The voter ID trial in Pennsylvania is over. The ACLU lawyers appear confident, but I’m in the camp that says “be hopeful after the hearing, because at least you will then have been happy for that short period”, so who knows. We can be very, very sad later, double-sad, to make up for this brief optimistic interval, right? No harm done.
Judge Simpson has promised a decision the week of August 13. Let’s hope he grants the injunction.
This is from a study commissioned by the Pennsylvania ACLU (pdf):
Finally, there are several statistically significant differences in possession rates of valid photo ID across subgroups of the population.
Specifically, female eligible voters lack ID at higher rates (17.2%) than do males (11.5%). Latino eligible voters lack ID at higher rates (18.3%) than do non-Hispanic Whites (14.0%). The elderly (over age 75) lack ID at higher rates (17.8%) than middle-aged residents (10.3%) and younger respondents (age 18-34) also lack at higher rates (17.9%).
Eligible voters who make less than $20,000 annually are more likely to lack a valid photo ID (22%) than all other income categories, most notably those who make $80,000 or more (8.2%), and finally 18.5% of respondents who did not complete high school lack an ID compared to 8.3% among college graduates.
I have not seen the male-female disparity before, although the connection between photo ID and income has been documented over and over and over. For the vast majority of us who live in the real world and occasionally encounter people who make less than $20,000 a year, this is not shocking. Many, many low-wage workers in the US do not actually have “ a bank” and they’re certainly not taking trips that require air travel on $16,100 a year:
The bigger problem here is that low-income consumers don’t have much of an alternative when it comes to banking. There’s a growing population of people who don’t have a bank accounts because they feel they can’t afford it. They are called the un-banked and under-banked; people who don’t have enough funds and/or mostly deal in cash transactions and who say they can’t afford bank fees.
This Forbes article about banking practices and low-wage workers is going to piss you off, so be warned.
Again, Pennsylvania’s law is one of the most restrictive in the country. The latest conservative demand in Pennsylvania is for PHOTO ID, which is not true in most other states. The alarm here is justified. This is not the flip side of the hysteria on the Right over voter fraud, no matter how many times our ultra-savvy and ultra-sophisticated political media say it is. We’re talking about real people who will not be able to vote, not the dead-zombie-voter stupidity that comes from not understanding how state voter rolls are maintained or registrations that say Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse NEVER VOTES. Attempted registration is a wholly different process than VOTING.
If any Ohio lawyer is interested in helping out with voter protection in my state this year and wants more information, email me. There is a big statewide training meeting coming up and I will be there, so we could even sit together at the lunch table. Don’t let that scare you off: they’ll also email you anything you need.
Valdivia
Wish I were an ohio lawyer so I would get to sit next to you at the lunch table Kay! You’re my blogging heorine. :)
geg6
Here’s what drives me crazy about this whole thing. We have voter id cards here in PA! You can be asked to produce it at any time you go to vote. When I moved in with John, I was voting in a new town and new polling place. I had to produce my valid voter id card before I could vote because the poll workers had never seen or heard of me before. They don’t have photos, but we have fucking voter id cards!
No one ever seems to mention this. Ever.
the Conster
I’m just so cornfuzzled by all of these voting posts. In all the years I’ve voted (since 1974), I’ve never had to show ID to vote. I’ve had to show ID to register to vote at the town hall when I’ve moved, but these stories about what some of you have to go through just kill me. I show up, they ask my name and address, they cross me off their list, and I vote. This is Massachusetts though, so that’s probably why.
red dog
@geg6: I hope the ACLU brought this to the judges attention.
geg6
@the Conster:
That’s pretty much how it has always worked here, too. Until Corbett and his cronies in the legislature decided that the only way Rmoney could win in PA would be to disenfranchise a million or so voters.
We’ve always had voter registration cards here. You get one when you register to vote or you get a duplicate when you move. That’s the only id I’ve ever had to show. And I’ve only ever had to do that once.
Steve
You can’t buy a yacht without showing ID, so why should you be able to vote without one?
RSR
here’s a graph showing the relation of Philadelphia black polling divisions and valid ID possession:
http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/PAVoterIDimpact/Black
Lack of ID is more than 50% higher in ‘all black’ neighborhoods (>97% black, 40%-42% w/o ID) compared to ‘non black’ neighborhoods (<1% black, amazingly still 26%+ w/o ID).
