"How Conservatives Invented 'Voter Fraud' to Attack Civil Rights"
How Conservatives Invented 'Voter Fraud' to Attack Civil Rights
By Gary May at Salon
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/14/how_conservatives_invented_voter_fraud_to_attack_civil_rights/
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Before the Republican victory in the 2010 midterms, only two states had rigorous voter ID requirements. By August 2012, 34 state legislatures had considered photo ID laws and 13 had passed them; five more made it past state legislatures only to be vetoed by the Democratic governors of Montana, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina and New Hampshire. By that same summer, a number of states already had the new laws in place: Pennsylvania (where it was estimated that 9.2 percent of registered voters had no photo ID), Alabama, Mississippi (approved by referendum), Rhode Island, New Hampshire (whose state General Court overrode the governor’s veto) and five whose sponsors were all ALEC members — Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. In Alabama, Kansas and Tennessee, people wishing to register or vote must show their birth certificate. To acquire that document, they must pay a fee, which many believe is the equivalent of the poll tax, banned by the Constitution’s twenty-fourth amendment. Minnesota’s citizens would vote on a state constitutional amendment in the 2012 election; if passed, voters could cast their ballot after showing a government-issued photo ID.
What these policies had in common, beside their connection to ALEC, was their negative impact on minorities. The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s Law School estimated in October 2011 that the new voter ID laws could affect more than 21 million potential voters, predominately African Americans, Hispanics, students, the elderly and the poor.
Other voting laws passed in the wake of the 2010 midterms were just as injurious as the voter ID laws and threatened not merely minorities but also people likely to vote for Democratic candidates. Florida’s new voter law turned Jill Cicciarelli, a 35-year-old civics teacher, into a criminal. She inadvertently ran afoul of H.B.1355, which tightened the state’s already strict regulations governing the registration of new voters. The 158-page bill became law 24 hours after it passed because Governor Rick Scott considered it essential to combat “an immediate danger to the public health, safety or welfare.” Cicciarelli, who taught government and sponsored the Student Government Association at New Symrna Beach High School, was on maternity leave when the law went into effect in July 2011, so when she returned to school that fall she was unaware that she was about to commit a crime. In her senior government class she discussed the 2012 presidential election and, as she had many times before, organized a campaign to preregister those students who would turn 18 before November. Eventually 50 students applied, and after a few days she sent the forms to the county election office. “I just want them to be participating in our democracy,” she said later. “The more participation we have, the stronger our democracy will be.”
The new law required third-party registration organizations to register with the state election office, receive an identification number, undergo training and turn in their application forms no later than 48 hours after their completion. (Previously, registration was voluntary and the completion deadline was 10 days, but it was rarely enforced.) Cicciarelli violated each of the new provisions and could be fined up to $1,000 for missing the due date and an additional $1,000 for failing to register. When Ann McFall, Volusia County Supervisor of Elections, learned of Cicciarelli’s infractions in late October, she reluctantly alerted the secretary of state’s office that the teacher had violated the new law’s requirements, potentially a third-degree felony if investigators determined that she was guilty of “willful noncompliance.” “I was sick to my stomach when I did it,” McFall later told a reporter, “but my job was on the line if I ignored it.”
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