Democrats Should Widen Focus On Voter Suppression
What with the ceremonies at the L.B.J. presidential library last week to commemorate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 becoming law, the subject of current-day voter suppression was brought up by several Democrats, including President Obama. While it was important to spotlight Republican efforts to move backwards on expanding voting rights in the speeches, what was noticeable on the weekend political talk shows was how adept Republicans are at centering their entire argument around voter identification laws. Democrats presenting their own case seemed willing to go along with this, for the most part.
Now, Democratic willingness to directly take on the arguments of voter ID laws is admirable. Democrats know that the facts are on their sides, and they repeatedly point out that voter fraud is pretty much non-existent in America today. If you added up all the successfully-prosecuted cases of voter fraud for the past three or four election cycles, the total would be not be enough to swing even a statewide race, much less a national one. The Republican efforts are nothing short of a "solution" in search of a problem.
That's a good case to make, and Democrats (to their credit) have been pretty strongly making it. But if Democrats focus solely on the voter ID laws -- as the conversation always seems to do -- they wind up ignoring a much wider and much more sweeping political case they could instead be focusing on. I am not suggesting here, to put this another way, that Democrats back off on defending their position at all. I am merely pointing out that focusing solely on voter ID means leaving a more-powerful argument on the table, undiscussed. Which is a shame.
The Republican voter-suppression efforts don't end with voter ID laws. Democrats would do well to point this out. Republicans are also busily passing laws which restrict registration efforts, restrict early voting, restrict poll locations, and restrict ballot-box access in many other ways. This should be the centerpiece of the Democratic argument: Republicans want to make it harder for you to vote.
Separate out the voter ID issue. Put it to the side. Widen the conversation to the larger picture, because it is an ugly one that most Americans would consider nothing short of a naked effort to suppress the vote. That is a much more powerful argument for Democrats to make. Republicans want to make it harder to vote, Democrats want to make it easier. It's a simple concept, and it's one that strikes at a foundational belief most Americans share: things always get better throughout American history, never worse. Pointing out that this is exactly what Republicans are trying to do should be the main focus of the Democratic argument.
Voter identification laws are in a sort of limbo right now. In an initial legal case, the Supreme Court ruled that the concept of a state requiring identification to vote is not, in and of itself, unconstitutional. However, since that point, many states have passed such laws (increasingly, in the past few years) only to have them ensnared in legal actions. As these cases wind their way upwards through the federal court system, nobody really knows which case the Supreme Court will take next on the issue, and how it will ultimately rule. During this window of time, politicians on both sides of the issue are making their case to the public.
The problem for Democrats on the issue is that the Republican position sounds awfully reasonable, at first glance. After all, these days you have to produce a photo identification to board an airplane, open a bank account, drive, and many other aspects of modern life. So what's the big deal with requiring a photo ID to vote, after all? This argument plays well in the suburbs, and among people who have never lived in cities or otherwise come into contact with groups of Americans (and there are indeed millions of them out there) who don't drive, don't have a bank account, never fly, and don't do all the other modern-life things which require ID.
The problem for Democrats is that this requires educating the public on the real victims of such laws. The reason that it's a problem is that this part of the larger argument takes so long to explain that it consumes the entire interview and the entire discussion on-screen. Democrats never have time to move on to their other points. Which, as I said, is a shame, because their bigger point is so much more powerful.
Imagine, if you will, a Democratic member of Congress being interviewed on the issue, paired up with a Republican. The Republican swiftly moves to make his points on voter ID laws. But instead of taking this path, the Democrat instead responds with some version of the following:
Well, the Democratic position on voter ID is well known, so instead of laying it all out for you again today, I'd like to make a different point. My esteemed colleague Senator Bushwah says that the reason voter ID laws are being enacted is to combat voter fraud. Well, voter fraud is all but non-existent, but whatever. Let's take a look instead at some of the other laws being enacted hand-in-hand with these ID laws. Over the past half-century, many states have made good-faith efforts to expand voting and make it easier for citizens to perform this important civic duty. But now, Republicans are trying to roll back all these voting expansions, because they think that by doing so, they'll make it harder for Democrats to vote. This includes efforts to: make it harder to register, make it harder for students to register, make it harder to get an absentee ballot, make it harder to vote by mail, and change polling locations to make them more inconvenient for voters. How does ending a program which allows high school students to pre-register so they are on the voting rolls by their 18th birthday fight voter fraud? Why in the name of sanity would we make it harder for these new voters to cast the first vote of their lives? That is what Republicans are indeed doing.
