Yesterday, the Justice Department demanded more information from the State on VoterID.
Cottonmouth has the actual letter, which is pretty fascinating reading. I’ve attached it at the end of this post.
Just as an aside: When and if some parts of the more paranoid precincts of the conservative movement see the list of things being requested, it is really going to set them off. Like atomic-blast level set them off. They are really going to know the federal black helicopters are coming.
The letter outlines some history. You need to understand how preclearance works. Under the Voting Rights Act, if a state or jurisdiction has been found to have a history of voter suppression, to make any changes in law relating to voting, they must have those changes “precleared” by the Justice Department. To obtain preclearance, the state has to show that the provision doesn’t have discriminatory effect, and that it was not passed with discriminatory purpose. If the Justice Department refuses to preclear, the state’s recourse is an action in the District of Columbia federal courts.
The preclearance requirement is why you are hearing somewhat different results relating to VoterID in different states– the states that aren’t subject to preclearance don’t have this particular burden.
Here’s what has happened so far. First, after passage of the constitutional amendment, the state moved to have the constitutional amendment precleared. DoJ said, “Nope. You have to have implementing legislation, and we won’t preclear without that because we can’t tell what you are planning to do.” This was during the term of legislature. As soon as the implementing bill was passed, the state sought to preclear that. DoJ said, “Nope. This implementing legislation obviously requires regulations, rules, and like actions to carry it out, and we can’t tell without those.” The state responded: This is it, it’s all of it, and we want you to pass on this.
The DoJ responded with the letter from yesterday. It demands a mountain information:
1) The factual basis for the state’s “determination that implementation” of VoterID “will not have a retrogressive effect on minority citizens in” voting, along with data reviewed, a description of how the state made that determination, and copies of studies, documents and so on relating to that. They also ask for the same about any determination by the state that it will have a retrogressive effect.
2) The factual basis for the state’s determination that implementaiton “was not adopted, even in part, for the purpose of discriminating against minority citizens” along with studies, etc relating to that.
3) In order “to conduct a statistically valid analysis of the effect of the” VoterID requirement, identify everyone registered to vote and provide their name, racial identity, date of birth, residence, county, voting precinct, drivers license number, non-drive id card number, social security number, or unique number assigned by the state. While they ask for all information in electronic form if possible, for this and the next three they require electronic form.
4) Same information for all individuals with an id sufficient to meet the requirements for VoterID in the House bill.
5) Same information for any person listed in the database maintained for gun permits.
6) Same information for any person issued a photo id by the state, or a college photo, or government employee photo id.
It’s obvious where they are going with this, comparing PhotoIDs that don’t qualify to those that do and comparing racial breakdowns on those and gun permits.
7) Location of all offices where you can get a qualifying id and their hours of operation.
8) List of boards, authorities and entities that issue acceptable ids.
9) List of what would be acceptable ids under the statute.
The letter also notes that decision of the DC court in the Texas case listing actions that might mitigate the retrogressive effect found in Texas, and asks the state what mitigating steps it intends to implement.
The state has sixty days to respond or the DoJ can just say no.
I thought that Secretary of State Hoseman’s press release in response to this letter was pretty hilarious:
The Department of Justice has requested information from the Attorney General as to whether the addition of a Constitutional voter identification provision had a discriminatory purpose. That issue was decided last November by a vote of all the citizens of Mississippi in a free and fair election.
The Department of Justice also asked if there is a discriminatory effect. We believe the process of implementation authorized by the Mississippi Legislature and the rules and regulations will show no discrimination against any citizen of Mississippi.”
Convinces me!
Seriously, I can’t imagine how VoterID survives this level of scrutiny.
Unless, of course, the United States Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, choses to strike down the Voting Rights Act.
Here’s the DoJ letter.
Pike, I don’t agree with your premise that a voter ID requirement is an unconstitutional restriction on the right to vote. If it were, then wouldn’t the voter ID laws in other states be unlawful on constitutional grounds? Georgia’s law passed muster with the DoJ, right?
In response to your question re: what necessitated the voter ID requirement here, first 62% of Mississippi voters approved a voter ID law in a 2011 referendum, and second the implementing legislation carried out the will of the people. Those two things happened.