Here's the full report from which that graph derives:
Does PA’s new voter ID law impact groups differently by ethnicity?
Except for one outlier division with only 27 voters, every division has at least 10% w/o ID and some are as high as 85% – 86%. Those two 85%+ divisions have a combined 2100+ voters, yielding more than 1800 w/o ID!
Mnemosyne
The whole “unbanked” problem is a lot bigger than people realize. After my father-in-law died, we discovered that he had a stash of cash in his apartment that he was saving for our nephew. (We knew it was for him because his name was written on the shoeboxes, envelopes, etc.) It turned out to be around $600, so the first thought was, “Let’s put it in a savings account.”
Of course, to open a savings account at Chase, you have to have a minimum deposit AND you have to keep a minimum balance of $300 in it at all times if you don’t want to pay a monthly fee. Our nephew is over 18 and not currently a student, so he didn’t qualify for any of the usual “young people” accounts.
So … what do you do? Put the money at Chase knowing that they’re essentially extorting $300 out of you that you can’t touch without paying a fee? Find a local or regional bank that doesn’t charge a fee for savings? (Not many of those left in Chicagoland.) What options are there?
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne: Credit Union. There’s one out there that the young person qualifies for… ‘affinity’ for membership purposes doesn’t mean ’employer’ any more.
geg6
@Davis X. Machina:
You beat me to it, but that’s exactly what I was gonna say.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
I found out recently that fast food companies here are paying workers with a kind of debit card. I haven’t been able to look at the specifics yet, but it worries me. Am I wrong to think we seem to be devoting our entire creative energy and effort into ripping people off, rather than producing goods and services?
Mark S.
@Mnemosyne:
Couldn’t you just open a checking account instead? When I opened my Wells Fargo account a year ago, I only had to deposit $100.
Linda Featheringill
“Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient” by Sydney Smith. [Google is grand.]
It is very inconvenient to be without a bank account. Been there, done that. People are nicer to you when you do have an account. And even a Visa card connected to your account causes people to treat you better than if you have no credit card.
That’s like the world is more accommodating when you have a driver’s license, even if you no longer drive, like me. That state ID card seems to give a lot of people permission to look down their noses, be condescending, and otherwise be rude.
It’s strange. Our government doesn’t require much in the way of “papers” but the rest of society certainly does.
However, such undocumented people are just as much of the US as anyone else and have just as much right to vote as anybody.
ant
i thought they had a non picture id for the Amish there in pa.
muddy
I know a number of guys who bring their paycheck to their local bar, they take the week’s tab out of it, and give them the rest in cash. A lot of small local groceries do the same.
Linda Featheringill
@Mark S.:
“Couldn’t you just open a checking account instead?”
I don’t know all the details but bear in mind that banks have shit lists and they share them with other banks. If your name gets on such a list, you may have difficulty opening an account anywhere.
If you find that you’re in trouble with a bank, the best course of action might be to run out and open an account with another bank before all hell breaks loose. That way, you’re covered.
Valdivia
Kay any thoughts on this about the State’s confidence that the Indiana decision guarantees the law will be upheld?
Neutron Flux
@Mnemosyne: it’s his money. Give it to him.
PeakVT
@Kay: It’s not 100% of our creative effort (Apple is going strong, the car companies have some spiffy new product out, the entertainment industry is as strong as ever etc.), but it is far, far too much. Big countries can’t get rich or stay rich on banking and low-end retailing.
Argive
Our saving grace may be that the people who came up with this voter ID law weren’t all that bright. Did Turzai really think that he could flat out say that the law would help Romney win PA in November and it wouldn’t come back to bite him? And TPM’s latest article on the case notes that
The state also signed a stipulation agreement stating that they had no evidence of voter fraud in recent elections and that they did not expect voter fraud to occur on November 6. The ACLU (bless them) sums up the state’s argument thusly:
What fools. Still, this kind of thing is nothing new. Voter suppression has been part of American history since the day the Constitution was ratified.
AnonPhenom
If we took Matthew Yglesias advice on helping the unbanked;
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/05/06/200883/the-case-for-a-public-option-for-small-scale-savings/
We could kill a bunch of birds with one stone.
Make that ATM card legal Federal ID, or better yet get State Election Boards to auto register card holders and you could kill the Republican Party.