The most blatant of these efforts is to roll back early voting. Many states, to encourage people who find it hard to vote on a Tuesday (because they are hard at work), have extended voting to add days or even weeks of open polling days before Election Day. They have opened their polling places early, so people can cast votes on the weekend, or other times more convenient to them than Tuesdays. Republicans are against this, for some inconceivable reason. Making it easier for people to vote has nothing to do with voter fraud. Nothing. Making it harder for people to vote by closing down these early voting days is nothing short of trying to suppress the vote. There is no other possible explanation for doing so.
So I'd like to ask you, Senator Bushwah, why exactly did you support the new law in your state which got rid of early Sunday voting? Doing so has nothing to do with voter fraud, and everything to do with the fact that African-Americans in your state have been delighted with Sunday voting because it means they are able to go cast their votes right after they attend church. The only possible reason for making it harder for your constituents to vote -- by killing Sunday voting -- is that you don't particularly like who votes on Sundays.
This is a powerful case to make. It shifts the focus from the voter ID laws to all the rest of the voter suppression laws now being gleefully passed by Republican statehouses across the country. When you set aside the argument over voter fraud and voter identification and focus instead on the rest of the voter suppression efforts, it leaves the Republicans with a much weaker case to make. Reasonable people (especially low-information voters in the suburbs) can disagree about voter ID laws, after all, but it is much tougher to argue "reducing the number of voting days is a good thing for American democracy." That's not a reasonable argument to make, really. By forcing the conversation to the larger issue, Democrats make the much stronger case: "We stand for making it easier to vote -- Republicans want to make it harder for you to cast your vote." That hits home, even out in the suburbs.
Rather than getting into the weeds of the voter ID laws -- even when you've got a good point to make ("Texas accepts a gun permit for identification, but not state-issued student IDs!") -- Democrats need to instead take control of the larger argument. Because Republican efforts do not stop with just new voter ID laws -- they are passing all sorts of laws which have no other purpose than suppressing the vote. Or, even worse, suppressing certain demographic segments of the vote. And they really have no believable counterargument to make.
So while, as I said, Democrats are overall doing a pretty good job of defending their position on voter ID laws, by doing so at the expense of the larger argument they wind up selling themselves short. Because there is a much easier and much more powerful argument to make, if you set the voter ID sub-argument to the side for a moment. Democrats should be making this larger case, every chance they get. One party fights for expansion of voting rights. One party is now fighting as hard as they can against expanding the ease of voting. For no supportable reason. That's a political argument worth making, and one that Democrats should now be strongly pointing out.
-- Chris Weigant
Cross-posted at The Huffington Post
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Ok, so I'm going to say something you're not going to want to hear, but to make it go down easier I'm going to quote one of Chris's paragraphs.
"The problem for Democrats on the issue is that the Republican position sounds awfully reasonable, at first glance. After all, these days you have to produce a photo identification to board an airplane, open a bank account, drive, and many other aspects of modern life. So what's the big deal with requiring a photo ID to vote, after all? This argument plays well in the suburbs, and among people who have never lived in cities or otherwise come into contact with groups of Americans (and there are indeed millions of them out there) who don't drive, don't have a bank account, never fly, and don't do all the other modern-life things which require ID"
This! All of this! I hate to say it but we've lost the reasonable argument debate and need to move onto something different. Which is hard thing to hear considering how crazy-pants the opposition has been on this. They have no facts, but they have an argument that appeals to what is still (not the future) the dominant demographic in America.
