever makes sense on the most basic, practical level, and all of it is accepted without question. We’re more than happy to accuse Democratic VOTERS of all kinds of illegal acts without a shred of proof, but even calmly walking through the outlandish claims of Republican lawmakers and leaders and lawyers step by step to determine if they make sense is off limits and partisan.
In 2004, in Ohio, where I live anyway, John Kerry’s campaign used outside groups to register and inform voters, and it was a mess. Voter registration rules are state law, and one really needs people who are familiar with the rules and the state. Too, the Kerry campaign were contacting voters anyway. It never made a whole lot of sense to me why we were conducting two separate campaigns.
On that note, there is widespread confusion about voter registration and voting because conservatives and media have conflated the two things for nearly a decade, and they are two separate processes. That’s why we hear the nonsense about Mickey Mouse voting.
Here’s the truth, and it’s logical and it makes sense. Like state birth records process, another ordinary, mundane records process that has been turned into a super-complicated plot out of a spy novel, voter registration is governed by a series of rules and they’re all written down in state codes. Voter registration is not unknowable and mysterious and arbitrary.
When one person accepts a voter registration card for another person, the individual who is “registering” that voter (turning the card in) may not make a final call on the validity of that registration. ALL registrations must be turned in. The state or county official makes the call on the validity of the registration. You can easily understand why this is so: if the person collecting voter registrations were permitted to cull registrations willy-nilly, just using their own best judgment, and rejected those registrations THEY deemed invalid, there would be all kinds of potential for dirty dealing. Easy, right? Makes sense? Yet every single year, regular as rain, we hear breathless reporting on how Mickey Mouse is voting, because a registration was turned in for Mickey Mouse at 123 Main Street. Registering to vote and voting and are two separate things, and the first must be completed before the second may even possibly occur. There’s really no rational reason to jump to accusing all disfavored voters of voter fraud, because that’s a baseless and unfair accusation.
amk
Talk about ‘small gobinment’. Thanks Kay for shining the light on this despicable voter disenfranchisement.
BGinCHI
Let’s play the long game for a second. Kay, do you think the voter suppression will fail not in the short term (it will keep some people from voting for sure) but in the long term?
Does it have the potential to get people more aware and energized about voting instead of taking it for granted? This might especially get the Democratic party to stay focused on basics and grassroots approaches rather than playing the big-money few donor GOP game.
Is the future GOTV vs Big Money?
PaulW
I’m volunteering here in Florida with Organizing for America, trying to get voter registration and GOTV efforts underway.
I believe we should have more registered voters, and greater access to voting – like early voting, or mail-in ballots like in Oregon. The efforts by Republicans – and its only Republicans, I don’t hear about Democratic states restricting voter rights – to shut out minority, poor, and young voters is sickening.
Linnaeus
@PaulW:
It’s almost enough to make one think that conservatives don’t actually believe in democracy.
PaulW
@BGinCHI:
No, because if we Get Out The Vote successfully enough times, Big Money will go bankrupt or end up in jail. One hopes.
Kay
@BGinCHI:
I do, because I participate in these conference calls with voting rights advocates from affected communities, and this is a BFD to them. I can’t stress that enough. I’ve had the same address for a decade and I have a drivers license, and I’m a lawyer in a small town. It is HIGHLY unlikely I’m going to be unlawfully or wrongfully disenfranchised. But it’s a BIG country, and I’m not the “norm” where we should be setting the bar on something as vital as voting.
I know you’ve seen polling where the majority of Americans don’t give a shit, or whatever, but the majority of Americans don’t have the sort of history of disenfranchisement that the targeted communities do. So, at some point, I think it reaches mainstream, because these are some passionate, committed people.
PaulW
@Linnaeus:
They only believe in democracy when the votes go only to them.
jheartney
I’ve been doing Voter Reg here in MO. The campaign recognizes that this is key, and that (along with ID’ing workers for summer and fall) is the current big push. Fortunately lots of strong Dem areas to go prospecting in in St. Louis.
Mino
I’m praying that GOTV this year suggests to Republicans that Citizens United was a blind alley for them and they will work with Dems to clean up the situation since theri own voters don’t like it either.