Make no mistake — I understand the threshold question propounded by opponents and their demand for absolute proof that voter ID is a cure all. Well, voter ID does not purport to be a cure all. Why should ID at the polling site be required? To verify the identity of the person presenting himself or herself at the polls. Is that a good idea? I think it is. Why? So someone can’t vote in the name of someone else on the rolls. It helps ensure a one person, one vote standard. A one person, one vote standard protects the integrity of the voting process. I think that’s important.
I find it interesting that the vast majority of opponents to voter ID are democrats. I don’t understand the push back, frankly, but I do find their paranoia entertaining. You know, the theory that voter ID is some sort of evil plan being pushed by those mean ol’ republicans. Talk about a segment of the population stuck on the conspiracy theory stuff.
I have yet to hear or read a cogent argument as to why the voter ID requirement has more of an adverse impact on blacks than it does on whites. I have yet to hear or read a cogent argument as to why the voter ID requirement has more of an adverse impact on democrats than it does on republicans and independents.
Freeland argued above that folks would forget their ID, have to cast a provisional ballot, then get their ID and return to the clerk’s office, all of which would somehow result in suppression of the democrat vote. Hmmm. To accept that argument, I’d have to accept the premises that only democrats forget their IDs when they go to vote, and that democrats forgetting their IDs is quite predictable, and the the evil republicans who have pushed voter ID know that only democrats forget their IDs. I don’t accept those premises.
To me, the voter ID requirement is equally burdensome (or non-burdensome) on whites, blacks, Hispanics, democrats, republicans, independents, etc. We all have to comply with the same standard. Since we all have to comply with the same standard, I fail to see how the discriminatory intent or result arguments have any legs.
John, I don’t know where you see me asserting the unconstitutionality of voter ID requirements as a premise. It might be my conclusion, but it most certainly is not my premise. If any premise in this discussion is starting to look false, it’s that Missisippi has an in-person voter fraud problem that voter IDs can abate. Some of us have asked and asked for evidence of it, and the silence is telling. And in asking, we’re asserting the proper, classically conservative approach to considering laws that would restrict constitutional rights, which should have happened in the first place: first identify a problem (or imminent problem) to be remedied with a law rather than pass a law for the sake of passing it.
I also don’t think you want to start throwing stones at people you to perceive to be paranoid conspiracy theorists when, put to the question of describing actual events that necessitated the voter ID law, you point to none. I don’t think any of the conservative regulars on this blog should be tossing those stones, in fact. The fact that the law was passed by popular referendum is irrelevant for the DOJ’s purposes and for any constitutional analysis. Neither a successful referendum nor a bill of legislation can trump federal statutory or constitutional rights. But I’m sure you already knew that.
Pike, you wrote: “What, then, is the factual context that necessitated a law restricting the right to vote to those who procure an ID?” Your supposition that voter ID restricts the constitutionally protected right to vote is the premise for your asking for “the factual context” that necessitated the voter ID law.
Regarding democrat/liberal paranoia, read the article linked at Anderson’s last post. It’s a hoot.
Requiring voter ID does restrict the right to vote. Excluding citizens who have certain crimes on their record also restricts it. So does requiring citizens to cast their votes in a certain place on a certain day. The latter two are not unconstitutional; I’m inclined to think voter ID probably is. All of our constitutional rights are subject to restriction, and have been restricted, in appropriate contexts (that troblesome word again). Whether or not voter ID enacts an **unconstitutional** or **illegal** restriction is an entirely different question — and conclusion– than my simple statement of fact (I suppose a minor premise) that it is a restriction.
I guess this makes it pretty clear that voter fraud abounds:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/us/politics/nathan-sproul-a-republican-operative-long-trailed-by-voter-fraud-claims.html?hp
Maybe we should have to dip our right fore-finger in purple ink when we vote?
Problem solved! (except for those damn illegal aliens. And absentee ballots. And early voting?).
I am all for the dip the finger solution
I am all for the dip the finger solution.