So where to do we go from from here? The solution is a non-mandatory, government financed, federal picture ID. Now I'm not saying that the libertarian wing of both parties won't raise holy hell about a non-compulsory federal ID. Because they will. But it is only solution that cuts this argument off at the knees.
"You have to present a picture ID to buy cigarettes or liquor, why do we have lower standards for exercising the franchise, the most fundamental and sacred right of all Americans?"
Not to say I agree with that argument, but it's currently winning, and liberals need to switch tactics.
You're circling both the real issue and the real argument. Every voter is issued ID by their local election commission. If the issue really were fraud or photo IDs voter registration cards could simply contain photos.
The simple fact is that voter registration cards contain signatures because that's what election judges have always used to identify registered voters. The issue isn't requiring photo IDs. Its requiring some to unnecessarily jump through additional hoops, at additional personal expense, in order to vote. Poll taxes in other words.
The argument should be that if Republicans are concerned about voter identification why aren't they requiring sufficient identification be ISSUED instead of issuing INSUFFICIENT identification and requiring SOME voters to obtain ADDITIONAL identification on their own? THAT'S the burden that discriminatory. That's what suppresses votes. And that's what's obviously UNREASONABLE.
It isn't just the photo-IDs that are red-herrings, its debating whether photos should be required instead of debating why Republicans want voters to show drivers licenses instead of their voter registration cards. Not all voters have drivers licenses, but they all have voter registration cards. And identifying voters is what voter registration cards are for.
The current system is under attack, not because it's unreasonable, but precisely because Republicans can justify their position by pointing to it and going, "anyone can forge a signature! We prevent that by requiring blah blah blah," REGARDLESS of the actual facts.
You guys need to acknowledge that reason based arguments WILL NOT WORK. And haven't worked, even remotely effectively, since about 1980 or so.
Voter ID laws are on the rise because they present a simplistic argument that appeals to white voters; and those laws also disenfranchise statistically poorer demographics without TRADITIONAL dog whistle racism.
I know it's hard to advocate an offensive approach, especially when you're losing on the defensive. I mean we have enough to worry about amirite? But the fact of the matter is that the current approach is losing and will at best delay the inevitable.
BTW,
The idea that everybody needs ID is circular logic. The only reason IDs are required so much is federal government requiring even private businesses to check IDs. It isn't reasonable for government to require their presentation because "everybody" asks to see them. "Everybody" asks to see them because government requires their presentation. Organizations that actually need to use IDs issue their own for the purpose.
Republicans aren't just requiring photo-IDs, they're severely restricting what IDs will be accepted as well. And they're requiring that they be "current." As in you have to purchase a new one every few years. Identities don't change over time. Even expired licenses should still be acceptable as ID. What matters to the validity of the ID is the integrity of the issuing party, not how recently it was issued.
These unnecessary burdens in time and expense unconstitutionally suppress the ability of the most vulnerable to vote and add costs and obstacles that only apply to non-drivers. The right to vote is not a franchise reserved for those who drive and can afford automobiles!
YoYo[3],
That "argument" makes no sense. If you think "objective" arguments are losers, because the American people are so stupid they simply cannot be educated or reasoned with, then the entire process of voting is pointless. Its predicated on the idea that ONLY The People can make objective determinations about government policy.
The Right has a sophisticated and extensive national network of media outlets dedicated to distributing their propaganda. It makes getting the truth out difficult, not impossible. The one thing that WILL guarantee our failure is validating their lies by trying to address "solutions" as if their propaganda were valid and factual. THAT'S a mistake Democrats make all too often.
I grew up with the Civil Rights Movement. That "defensive" approach didn't work either.--Until it succeeded. White voters are embracing these tactics, in part, because of their declining power at the ballot box, and their fears over losing that power. Its a strategy that's ultimately self-defeating.
Republicans are only holding on due to the abysmal turnout in off-year elections. It allows a committed minority to wield electoral influence all out of proportion to their numbers. But if they actually manage to make it important enough for people to turn out to vote even in off-year elections they'll be easy enough to defeat.
