Tag Archives: vote suppression

Why Can’t We Be More Like Oregon?

As I’ve previously noted, early in the session, Indiana’s legislature moved quickly to kill a bill that would have kept our polling places open for two extra hours. (Indiana’s polls are the nation’s earliest to close). It was just one more effort to suppress the votes of people–mostly elderly, working poor and/or black–who might vote for the “wrong” party.

If we really wanted our citizens to vote (“we” clearly don’t), we’d take a leaf from Oregon’s book.

Call it “motor voter” on steroids.

New legislation signed into law today in Oregon paves the way for the state to one day have close to 100% voter registration. The new law takes the federal “motor voter” law to new levels and registers a person to vote when they obtain or renew a state driver’s license or ID – and it’s partially retroactive.

The law dictates that once residents interact with the state DMV – whether to get a license or ID for the first time, or renew an existing one – they’ll become registered to vote if they aren’t already. The registration will be provisional for 21 days, during which time applicants will be notified of their new status and be given a chance to become affiliated with a political party or to opt-out of the voting process altogether. In essence, Oregon will now be the first state to approach voting with an “opt-out” mindset, as opposed to “opt-in.”

I’ve written before about the virtues of Oregon’s vote by mail system, which is not only convenient, but allows time for thoughtful consideration of ballot choices. Every registered voter is automatically sent a ballot about two weeks before Election Day, and can either mail their ballots back or return them in person.

According to the Oregonian, 

Because of Oregon’s careful signature verification process, fraud and other electoral mischief are virtually nil.

Recounts in extremely close races are based on paper ballots of every vote — not receipts or electronic voting machines. So there’s no danger in Oregon of software hackers casting ersatz votes by the thousands — not to mention no electricity to operate electronic voting machines or impassable roads and polling places 3 feet underwater.

In the 2014 midterm election, 53.5% of Oregon’s registered voters actually voted. The state was fifth in voter turnout. 

Indiana was dead last. Gee–I wonder why.

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And Furthermore….

The McCutcheon decision, with its political privileging of the very wealthy, should focus our attention on the realities of the American economic landscape.

Thomas Piketty’s new book–which has been hailed as an “instant economic classic”– does just that. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty asks whether we can stop the relentless accumulation of wealth by the richest few, and if so, how.

As Eduard Porter summarized Piketty’s core message in the Times, “the economic forces concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of the fortunate few are almost sure to prevail for a very long time.” Piketty says that as the return to capital exceeds economic growth, an ever larger share of national income goes to the owners of capital, the managers of capital and to their heirs, and he warns that economics cannot reverse this. Policy–political action–will be required.

Unfortunately, in the wake of Citizens United and McCutcheon, the wealthy–who already had far more political clout than the rest of us–seem likely to continue calling the policy shots.

In a thoughtful essay in The Nation, Ari Berman explains why policy change will be so difficult: the Court has made it easier for the wealthy to influence elections at the same time it has made it harder for poor folks to vote.

These are not unrelated issues—the same people, like the Koch brothers, who favor unlimited secret money in US elections are the ones funding the effort to make it harder for people to vote. The net effect is an attempt to concentrate the power of the top 1 percent in the political process and to drown out the voices and votes of everyone else.

Berman calculates that 322,000 average Americans would have to give an equivalent share of their net worth to match Sheldon Adelson’s $91.8 million in Super Pac contributions. And he points out that, since Shelby County  (the voting rights case), eight states that had been covered under Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act have passed or implemented new voting restrictions (Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina), and other states have been encouraged to follow suit.

According to the New York Times, “nine states [under GOP control] have passed measures making it harder to vote since the beginning of 2013.”

So–more ways for the “haves” to “express themselves.” Fewer avenues for participation or influence by the rest of us.

Can we spell oligarchy?

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It Can Happen Here

One of the (multiple) controversies of the last election cycle concerned efforts in several states to make voting more difficult. Republicans in those states–perhaps most notably Florida–cut back early voting times, required government-issued IDs, “purged” voter rolls of thousands of eligible, properly registered voters, and took other measures designed to limit voting by poor and minority citizens, on the not-unreasonable assumption that most of those votes would go to Democrats.

Here in Indianapolis, the lone Republican member of the Marion County Election Board repeatedly blocked the efforts of Beth White, the County Clerk, to open satellite voting locations. The sites had been extremely popular in earlier elections; they made early voting much more convenient for people who work long hours or have difficulty getting downtown to cast a vote at the Clerk’s office. There was no legitimate reason to block satellite voting; the extra money had been raised from private sources.

Now, with a super-majority in the Indiana General Assembly and fewer impediments to wholly partisan measures, we are seeing additional efforts to limit voting. Two amendments are pending in the Indiana House today to SB 388. That bill was heard in committee last week.  These amendments, sponsored by Rep. Thompson, would reduce in-person absentee voting at the clerk’s office from the current legal requirement of 29 days.