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne: I am a big, big fan of credit unions. Find a local/neighborhood one or one affiliated with a fraternal or ethnic group you may belong to.
different-church-lady
Fixing that for you: A BJ tradition since 2006*.
(Or some other year, how the hell do I know?)
cecilia
@Steve: because having a boat is not a right guaranteed in the Constitution.
Voting, however IS
different-church-lady
One totally under-acknowledged factor in bank fees: it’s a consequence of the Fed making money so damn cheap. Banks simply don’t need our money anymore. With the prime rate is as low as it is, our $1237.53 in savings is more of a pain in the ass than a resource.
Kay
@Valdivia:
I really dislike Weigel’s coverage of voting issues. I thought his coverage of the True the Vote convention was overly sympathetic and I think his coverage of this trial was too breezy. It’s how this issue is treated: both sides do it, look at those zany voting people fighting, etc. Is there a political aspect to this? Yes. Both sides. But, Val, at the end of the day conservatives cannot produce evidence of voter fraud. Making shit up is DIFFERENT than not making shit up. Weigel, in my view, treats it as two “stories”, both equally valid. That is false.
The True the Vote people in Texas have an actual record of voter intimidation in Texas in 2010. They’re not adorable people in funny hats. They went into AA neighborhoods and harassed voters. They took action.
I cannot stress to you enough how important this issue to some vital liberal and Democratic constituencies. I’ve been at it since 2006 and I did not grasp the full import until I went to the Senate “field hearing” in Cleveland, and sat in that room with AA ministers and voting rights activists and others. Then I knew. This is a powerful thing. It has historical weight and import. It deserves better and more rigorous coverage than it gets.
The lawyers are predicting victory because that’s an advocate’s job. I said as much in this post. So, in answer to your question, I’ll skip the Commonwealth lawyer/GOP victory spin, as duly transcribed by Mr. Weigel and wait for the judge to rule :)
Another Halocene Human
@the Conster: In Mass every year or two we would also elect the key election workers in an off-cycle vote. Generally the same old elderly folks that knew all about me even though I couldn’t recall meeting them. :P
So far that hasn’t happened in Fluhduh. I guess who volunteers, volunteers.
To me it’s a lot more logical to be voting on election workers than voting for judges.
Jay in Oregon
@Linda Featheringill:
There’s actually a credit reporting bureau that deals specifically with checking accounts. I don’t remember the name offhand but we ran into them when I opened a checking account at my credit union and my wife couldn’t get on it because there was a delinquent/overdrawn checking account linked to her SSN. (I think it was more of a clerical error than actual identity theft—that is, a bank employee mistyped someone’s SSN when setting up the account.)
Until my wife showed proof that she was the rightful owner of the number, which basically consisted of faxing in a copy of her SS card, this bureau wouldn’t take it of off her record.
I’ll dig through my paperwork when I get home and see if I have copies of the letter we got. I’d certainly never heard of it before, and I never see it mentioned in discussions of monitoring your credit report.
Another Halocene Human
@Steve: Are you implying that a vote could be obtained with sufficient unmarked rolls of cash money?
sphouch
Kay,
Inasmuch as you are more current on the situation in Ohio and I can’t bring myself to read any Breitbart links, I have been seeing quite a bit of commentary from my friends on the right, particularly the veterans among them, about the following: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/08/02/obama-campaign-sues-to-restrict-military-voting
I’m aware that this somehow affects Ohio, but beyond that, I am not sure what the details are. Do you, or any of the astute BJ faithful have any information about this?
Another Halocene Human
@Jay in Oregon: Isn’t that the CHECK21 system? Maybe I’m mixing it up. The banks have one, the CUs generally use credit reports.
Maybe it was a clerical error but the fraudsters often use other people’s ID to kite checks these days. One year I had a landlady who got into a fix that way but the bank knew it wasn’t her because the Walmart security cam a county away clearly showed the check writer to be a heavyset male in his 50s and she was a short, trim, blond female who was at work at the time.
Two things happen to get on the blacklist. Either you are a grifter, in which case the banks are always trying to catch up to you and get you imprisoned, or you’re just poor and you ended up kiting a check because the money just isn’t there. There’s no post-dating any more, the electronic system has led to the “multiple NSF cascade” that wipes small balance accounts out, just a lot of issues that make banking impossible for people with income insecurity or too little income.