So appeasing them is the last thing on my mind. Johnson was wrong when he said he'd thrown away the white southern vote for a generation. Its been longer than that! Nixon, likewise, lost the Black vote for more than an election cycle or two also.
Voter suppression is in no danger of succeeding. If people think its starting to succeed it will REALLY fail. And the backlash will not only be spectacular it may well be permanent.
I've never understood why voting day was not a legal holiday. That would at least help workers get to the polls (although not everyone, of course, works a standard shift or has legal holidays off). I live in Pennsylvania, the state where a Republican state senator famously promised that their voter ID law would carry the state for Mitt Romney (but didn't, perhaps because they were forced to push the start date back an election or so). My polling place has so few people voting at it that the ladies who man the polls start turning to your page in the registration book as you come in the door -- except one often started turning toward the back of the book (for the initial of my maiden name, which I used professionally) and had to be reminded by one of the others that my married name started with an initial farther forward! I fear that people in rural settings like mine, or even suburban settings, might not realize that in more congested places there can be a real need to spread voting out over more time. I'm certain lots of people in our area would feel that one day is plenty of time. So even those other efforts might not be as obvious as you might think, in the 'heartland', and might need some explaining.
Over 30 states have enacted voter ID laws, that's called losing.
Further, I'm not saying that evidence based arguments are losers all the time, but you do have to admit that Republican success especially in the last two decades has depended on reasonable sounding arguments that are based on nonsense. And they keep sticking around and making gains.
Republican "successes" the last two decades based on their extremism. They've simply gamed the system. Controlling two branches allowed them to push through radical policies unchecked, and stack the court to prevent SCOTUS intervention. There have been lots of "successes" lasting a decade or two. The term-limits on the Presidency have been pretty effective in limiting many of those "successes" to only a decade or two with resulting backlashes that last permanently.
Even Republicans are aware of their own failure, its why they're so desperate to rig the vote with gerrymandering and voter suppression. They know that beyond a loyal minority they don't connect with and aren't supported by the rest of America. Slandering Democrats to win votes solely because your being in opposition is a short-term strategy. As P.T. Barnum famously noted "you can't fool all the people all the time."
The Republican party's influence is on the wane and they've done nothing to change the underlying dynamics. Rather they're exacerbating them. The interest in seceding in so many "red" states isn't because they're "winning." Its a mistake to assess their success by polls and media opinion. They own the media. In THAT they've succeeded.
Republican arguments are not "reasonable sounding." They are simply not challenged. ANYTHING is "reasonable sounding" is you simply ignore the contravening facts. Republican arguments are lies. They succeed because the lies are allowed to stand, not because they are reasonable.
There is no evidence of Whitehouse cover-ups in Benghazi. No evidence of Whitehouse ordered IRS harassment of conservative 501Cs. No evidence that any health insurance policies were cancelled because of the PPACA. No evidence of voter fraud at the polls.
Conservatives believe these things, not because they're reasonable, but because they suit their prejudice. And nonconservatives believe they're, if not true, at least possible, because conservatives keep saying they're true and no one is saying they are not.
This is about propaganda. "Reasonableness" is unnecessary. Republican arguments are proof of that. If Beck or Limbaugh says it, its "reasonable" because every other conservative will agree. No matter HOW crazy it is.
Republicans have come right out in the open and admitted Voter ID laws are about suppressing Democratic votes. The reason that's less believed than the combating fraud excuse isn't because its not "reasonable!"
YoYo [1] -
That is indeed the problem. I was thinking, while I wrote this, of a friend of mine who is about as uber-lefty as you can get. This was a few years back, when the voter ID thing first got going in a big way.
Her first reaction was the basis for that paragraph: "Well, that sounds reasonable, I have to show my ID to get on a plane or open a bank account." She grew up in the 'burbs, now lives in a small town, and has never lived in a city her whole life.
When I tried to explain there were millions of Americans who didn't fly, who didn't open new bank accounts, didn't drive, and didn't have an ID (because they had no need for one). She at first didn't believe me -- "millions?!?"