Downballot will tell the story.
BGinCHI
@Kay: Thanks Kay. Agreed.
It seems vital that the GOP and this disenfranchisement strategy (which is NOT new, though the tactics may have changed) be seen for what it is: anti-democratic.
Their work on the media seems just as important as anything here.
Ash Can
@Mino: You can count on Republicans to do the exact opposite of that and double down. I’m middle-aged, and I’m beginning to think I won’t see the GOP return to sanity and/or any semblance of principle in my lifetime.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
This is the kind of thing that makes me think that the head of the DNC needs to have community organizer on his/her resume.
rlrr
@Linnaeus:
I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.
— Hunter S. Thompson
Ben Franklin
Kay;
A little OT, but along with registration/disenfranchisement issue, how do you project the campaign dollars for both Parties? Are we going to be ahead, or at parity over the coming months?
Kay
@BGinCHI:
Durbin is doing “field hearings” on voting rights, he held one on FL already, and I think that’s a great idea. Senators add a sort of clout that we’ve needed, because even if this doesn’t affect the majority of voters, the voters it does affect are absolutely part of any liberal or Democratic coalition, and this is really, really important to their advocates and representatives. Just on sort of solidarity grounds it should be a high priority, even aside from the obvious practical effects.
gene108
@Linnaeus:
They are being honest originalists.
They’re just trying to restore America to the vision the Founding Fathers had, when only white male Protestant land owners, over 21 years old could vote.
America wasn’t founded to be a bastion for universal suffrage, despite four Constitutional amendments giving blacks, women, 18 year olds and older the right to vote, along with one banning poll taxes. Some long dead men, who created the Constitution, with ability to amend it as society’s needs change over time, were right in 1789 and all the icky change stuff that happened later should just be ignored.
Kay
@Ben Franklin:
I have no idea. I don’t follow it at all. The Obama campaign here is up and running, “on the ground”, but I have no idea of media budgets or anything like that.
I would just assume they have more :)
jheartney
@Mino: The only way to get rid of Citizens United is through SCOTUS appointments. And they’ll need to be “liberal” appointments, rather than squishy moderates. We need Brennans, not Anthony Kennedy’s.
Mino
@gene108: You’d certainly get Clarence Thomas’ vote on that. Of course, he might want an exception for himself–drawing up the ladder, doncha know.
Mino
@jheartney: We need fucking Teddy Roosevelt.
Ben Cisco
@Kay:
That’s partly because THEY keep getting caught doing it – all over the place. Ken Blackwell right there in Ohio, Charlie White in Indiana, Paul Schurick in Maryland, Coulter in Connecticut – and those are just the names that popped into my head as I was reading this.
As usual, their projection puts the local multiplex cinema to shame.
Kay
@Ben Cisco:
That was actual voter registration fraud.
I read a lot about it, and I found it amusing, because I would bet 5 bucks that the reason he submitted the wrong address was because that way he could retain his old gubmint job while running for his new gubmint job and keep his health insurance.
If Indiana is like Ohio on residency for the the job he HAD, that’s why he did it. People do elaborate machinations here to keep health insurance while running for office, they don’t commit felonies, but still.
This country is insane. Completely and utterly insane.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Ash Can: I agree, and am scared shitless as to what happens when Obama wins this one, and I see no way he doesn’t. The GOP has put up a patsy, pure and simple.
I think we’re going to see
somea LOT of good old-fashioned domestic terror, like we did in the second Clinton term.Difference this time being is that there’s a lot more instructional material out there on the internets.
rikyrah
kay,
once again I appreciate you keeping us informed on the ground level.
The Other Chuck
If voter turnout in elections were 100% or even 90%, there would not be a Republican Party, just some regional cranks in the deep south.
Tokyokie
My wife (who’s a naturalized citizen) and I both carry our passports with us to the polling place these days on account of this sort of crap. Sure as hell seems to me to be an interstate conspiracy to deny Americans their civil rights under color of law, which should be actionable under civil rights legislation and the RICO act, but what do I know?
MobiusKlein
So who has a good reason we don’t have National Standard rules for voting and voting registration?
