voter suppression

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

Reports and exits polls this entire political season have built a narrative of tremendous, even record-breaking voter participation, pushing us to believe that voter turnout in November will exceed all expectations.

Maybe.

I received an interesting phone call at work this week, so interesting that I decided to record and share it with everyone--I'm just that way.

Throughout his tenure, Alberto Gonzales has allowed political gamesmanship to drive the US Justice Department, an agency that has enormous power to jail people, destroy reputations, and affect the outcome of elections.

In addition to the firing of nine US attorneys and the use of warrantless wiretaps in the war on terror, Gonzales also assisted in a five-year Republican campaign to pursue restrictive voter ID laws that would disproportionately disenfranchise minority, senior, student, and disabled voters.

That legacy of voter suppression extends to North Carolina, where Republican State Auditor Les Merritt trumped up earlier this year unsubstantiated charges of voter fraud to discourage eligible voters from going to the polls.

“The North Carolina Democratic Party is pleased that the Bush Administration’s exit strategy includes the resignation of Alberto Gonzales,” said NCDP Chair Jerry Meek. “But while we’re throwing out the bad apples and restoring integrity to the electoral process, Mr. Les Merritt should be the next to go.”

Last week, the Senate Rules Committee heard testimony on the Ballot Integrity Act of 2007 (S. 1487). Senators Diane Feinstein and Christopher Dodd are the bill’s chief sponsors, but Senators Biden, Boxer, Brown, Clinton, Inouye, Kennedy, Leahy, Menendez, Leahy, and Obama have also signed on. While much of the bill is taken up with voting equipment standards, a significant number of voting rights issues are also addressed. These include increased safeguards for voters from being purged, uniform requirements for training poll workers to a set of minimal standards, and equitable allocation of polling place resources. Most importantly, the bill prohibits states from restricting voter registration drives.

Voter registration drives by nongovernmental entities play a critical role in the health of our democracy. They have been effective vehicles through which eligible Americans from traditionally disenfranchised communities have become registered to vote. According to the US Census, 12 million Americans have registered to vote through a voter registration drive, accounting for 8.5 percent of all registered voters. Minority voters, in particular, rely on the voter registration drives. Fifteen percent of Blacks, 15.5 percent of Latinos and 12.5 percent of Asians registered to vote through a drive compared to 8.6 percent for White non-Hispanic voters. In fact, Blacks and Latinos are 65 percent more likely to have registered through a voter registration drive than Whites.