Katrina vanden Heuvel: Legislation Watch: Ballot Integrity Act of 2007

[marmar]

from the Nation:


BLOG | Posted 07/22/2007 @ 10:17pm
Legislation Watch: Ballot Integrity Act of 2007


The Bush administration, its political appointees and their cronies have fomented dramatic fears in order to justify laws, policies and prosecutions that suppress the vote of minority and lower-income communities. It turns out that this is nothing more than fear mongering at its worse. Voter fraud has been disproved and occurs "statistically…about as often as death by lightning strike."

What is true, however, is that voter registration drives are incredibly successful (hence the backlash). The 2004 Census reported that such drives registered 12 million Americans to vote, largely from minority and low-income communities. In Florida alone, activists registered 524,000 new voters, mostly from African-American and Latino communities – almost 20 percent of all registrations processed by the state that year.

A Project Vote report notes that just as the Democratic Party felt threatened by an influx of new African-American voters in the late 19th century and responded by erecting stricter registration rules to "protect our democracy," so too are Republicans now resurrecting baseless fraud allegations to erect new barriers to voting and to thwart voter registration drives:

• In Florida, prior to the 2006 election, the state legislature passed a bill establishing a punitive set of fines – even for accidental mishandling of voter registration forms – that forced the League of Women Voters to halt a major registration drive for the FIRST time in its history. The law was later overturned as unconstitutional but not before real damage was done. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=216592