It’s insanity that each State has different rules and regulations about how to deal with registration. It adds bureaucracy, cost, and uncertainty. It also allows unscrupulous local official the ability to skew the voting populations.
I say it’s time for a national voting card.
Bullsmith
How come the MSM is always ready to give time to voter-fraud fearmongering, but the actual, coordinated effort to deprive tens of thouseands of American citizens of their right to vote is all yawn? Really, like the war on women, the war on voters has a fairly broad base of people who are getting deliberately targeted for second-class citizenship. It’s a huge deal, but not really an issue I see written about outside blogs almost ever.
Todd Dugdale
@Tokyokie: Passports aren’t accepted under nearly all of the Voter ID laws, even though they prove identity and citizenship. It has to be a State-issued ID or tribal ID.
Passports don’t include your address, which is one of the sneaky things about the WI law. You can now disenfranchise voters for not updating their addressees if they move outside of their current precinct. And voting in a precinct where you don’t reside is actual voter fraud, regardless of what your ID says.
cosima
Yesterday I spent a few hours registering voters here in CO thru the local Organizing for America (Obama) effort.
My first question to people on the street (which, by the way, was much more successful than trying to accost people as they were going in or out of the market) was “are you a registered voter?” My second question, in the event that they said yes, was “Have you voted in the most recent state &/or municipal elections, because if you have not, and are a mail-in ballot voter, you may not be receiving your ballot this year.
The short version of that issue is that our (R) Attorney General decided that mail-in ballot voters who had not recently exercised their right to vote should not receive their ballots this year. Saving money like crazy, of course!!!! It’s being contested in the courts here, but likely will not be resolved by October, and even if it is, who knows which way it will go…
So, I registered/updated registration info for 4 people, and gave the info to do updating online to two people. The office rep said that the average is 1.2 voters per person pounding the pavement.
I had an awesome – and fairly long – discussion with a hispanic fella who said he’d not voted in years. We discussed the average turnout for hispanics locally — 19% — and this is an area that is probably close to 40% hispanic. He chose to take the info to update his registration online, and I do hope he will, I do hope that he takes something positive away from our long talk about expecting others in the community to do our voting for us, and to vote our values (not gonna happen fella!). It’s an issue near & dear to my heart these days, and pounding the pavement talking to people & registering voters was great. It’s not much, but it felt good to do it.
slag
Yes. Why is this so hard for people to understand? And beyond the propensity for hijinks, voter registration drives are almost always an absolute mess. They take place out of doors, oftentimes, with no resources other than a clipboard, a pencil, and a poorly designed form. It rains; it snows; wind blows. These are not ideal conditions in which to conduct a highly detailed fact-checking operation. That’s what centralized offices and computers are for. That’s what centralized state databases are for. That also happens to be what privacy laws and rules surrounding data management are for. There’s no big mystery here. The processes–and the reasons for them–are actually phenomenally straightforward.
When you can’t get something so simple and straightforward correct in your observation and reporting, what hope is there you’ll get something complicated–such as health insurance reform–correct?
pseudonymous in nc
FTFY.
As I’ve said here before, the system by which elections are governed, with decisions made on a county or even precinct level with large degrees of latitude, is the sort of thing that would be red-flagged by any neutral election observer elsewhere in the world.
TooManyJens
@cosima:
What was his reason for not voting?
pseudonymous in nc
@MobiusKlein:
Article II makes clear that state legislatures could, if they so chose, appoint a slate of presidential electors; Article I gives states the lead in determining election law:
Now, there’s sufficient wiggle-room there to allow the VRA to have force — though it’s obvious that old segregationist states are itching for a full-on challenge to Section 5, in the belief that the Roberts court would back them.
pseudonymous in nc
@slag:
Which is why it cannot be adopted. The idea that it might be as simple to register and vote as in Canada — where there’s a federal database that is shared with the provinces — goes against the longstanding principle that the “right to vote” should be an assault course for the wrong sort of voters. Feature, not bug.
cosima
@TooManyJens:
I don’t think his reasons were/are much different from those of others who don’t vote — he said that he felt discouraged by the current political climate, sometimes just can’t be arsed to get to the polls and do it (hope he’ll jump all over the mail-in ballot option!), and then segued into his opinion that while education, family & standing up for yourself/others is something that is stressed in Hispanic families, that there is no focus or stress placed on voting. He also mentioned that in general his attitude is that someone else will get out there and vote, making up for the lack of his vote. But of course when you look at the 19% voter turnout on the part of Hispanics here in CO you realize that it isn’t happening.