It would only create a new business for con artists such as the GOP’s Nathan Sproul, featured in the NYT article (linked above at 6:15 pm): quick-dry goop for your finger … put it on before you jab your digit in the purple ink, vote and stick your finger in the inkwell, then rinse the dye off and go vote again. Then the GOP would want constitutional amendments requiring whole-body immersion for voting and would make serious arguments in its favor. I’ve seen it all before.
As I’ve stated on another post, I have witnessed the type of voter fraud that presenting an ID would stop. Long story short, my daddy was the victim of this crime a couple of decades ago in The Bold New City. There was never a prosecution because there was never an arrest, and to my daddy’s knowledge not even a complaint filed. So you tell me how is the SoS to present evidence of a crime when there is (at least in this case) little to no paper trail?
In closing, the premise of voter ID is pretty simple. “[T]hey are who we thought they were!”
The photo identification card laws are clear burdens of extreme degree on poverty stricken Americans who own no car, walk wherever they go (or pay others to drive them) and do not already possess a photo identification. In Texas, a Government study identified one million (of 13.5 million) otherwise eligible voters did not possess photo identification cards. In a case in Indiana, 12 retired nuns did not have photo identification cards when they appeared at their voting location because they had taken a vow of poverty and had none. How many of our poorest citizens are among the “minorities” who do not have photo identification cards? I suspect about the same percentage as do not belong to country clubs, own automobiles, have post-graduate degrees or have health insurance. The point is not that they are poor, but that they should have exactly the same unfettered right to vote as our most affluent citizens, and if our citizens who live in abject poverty are mostly African-Americans and Latinos, then a photo identification burden on their right to vote should be unlawful, especially in a “preclearance” state with a history of shameful Jim Crow laws, “literacy” tests and poll taxes. How about it? Does anyone know what percentage of our most poverty stricken Mississippians are also African-Americans and Latinos? This would seem to me to be the key to unlocking this riddle.
So, only rich people have photo ID or have the ability to get a photo ID? Poor people can’t get their free photo ID at the circuit clerk’s office? Getting a free ID is a “burden of extreme degree”? Come on.
Quick: what was the State of Mississippi’s “official” reason for denying James Meredith’s application for enrollment at Ole Miss?
Hint: it wasn’t “race,” … of course not. That would have been unconstitutional. Mississippi would never do anything unconstitutional.
Hint: the answer lies within this blog thread.
Getting a free ID is a “burden of extreme degree”? Come on.
As was specifically explained to you, poor people without a car, in rural counties, really do find it difficult to get to the courthouse. You’re ignoring that, because you prefer to troll this blog.
In general, your hatred and contempt for the poor exemplify the evil of the Republican Party. You are doing your side no favors.
Quick: what was the State of Mississippi’s “official” reason for denying James Meredith’s application for enrollment at Ole Miss?
Was it because they thought he was Muslim? That seems to be the code word they use about the President when just a few years ago they would have said nigger.
Answer: “false voter registration.”
Anyone convicted of a crime could be denied registration at Mississippi’s colleges in 1962. So they said….
John, there are some questions which become incapable of rational debate on this blog. On occasion the discourse may begin with a modicum of intelligence but if the topic is one which tends to be polarizing it degrades quickly into name-calling and condescension.
Last week I asked if anyone had an example of Obama truly being vetted in 2008 over his influence by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and liberation theology. There was no answer other than “sure, we heard all about it” or words to that effect. No one could give an example of vetting the issue despite repeatred requests.
Now, this week, the media has unveiled a couple of videos indicating Obama using race-baiting tactics in 2007, a possible influence of liberation theology. As I said then and as I say now, my criticism is directed to journalism in 2008 and today. I care not to debate Obama, the politician and president, on this blog. I chose journalism because i thought the liberal-minded on this blog would agree with the sentiment that freedom of the press is in jeopardy. however, no one would/could go down that path. I suspect it was due to devotion to Obama preventing them from dealing with the issue.
Hootie, you received ample rational responses about your “vetting” non-question but refused to address any of them substantively. Quit complaining that other people aren’t telling you what you want to hear on this blog. There are major news organizations that do that for you, 24/7, fair and balanced.
