Fox News, Voter IDs, and Mandatory Voting

Mariehurt — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:55:37 +0000

New Orleans Fox News Special Reports doing a documentary on voting rights would seem to some to be an oxymoron, while others would be certain that it would be me that was the moron for even being willing to sit down with these folks, but, hey, someone has to carry the weight and, frankly, the issue is very, very important. By waving the bloody shirt of alleged voter abuse and the ACORN flag, right wing Republican majorities in state after state have used this thin rationale to suppress the votes of lower income voters, minorities, youth, and others.

Preparing for their visit with me in our New Orleans offices, I wanted to be up to date so did a little research. Let me tell you, it is worst than I even imagined!

First you just have the general mess of our patchwork voter system. According to recent reports by Pew:

24 million citizens are no longer validly registered or have information that is significantly inaccurate.
1.8 million deceased are on the voting rolls
2.75 million are registered in multiple states
51 million or 24% of the eligible population is NOT registered!

In 2008 over 2 million ballots were cast nationally. Half were rejected because the voter was NOT registered, meaning, it seems to me, that they thought they were registered, so they were simply disenfranchised.

Secondly, we have the systematic attempts now to restrict voting access, especially by requiring IDs. According to the New York Times’ compilations:

11% of citizens or 21 million people do NOT have a current photo ID
The demographics of disenfranchisement would decrease the voting of 15% for low income citizens, 18% for young voters, and 25% for African-American voters.

Thirdly, if you take the accumulated weight of all of the new initiatives to restrict access to the ballot, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU:

The cumulative impact will be that 5,000,000 people will find it harder to vote in 2012.
States attempting to suppress the vote account for 63% of the electoral vote in 2012.

I’ll have more to say about this, but how can anyone pretend that these measures are democratic? Not me!

Voting Rights for Indian Poor

jstuart — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:18:43 +0000

New Orleans Recently in Delhi all of us as organizers of ACORN India greeted the news that the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) was allowing the urban poor without home addresses to register for voting cards with great excitement. Dharmendra Kumar, Hina Sheikh, and Prachee Sinha all attended a meeting while I was in India to see what it would take to break the logjam of the 100,000 who had tried to register so that they could finally vote.

As organizers we knew the ramifications of this first-time experiment are huge. If it worked in Delhi, the nation’s capital, then we could begin campaigns in Mumbai, Bangalore, and elsewhere to try to force the same provisions to be enacted.

The impediment historically has been that without a fixed address that could be verified by the election commissioners, an individual could not vote. This effectively disenfranchised millions of the urban poor in India who were living as slum dwellers, pavement dwellers, and transient labor from place to place.

But this breakthrough could also represent more than a significant step forward in creating a voice for the urban poor and a progress in civic engagement. Winning rights for the homeless to vote in India also opens the door to a base level of citizen wealth for the urban poor in the country.

Simply put without a voting card which represents a formal identification, it is virtually impossible for a poor individual in India to obtain a ratio card. Getting a ration card means that finally a citizen can access what exists as a survival net in India (to call it a safety net would be absurd) since they can obtain minimal allotments of food and cooking fuel.

If we can get our arms wrapped around it, ACORN India sees this as a huge potential campaign that could benefit tens of millions in this huge country.

An article in the Indian press this week gives some sense of what it all means as the first poor, 500 citizens have pushed through to enfranchisement and gotten to exercise the vote.
New Delhi, May 7 (IANS) ‘I voted!’ said an excited 70-year-old Prithvi Chand after he cast his vote at the Ramnagar polling booth in Paharganj in central Delhi. ‘I just hope that change will happen for the good and that our issues would be highlighted by the politicians.
Our ally, Action Aid, hit the nail on the head in the same piece: “Parvinder Singh, communication manager, Action Aid, an NGO that works to end poverty, said: ‘The homeless people have no takers when it comes to political parties.”Without a permanent address, one cannot have a government issued identity card or voter card. This allows the candidates to neglect homeless people from their electoral considerations,’ he said.”

Some people find it hard to believe which underscores the fight in front of us: “Zile Singh, who begs at Moti Bagh flyover, said that he has never voted and he doesn’t think he ever will. ‘I don’t have a home. No permanent place to stay. How will I get a voter card? It’s just a dream.”Even If I get the card, what will happen? My life will not change. I will still live on the street,’ he said.”

Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » voting rights

Fox News, Voter IDs, and Mandatory Voting

Voting Rights for Indian Poor