Att. Gen. Holder decries states' efforts to restrict ease of voting

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So what does Holder plan to put an end to the GOP's Jim Crow actions? BBB

Jan. 16, 2012
Holder decries states' efforts to restrict ease of voting
William Douglas | McClatchy Newspapers

COLUMBIA, S.C. — In his bluntest comments to date, Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday that voting rights, particularly for minorities, are under assault in some states.

Speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday event in Columbia, Holder said some states had sued to challenge provisions of the Voting Rights Act and had approved new laws that would make it difficult for some minorities to register and vote this year, five decades after King and other civil rights leaders fought for access to the ballot box.

"Each of these lawsuits claims that we've attained a new era of electoral equality, that America in 2012 has moved beyond the challenges of 1965 ... ," Holder told hundreds who gathered outside the domed Capitol. "I wish that were the case. But the reality is that — in jurisdictions across the country — both overt and subtle forms of discrimination remain all too common."

He added: "Protecting the right to vote, ensuring meaningful access, and combating discrimination must be viewed not only as a legal issue but as a moral imperative. And ensuring that every eligible citizen has the right to vote must become our common cause."

Holder's comments come nearly four weeks after the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division ruled that South Carolina's voter identification law was discriminatory because it would make voting harder for minorities, who lack sufficient forms of government-approved ID more often than whites do.

Justice Department officials weighed in on the law under Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which requires approval of proposed voting-law changes in 16 mostly Southern states because they have histories of discrimination.

"We'll also continue to review other types of changes to our election systems and processes — including to the procedures governing third-party voter registration organizations, to early voting procedures and to photo identification requirements — to ensure that there is no discriminatory purpose or effect, " Holder said.

South Carolina is one of 13 mostly Republican-controlled states that have approved new voting laws that include requiring government-approved photo ID to register or vote, shortening early voting periods and curtailing voter registration efforts by third-party groups such as the League of Women Voters or the NAACP.

Supporters of the new laws say they're needed to protect against voter fraud. Several studies and investigations — including a five-year probe by President George W. Bush's Justice Department — indicate that voter fraud in the United States is negligible, however.

Opponents view the new laws as a thinly veiled attempt to suppress the votes of minorities, the elderly and the young — key voting blocs for the Democratic Party.

An October study by New York University's Brennan Center for Justice estimated that the new laws would adversely affect more than 5 million voters nationwide, mostly minorities who lack sufficient government-sanctioned photo IDs or the materials to obtain the IDs.

"The spate of recent laws — the state ID laws, the laws that cut out voting on Sundays. The rationale of voter fraud — when we know the evidence of significant voter fraud is zero," said Norman Ornstein, a political research scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "I'm left with the conclusion that it's an attempt to shape the electorate. I really view these as a modern-day equivalent of a poll tax."

Most of the Republican presidential contenders have derided the Justice Department's ruling on South Carolina's voter law as unwarranted federal meddling.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Texas Gov. Rick Perry have accused the Obama administration of turning a blind eye to voter fraud and President Barack Obama's re-election campaign of trying to steal the 2012 election.

Perry, whose state's voting laws are under Justice Department review, told a restaurant crowd last week in Blythewood, S.C., that the Palmetto State is at war with Washington.

"You're in a war with the federal government," he said. "When they walk in with their Department of Justice and they are going to take you to task, so to speak — sue your state for a voter identification law that your Legislature says should be allowed — this right to vote should be protected."

Such arguments didn't appear to faze Holder on Monday.

"We need — and the American people deserve — election systems that are free from discrimination, free from partisan influence and free from fraud," he said. "And we must do everything within our power to make certain that these systems are more, not less, accessible to the citizens of this country."

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@BumbleBeeBoogie,

Oct. 31, 2011
Congressional hearing sought over voter ID laws sweeping states
David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Does requiring a photo ID to vote return America to the days when poll taxes and literacy tests made it hard for minorities to cast ballots? Are state lawmakers trying to make it harder for people to vote?

Two top House Judiciary Committee Democrats want to know, and on Monday they asked Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, to hold hearings on those laws, which have been adopted or are pending in 37 states.

The chairman is reviewing the request, and he had no immediate comment.

"As voting rights experts have noted, the recent stream of laws passed at the state level are a reversal of policies, both federal and state, that were intended to combat voter disenfranchisement and boost voter participation," said Reps. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

Conyers is the committee's top Democrat. Nadler is the top Democrat on its Constitution subcommittee.

They're concerned about new laws in 13 states that they say will curb access to the ballot box.

The changes require voters to present government-approved identification cards, curb voter registration drives by third-party groups, curtail early voting, end same-day registration and overturn rules that give convicted felons who've served their time the right to vote.

Twenty-four states are considering similar measures, according to New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, which issued a report on the topic in October.

Others maintain there's no evidence that a systemic effort is under way to intimidate voters. Some maintain that voter ID laws are popular and can help boost confidence in the system.

"There's not a great deal of evidence of voter fraud" through impersonation, said John Samples, the director of the Center for Representative Government at Cato Institute, a libertarian research group.

Passing voter ID laws, he said, is unlikely to affect turnout. "There's not much evidence that requiring voter IDs will change things or deter people from voting," he said, citing other studies in recent years. "When people are sufficiently mobilized to vote, they turn out."

Still, Conyers and Nadler want the issue examined more thoroughly.

The changes in state laws, they contend, "raise serious constitutional concerns." For example, they said, "requiring citizens to expend significant funds to obtain a photo ID to vote runs afoul of the prohibition on poll taxes."

Poll taxes often were used to intimidate black voters in the South.

The courts, Nadler and Conyers said, also have ruled that "elderly persons born out of the state, persons with economic limitations, homeless people and even people with religious objections to being photographed may be burdened by photo ID laws."

The Brennan study found that more than 21 million people lack government-issued photo IDs. Hilary Shelton, the director of the NAACP's Washington Bureau, estimated that one-fourth of African-Americans don't have the proper documentation to meet ID requirements.

Critics of the voter ID laws maintain that it's the drive to enact such laws is motivated by partisanship, an effort to keep supporters of President Barack Obama away from the polls.

During the Bush administration, political appointees in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division aggressively pursued positions on voting rights laws that critics charged were designed to aid Republican candidates by curbing the turnout of Democratic-leaning minority and poor voters.

The effort intensified as President George W. Bush's popularity waned and the GOP risked losing control of Congress in 2006, which it did. Charging that election fraud was widespread, the administration backed proposals to toughen state and federal voter ID laws that would most affect these groups.

McClatchy reported that Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he discussed voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, highlighting the importance of about a dozen election battleground states.

A study issued last week by the liberal People for the American Way Foundation concluded that voter ID laws today have similar motives.

"Their clear target is driving down Democratic turnout and installing in office people who will do the bidding of the right wing and their Republican allies," charged Michael Keegan, the foundation's president.

Former Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., who lost a bid for governor last year, argued otherwise. In an opinion piece in The Montgomery Advertiser in October, Davis maintained, "Demanding integrity in voting in neither racist, nor raw party politics."

Davis, who was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said he now supported his state's voter ID laws.

(William Douglas and Greg Gordon contributed to this article.)

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Att. Gen. Holder decries states' efforts to restrict ease of voting

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