All of the above led, as I mentioned, to a very long discussion… we talked about moves at the state level, across the country, to suppress voter turnout, one of them being the AG’s effort here in Colorado. We talked about exercising the right to vote today, now, to make changes at the state &/or municipal level, small, incremental changes that will yield positive results eventually, but that cannot happen unless minority & disenfranchised voters get out and vote now.
Of course I told him that change can happen in his family with regard to voting, all he has to do is have a little talk with his siblings, parents, etc!
I registered two young voters, the upcoming elections will be their first time voting. It was so exciting for my eldest daughter to vote for Pres Obama in the last elections, her first, so it is particularly sweet for me to register young voters with that same enthusiasm. Not much enthusiasm elsewhere.
And so I’ve been pondering how to get info out into the community about the CO AG’s mail-in ballot bullshit. Decided that I’d print out some flyers with the info and post them in various places around town. I also get to talk a little bit about it when walking around registering voters. Going to give it a shot and see how it goes.
Tokyokie
@Todd Dugdale: Didn’t mean to imply that we only take our passports. We take our passports to confirm citizenship, driver’s licenses to confirm identity and address and voter registration cards, even though they’ve pretty much been rendered meaningless.
louc
@slag: Beats me. You’ll recall in Nevada, it was a Republican voter registering group that started throwing out the registrations from Democrats –which was actually against state law. But all anyone focused on was that Mickey Mouse and Father Christmas signed the registration form and gasp! Acorn turned them in. Guess what? I think bureaus of elections are competent enough to throw those out.
TooManyJens
@cosima: I would say you’re doing the Lord’s work, but that would be a little weird coming from me, so I’ll just say thanks. :)
TenguPhule
More like IEDS vs Gunnuts.
Scamp Dog
@cosima: I was out there myself on Saturday, also for Colorado OFA. What office do you work out of? I’m in Thornton.
cosima
I feel bad that I’ve been blaming the no-mail-in-ballots on the AG, when I should’ve been typing Sec of State (CO, of course)… so let me correct that now! Who knows, maybe our AG deserves some grief too, but not about that,
@Scamp, I think I’ll be mostly volunteering out of the west Denver offices — this weekend it was the office on W 38th, and earlier in the week I was at the opening of the new office on W Alameda. That is a heavily Hispanic area, so if you are bilingual (I am not, sadly) that would be an awesome place for you to help out. If things get boring in Thornton, that is.
I’m hoping to spend at least a couple of afternoons a week getting out to register voters. Even if I only get the average 1.2, well, they may talk to family/friends about it and get the ball rolling that way, snowball effect, right?
lgerard
The reason that this issue is portrayed as some type of problem is because people simply do not understand the law.
Just because a registration form is turned in to an election board DOES NOT mean that the person listed on it is a registered voter. The “Help America Vote Act” requires that the election board match the information on the registration form (exact name, address and date of birth) to an existing state database. If there is no exact match, then the registration is not complete until the potential voter can prove his or her identity with an ID.
The “registration fraud” problem (and its far more egregious cousin, petition fraud) could be eliminated by the simple step of prohibiting payment for the collection of registration forms or petition signatures. After all, if you cannot get enough volunteers to collect forms from potential voters or signatures for your cause, they probably should not be on the ballot.
Of course, republicans would oppose this, as they rely on paid canvassers exclusively.
Deen
Not to someone from the Netherlands it doesn’t. It makes no sense to me at all. Why would voter registration be necessary to begin with? I get my voting card in the mail a few weeks before the election, along with a (long) list of all parties and candidates taking part. No action from my part is required, other than voting itself. (I do have to bring ID to the polling station, though, but since everyone is already required by law to be able to present ID, that’s not an obstacle to voting either.) Sounds to me the voting system in the US is unnecessarily complicated, and as “pseudonymous in nc” suggests, probably deliberately so.