You’re a regular here, yet you accuse those of us who do not loathe the very sight of the president of being “incapable of rational debate.” So you must have another, irrational reason to keep coming back, like an addiction:
http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/blogs/toxic-and-intoxicating-effects-resentment
Read it now. If Romney is elected he’ll plug that bottomless drain on fiscal soundness known as public television.
One question that has failed to be answered here.. How do all these poor, rural people with no car or transportation who can’t get out to get a free ID, get out to vote?
JTF: they eat their free meals, drink their free coffee, turn on their free air conditioners, tune in their free TVs to their free PBS station, call people on their free cellphones, rest their heinies on their free reclining chairs, take the free pen the candidate for sheriff left at their free mansion, then mark their absentee ballot and put a free stamp on the free envelope and have their maid walk it out to their free mailbox. That enough “freedom” for you, you …..
Well, since every county is divided into voting precints, most people live closer to their polling place than they do to their county courthouse. In some cases they can walk. If that’s not an option they get rides from people who are also going to vote and who are protected by law from adverse employment consequences for taking time off to go vote. There is no such protection for hauling somebody to the courthouse and waiting on them for however long it takes to overcome this useless restriction on their constitutional right to vote and then taking them back home.
I assume most people who frequent this blog have spent most or all of their lives in Mississippi. The fact that some of you are utterly uninformed about the basic realities of life among “all these poor, rural people,” as Justthefacts skeptically puts it, is pretty telling, and pathetic. (And for it’s worth, I grew up in Washington County and can attest that Indigo73′s description of the hardship on that county’s poor, especially the elderly poor, is accurate.)
We should not impose these hardships on people without compelling evidence that Mississippi has or very well might have a problem with in-person voter fraud. There is no such evidence, so there must be other reasons to support it. Hating on poor people doesn’t cut it, no matter how good it makes you feel about yourself.
Pike: I’m one of those who did not live all or most his life in Mississippi. I have lived in states that had voter registration stations set up in, among other places, Publix and Food Lion and Safeway and Ukrop’s and other grocery chain stores, Walgreen’s and CVS and Rite Aid and other pharmacies, at DMV licensing substations (which were a helluva lot more conveniently located than the 50 +/- licensing stations in Mississippi), at neighborhood libraries, at the Navy Exchange stores on Navy bases, at community colleges and university campuses, at little hole-in-the-wall offices in strip malls, in shopping mall central walkway areas, at Metro terminals, …. In Nevada you can register online by using your Nevada driver license as “proof” that you exist. I’m not gonna hold my breath waiting for Del Hosemann to implement that.
Those other states pursued voter registration a helluva lot more aggressively than does Mississippi. Mississippi has a place: the circuit clerk’s office in the county courthouse. You can go there … if you can get there … and register to vote. You can’t register online. You can print out a form online … I guess that’s 21st Century technology at work for you in our fair state … complete it with a pen, then deliver it to the circuit clerk.
Mississippi’s history … its legacy … is repression of the state’s black minority. By any means or devices. This state wrote the book on using its laws to deny the franchise to black voters. For more than a century the state’s methods were successful … if you can call that “success.” Some do … I know.
Federal statutory laws enforced by federal Department of Justice attorneys in federal courts forced … literally forced … the state to yield to the Constitution of the United States of America. But the State is committed … dedicated … to doing no more than is minimally forced upon it to allow the franchise to its black population. Don’t you think our state … more so than any other state in the Union … would by now be positively and aggressively and affirmatively doing all it could to accommodate black voters? Don’t you know that anything done to accommodate black voters would, perforce, benefit all other voters, including those “poor, rural people”? Isn’t that clear on its face?
But what do we get? We get more … ever more … an endless litany of more more more … subterfuges and ruses and devices and ploys and gambits for diluting the black vote. That’s exactly what the voter ID baloney is all about … diluting the black vote. What is wrong with us? Why do we demand and insist on so much public-office stupidity and treachery?
You really wanna do something to advance the integrity of the vote? Do this: legally ban the sale, possession, and distribution of liquor in “airplanes,” half-pints, or pint containers.
Do this: legally ban the sale, possession, and distribution of liquor in “airplanes,” half-pints, or pint containers.