Amendment 1 reduces early voting down to ONLY 15 DAYS.  Amendment 2 reduces early voting down to ONLY 10 DAYS.

Tellingly, neither amendment has been heard in committee or has been reviewed by election officials–at least publicly.  Passage of either amendment would  greatly increase the numbers who turn out on Election Day; we could see long lines of the sort that discouraged an estimated 200,000+ voters in Florida last November. It would also make voting much more difficult for those who need to vote absentee in-person.

There is no policy justification for this proposal. Had there been, it would have been offered in committee and subjected to public discussion and debate. This is simply an effort to tilt the playing field, an effort to sneak in under the radar with a change in the rules that is intended to suppress Democratic votes.

This sort of behavior simply adds to the growing public disgust with government at all levels.

I don’t know how, but We the People need to figure out a way to send a message to our legislators, both here in Indiana and in Washington: we didn’t elect you to play partisan power games. We didn’t elect you to obstruct the operation of government, to refuse to confirm qualified nominees because the other guys nominated them, or to place the interests of your donors above the common good. We didn’t elect you so that you can rig the system to improve your chances of holding on to your job.

Evidently, Sen. Thompson and his cohorts would prefer we dispense with this democratic nonsense and not really elect our legislators at all–they’d undoubtedly prefer the system used in autocratic countries, where 99% of the “vote” turns out to ratify the election of a single nominee.

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Turnout and Citizenship

We had an interesting exchange in my Media and Policy class this past Thursday night. I team-teach that class with John Mutz, who–among his numerous other distinctions–served as Indiana’s Lt. Governor. Former Indiana Supreme Court Justice Ted Boehm and Common Cause policy director Julia Vaughn were guest speakers. So the discussion (about the impact of money in politics) was informed–and informative.

Julia noted that Indiana ranked next to last among the states in voter turnout, according to the recent Civic Health Index, and John challenged her statement that we should be embarrassed by that low level of participation, saying it didn’t bother him.

Should it bother us? This is one of those questions where the correct response is “it depends.”

If the folks who are blowing off the political process are low-information, low-interest voters, then I agree with John that it isn’t a problem. Why should the votes of the uninformed dilute the votes of those of us who take the process seriously? If you don’t know who you support and why, then you should stay home and let more thoughtful people participate.

On the other hand, if  low turnout is due to one or more of the following reasons, we have a different problem and we need to do something about it.

We should be embarrassed if

We’ve made voting too difficult. If we’ve restricted the number of polling places, and/or limited the hours those polls are open so that voting is inconvenient for people with jobs and family obligations and actual lives, shame on us. Ditto if we’re requiring all sorts of documentation that older, poorer folks are unlikely to have.

We’ve made politics too nasty. If all voters hear are 30-second attacks on the integrity, brains and general humanity of those running for office, research suggests those voters tend to turn it all off and stay home on election day. (Some candidates will actually engage in nasty campaigning in order to evoke the “pox on both your houses” response and thus suppress turnout, if they think a larger turnout would benefit their opponent.)

We’ve made the ballot too daunting and complicated. Remind me again why we are voting for coroner, treasurer, recorder and dog-catcher? Who beside the candidates really cares who serves on township advisory boards?

We’ve failed to “connect the dots” between government policies and the reality of our daily lives, allowing voters to believe that candidates are all fungible. (Hurricane Sandy is just one example of why policies matter: if disaster relief had been turned back to state and local governments, does anyone really believe the result would have been the same for those who desperately needed help? Instead of throwing mud at each other, candidates need to make the case that their preferred policies matter, and how.)

We’ve constructed a system in which many votes really don’t matter. This is the most depressing reason of all, because it’s true. Yes, my vote for state and local offices still matters, more or less, but increasingly–thanks to gerrymandering and winner-take-all allocation of Electoral College votes–my votes for President and many other offices really don’t. (In this year’s Presidential election, those Hoosiers who vote for Obama might just as well flush those votes down the nearest toilet; Romney will win the state and take all of Indiana’s electoral college votes–even if the win is only by a point or two. A couple of states allocate their electoral votes to reflect the breakdown of the state’s popular vote–the constitution permits that–but Indiana and most others don’t.)

So–should we be embarrassed by our low turnout? Yes. If we institute changes that make voting more convenient, the ballot less daunting, the process less negative and/or fruitless and turnout is still low, then we can shrug it off and accuse the nonvoters among us of of poor citizenship. But not before.

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Election Day

Today is election day in Indiana.

I know the system is close to broken. We’ve been subjected to negative ads because candidates believe–unfortunately, with much justification–that they cannot be elected unless they “define” their opponents. Districts have been gerrymandered. In Indiana, Republicans have worked to make it more difficult for people–especially poor people–to cast a vote. There are numerous flaws we can point to–or use as an excuse not to participate.

If we use those flaws as an excuse, however, we’re complicit. We’ll never fix what’s broken unless we participate in the political system, and the absolute minimum participation is through exercise of our franchise.

So VOTE.

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