Jay in Oregon
@Jay in Oregon:
Follwoing up on my earlier comment: the bureau I’m thinking of might be ChexSystems.
http://www.credit.com/blog/2006/05/chexsystems_the/
Another Halocene Human
@Kay: Wow, they started with welfare, now minimum wage workers?
Banks must make those fees!
Kay
@sphouch:
Thanks. It’s a lie. I’ll go ahead and do a post on it. The Obama Administration are suing to restore the early voting provisions that were put in after the 2004 elections, where certain liberal voting areas had long lines and few machines. Restore. To All. Not deny to military. They’re deliberately misrepresenting the issue.
This is an old conservative tactic, liberals hate military voters. They used it successfully in Florida in 2000.
Another Halocene Human
@muddy: in Florida employers no longer have to pay you by check. As a condition of employment they can require you to take direct deposit only.
Jay in Oregon
@Another Halocene Human:
I know that people can steal identities fairly easily, but the person’s name and the location of the bank were completely unknown to my wife, and there was just the one occurrence; nothing else has ever turned up on my wife’s credit report.
Another Halocene Human
@sphouch: Breaking: Britefart’s followers can’t read.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/281941_-Breitbart.com_Just_Cant_Under
Valdivia
@Kay:
Thank you Kay. I personally find Weigel too tongue in cheek about important things so I was wondering why in the world Kilgore (who I respect) would be linking to him instead of the ACLU blog. I am glad to hear this is total spin. And I am with you on the seriousness of voter suppression, it drives me absolutely insane.
Another Halocene Human
@Jay in Oregon: In the case I’m talking about it wasn’t stolen identity–the guy just wrote down a SSN at random when he wrote a bad check… which randomly happened to be my landlady’s SSN.
Kay
@Valdivia:
I don’t know who is going to win. I do know advocates spin, whether they’re lawyers or not.
sphouch
@Another Halocene Human: Thanks, AHH… and thank you to Kay as well, for bringing some light to the subject. While I am an attorney, I’m not in Ohio and not in a position to keep myself up to speed on the goings-on there without some help.
Mnemosyne
@Davis X. Machina:
Nobody in the family seems to have an affiliation that would cover an adult who’s not their spouse. He was helping care for his grandfather during his final illness, so he doesn’t have a job right now (he’s looking, but it’s tough out there for a 19-year-old with only a high school diploma).
@Neutron Flux:
I may not have been sufficiently clear — when he was given the money, his first thought was “savings account,” but he wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. He has the money, we’re just trying to help him do what he wants, but there don’t seem to be a whole lot of options out there for young adults who aren’t in college.
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne: CU charters can use mere geography for their affinity. Throw a zip in here… and once a member, always a member, even if you move.
lou
There’s probably another reason for the female gap: a lot of times when you get married, you change your name. So not only do you have to obtain your birth certificate, you have to bring a marriage license as well if you’re a woman and possibly other proof that your name has changed. More hoops for women to jump through.
Mnemosyne
@lou:
This is why I didn’t bother to change my name when I got married — it’s not actually required, and it’s a GIGANTIC pain in the ass to do it. I didn’t see any reason why I should go through all of that hassle for something that didn’t really mean much to either me or my husband (I asked, and he didn’t care one way or the other).
mainmati
@the Conster: same in MD. Only time you have to show id of some sort is if you are newly registering. This is a quite deliberate attempt at vote suppression and, frankly, if the judge doesn’t grant the injunction, he should be disbarred.
Ruckus
@Kay:
You are not wrong. It’s not every business but enough of them.
Is getting paid with a debit card better than a check? If you don’t have a bank account then I’d say most likely. Otherwise you have to cash it at a store or at a check cashing store for a fee, a sometimes hefty fee. At the local rural store they charge 5% and that’s considered not bad. As I understand it SS will issue you a debit card if you have no bank account or permanent address, otherwise it’s direct deposit.
Rome Again
Unbanked? There are many services out there online that will act as a bank and they charge very little in the way of fees. I use one of these services and I don’t have any overdraft fees at all. I dumped Bank of America when they started charging me astronomical amounts on overdrafts (charging the same transaction more than once). Some of these services also accept anyone, no matter the circumstances.