Now those are fightin’ words, Ben. I would never have made it through any given “May Day” at St. Andrew’s without one or two of those in my pocket.
But yes, thanks for pointing out the facts to those who’ve never lived in a state that actually *encourages* its citizens to vote.
I need an airplane bottle just to help me tolerate these cutesy how-dare-you-say-I’m-racist racists.
Anderson: it takes more than an airplane ….
I try to emulate Robert E. Lee in at least one respect: “I like whiskey. I always did, and that is why I never drink it.”.
Pike, hating on poor people? Really. I simply used the words of others on this blog and asked a relative question. Talk about running around the question. Geeeshh. I lived in the state of Mississippi for 20 years and never once saw anything remotely close to discrimination or the sort. It seems you want to keep the appearance that it is still just like the 50/60′s. News flash. It’s not
Pike, one last time…just to be clear. Give me something that was learned from vetting Obama about liberation theology instead of labeling me for asking. Read the text…it’s a criticism of journalism not Obama.
JTF, I answered your question — “How do all these poor, rural people with no car or transportation who can’t get out to get a free ID, get out to vote?” — very specifically.
As for your spending 20 years in Mississippi and never once seeing “anything remotely close to discrimination or the sort,” … Lordy lordy lordy. Were you comatose?
Pike, the WIC center, grocery store, post office, Dr. office, wal mart, etc…. are all closer to the court houses than their polling places. How do they get to these places? Your argument of burden is ludicrous! It’s a cheap excuse of taking advantage of people for their vote. Period. The end!
Hootie D, your obssession with the lack of any published investigation into something that did not exist is very much a criticism of Obama — and that is using the word the word “criticism” very broadly. “Paranoia” is, as usual, closer to the mark. It does you no credit to claim otherwise. Stop it.
Did you read that link? It might help you.
“Your argument of burden is ludicrous!”
Not nearly as ludicrous as the burden of argument is on you and your fellow supporters of the voter ID law, JTF.
Pike, I’ll do the favor and drop the subject. You’d be doing us a favor to argue without hyperbole and name-calling.
Hootie D, I’ll cop to a little name-calling, but not hyperbole. You really should not expect to run these silly conspiracy flags up the pole and not get called out on it, though. Toughen up.
No one said anything about conspiracy, except you just now. You read entirely too much into my posts. Toughen up? You make me laugh.
Here in Hinds County we had a racial & election commission trouble that the Secretary of State should probably note in the data dump to the feds on VoterID. One Mr. Clark, a veteran of the commission & chairman of the same, failed to meet a state deadline because he could not make the ballot. He brought this before the Board of Supervisors and the public via Jackson Jambalaya which horrified the Board and the electorate. The matter was resolved quickly and quietly. I was a witness in a separate matter in an city ward election suit that also had racial and failed administrative causes in the city election commission.
I’d like to point out one issue that I haven’t seen mentioned on this thread yet: the glaringly disproportionate impact upon women due to name changes.
I’m in possession of a valid photo ID, but the name on the voter rolls is my maiden name. You change your driver’s license and your SSN, but practically nobody thinks to update her voter registration. That requires an in-person trip to the circuit clerk’s office with your original marriage license or divorce decree to change your registration. I have no idea what you’re supposed to do if you don’t have those papers, because they’re harder to come by than copies of your birth certificate. I have asked if I could just fill out a new registration application and mail it in, and was told that no, I had to bring the papers and update my existing registration.
That’s why my registration is still in my maiden name even though I’ve been married for years. While it’s possible for me to resolve the situation with a morning at the bank and the circuit clerk’s office, it will affect a huge number of women who marry or divorce in the interim between elections. We’ll go into the polls thinking that we’re fine because we have ID, only to be denied the right to vote because our IDs don’t match our registrations.
Please, someone explain to me how that doesn’t disproportionately impact a specific population and burden our exercise of the franchise.
Just saw this today: SC Judges Uphold Voter ID Law, but Delay It Til 2013. And, it wasn’t SC judges. It was a three judge DC appeals court panel.
Someone had previously asked for an example of a pre-clearance state getting OK’d for voter-id.