She has done research on her own and now condemns voter suppression efforts by the GOP, but her initial reaction always struck me -- the GOP zeroed in on one argument which seems reasonable, at first glance.
I did not address in this article the very recent proposal to put photos on Social Security cards -- a FEDERAL photo ID that everyone would have. It's an interesting idea, but every proposal I've ever seen for any kind of federal ID has always gone down in flames, so I have no idea of the chances of it ever being enacted.
LewDan [5] -
One other thing I didn't address here was the backlash in 2012 against voter suppression laws. The turnout increased, because people were so enraged that the GOP was trying to keep them from the polls with the extra hoops. The real question is can that outrage be sustained in 2014? I don't know the answer to that question, personally.
DisabledDoc -
I fully support making Election Day a national holiday, too, and also those who propose moving it to a weekend day.
I heard from a relative that PA was very strict about who could get an absentee ballot -- you had to produce paperwork (like a plane ticket) to prove you'd be out of the district. Oregon, on the other hand, has mandatory mail-in ballots. They still open polling places for those who like the tradition of handing their ballot in, but everyone gets their ballot in the mail. Different states have different attitudes, that's for sure.
But I have to say, in a general comment to everyone -- both here and at HuffPost, the comments that I've seen to this article kind of reinforce its main point: the big debate always reverts to Voter ID, when there are many other aspects of what the GOP is doing which deserve much more discussion. And more outrage.
-CW
DisabledDoc -
One final point (you got me thinking...):
I've proposed this in the past but am too lazy to look it up right now -- my favorite suggestion for how to encourage states to IMPROVE voter turnout would be for the order of presidential primaries to be set by the percentage turnout in the previous presidential election. Let the traditional 4 states go first (IA, NH, SC, NV). But then after that, the order would be: state with highest voter turnout previously, down to (the last primary to happen) the state with the WORST turnout previously.
That would create all kinds of incentive to improve your state's percentage. Oh, I know, it'll never happen, but it is fun to think about...
:-)
-CW
CW,
Unfortunately, the outrage in 2012 was due to voter suppression efforts in an election people cared about. All too many don't care about non-presidential elections. I doubt you'll see much evidence of any backlash this year.
I'm an election judge. In our recent primary, for example, 90% of the voters I saw were over 70. And all but two were Republican. Of the remaining 10% half were Republican. Its the lack of interest in anything except Presidential elections that's the real obstacle to progressive victories. Republicans win off-year elections simply because they want to win them.--And bother to vote in order to make it happen.
The last thing Republicans should want to do is anything that would motivate Democratic voters. They, however, are unconcerned, confident that they'll always have superior off-year turnout. Much as they were confident the majority of voters would always be white and primarily male. Or, as in the Bush years, that they could establish a "permanent" majority.
Republicans' arrogant overconfidence, and sense of entitlement, is their greatest weakness. Their lack of contact with reality isn't just destructive, its self-destructive. Everything they've done the last decade speaks to short-term strategies and goals with no regard whatsoever for long-term consequences.
CW,
Here in Ohio we're working to get a voter bill of rights put on the ballot for a vote in November.
Don't know if it will happen but this is the kind of thing that I think is a good idea.
As I've been gathering signatures, I've been talking to people about all the shenanigans going on and it pisses people off.
They are deliberately making it harder for working people to vote here in Ohio. I tell as many people as I can.
We also call them the John Kasich re-election laws. Because let's be honest, this is basically what they are.
-David
LewDan -
You're right. The GOP may chalk up big wins this year, no matter what. The interesting thing, politically, is how it will be interpreted. Because if the GOP doubles down on what it is doing now, it is an iron-clad guarantee that we'll be inaugurating President Hillary in 2017.
akadjian -
That is very interesting... very interesting indeed. Please keep us posted on how the effort progresses. I'm in favor of a federal constitutional amendment to do the same thing, myself, so I will be interested to hear the progress of such efforts at the state level.
-CW