 |
| Rick Perry, Governor of the state with many of the most egregious voter ID laws. |
According to new research by University of Massachusetts Boston sociologist Keith Bentele and political scientist Erin O’Brien, the states that have enacted tougher voter ID laws in the past few years are also the same states where both minority and lower-income voter turnout had increased in recent years.
Focusing further analysis on just 2011, when the vast majority of voter ID regulations were passed, the researchers found that states which passed the legislation were highly likely to have:
- Republicans in control of both houses of the state legislature and the governorship
- Strong probabilities of being swing states in the 2012 elections
- Minority turnout which was higher in the 2008 election and with high proportions of African-American voters
- Larger numbers of allegations of fraud in 2004, though these had a “much smaller substantive impact relative to partisan and racial factors”
The authors note that the study’s results carry ominous implications and demonstrate voter ID laws have “an uncomfortable relationship to the political activism of blacks and the poor.” Their paper further situates voter ID within a realm of policies that “collectively reduce electoral access among the socially marginalized.”
That's the Republican mindset for you, pretend to protect the citizens from voter fraud, while all along working to take away the right to vote from anybody who might not vote the way you want them to.
Assholes!
OH! Then its OK for Democrats to mine the obituary column and bribe illegal aliens to vote . Course, with no ID, who would know?
ReplyDeleteProof you idiot! Every time one of the repubes makes that claim the numbers that are verifiable are less than a handful. Actual research into that specific claim ALWAYS prove there is NO threat there - or at least, such a tiny one that it is ludicrous.
DeleteYou just don't like having your arguments proven fallacious, thus exposing the true intent as suggested above.
So you have links to this kind of illegal voting that don't involve crazy wingnut sites? Please supply them. I live in Ohio and out of 5.6 million people who voted in 2012---- 17 people in the whole state tried to vote and were not legally entitled to---and all of them were legal immigrants by the way.
DeleteYou mean Ohio, the state where one woman told a reporter that in the last election, she was so excited that she voted for Obama twice (wound up being somewhere around 6 times)
DeleteYou have a convincing argument!
The American 'whites' (Republicans and supposed 'christians') hate the fact the minorities are going to outnumber them in the not too distant future.
ReplyDeleteThe Dems and federal government are watching carefully as to the illegal voting things that are on the horizon. Plus, ID obtaining efforts are already underway, for various Americans, to assure they will be able to vote in the next election cycle.
The Republican party is assuredly a majority nasty group!
The American 'whites' (Republicans and supposed 'christians') hate the fact the minorities are going to outnumber them in the not too distant future.
DeleteHow about their Dog allowing that to happen? What was he thinking? How will they dill with being outnumbered?
6:55 a.m. please post how we can get involved in these GOTV efforts.
Delete9:40 It would depend on the area in which you live. Please let me know and I'll provide information.
DeleteThis is akin to watching them kick in their final death throes. The more they expose how treacherous they are, the more the rest of us will push back against them and make sure we can vote.
ReplyDeleteI'm not in Alaska at the moment, but I have already taken steps to be able to register voters when I return in the spring.
My father was a World War Two veteran who fought at Guadalcanal.One mid term election I did not vote.He asked me if I voted.I said no.He reamed me a new asshole for not voting.I have voted every election since and will continue to honor those who fought to defend our country and our right to vote.These republicans are showing no respect for those who sacrificed their lives for our country.These people are false patriots.
ReplyDelete7:57 We need to vote now more than ever! I personally ALWAYS vote and absolutely love doing so.
ReplyDeletePlus, our country is now in such a mess due to the Republicans and their constant obstruction via the U.S.Congress. Watch the individual Republican governors across the nation too (along w/their majority state legislatures).
Our individual vote is very important and can actually outweigh the money the Republicans will put in the various races across the nation.
GET OUT AND VOTE in your upcoming elections. Kentucky especially - vote McConnell (R/U.S. Congress) out of office!
Always fun reading
ReplyDeletehttp://gawker.com/5868489/all-your-rick-perry-gay-sex-rumors-collected-in-one-handy-book
The most aggressive voter laws I have seen are the ones that ask you to provide ID to prove who you are. Did I miss something? Are there other more aggressive laws that I have not been made aware of?
ReplyDeleteI have to show ID at the Pharmacy to buy certain cold pills. Has anyone done a study that proves by showing ID at the Pharmacy, more minorities are getting sick?
Okay bring on the comments calling me a racist... but before you do, lets have an intelligent conversation on this backed up by some fact.
During the 2011 legislative sessions, states across the country passed measures to make it harder for Americans – particularly African-Americans, the elderly, students and people with disabilities – to exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot. Over thirty states considered laws that would require voters to present government-issued photo ID in order to vote. Studies suggest that up to 11 percent of American citizens lack such ID, and would be required to navigate the administrative burdens to obtain it or forego the right to vote entirely.
Deletehttps://www.aclu.org/fighting-voter-suppression
It is not about you being a racist—unless you think you are. It is about supposedly fixing something that was NOT broken. You show ID at pharms because there is a problem with people making meth out of cold medicines.
DeleteThere are many minority and poor people who do not drive and do not have licenses. Do you know what some state IDs cost? It is technically a poll tax to make someone have an ID that must be paid for to vote. Did you know the big thing now is some midwestern states are moving their BMV offices out of cities and way out into the suburbs or in some country town miles away from population centers and public transport? Who do you think that will hurt? Again—voter fraud was NEVER a problem.
The minority vote is a problem—for the GOP. Get it?
Two University of Massachusetts Boston academics -- Keith G. Bentele, an assistant professor of Sociology, and Erin O'Brien, an associate professor of Political Science -- recently published a paper looking at the proposal and passage of restrictive voter access legislation from 2006 to 2011. In the paper, titled "Jim Crow 2.0? Why States Consider and Adopt Restrictive Voter Access Policies," the authors conclude that restrictive voter measures are connected to both partisan and racial factors.
Delete"We looked at proposed and passage over this period, and we looked at just 2011 specifically," Bentele told TPM in an interview this week. "And you have this consistent emergence -- over and over and over -- these partisan and racial factors are the most strongly associated with these outcomes."
**The paper focused on a range of restrictive voter access legislation. That means not just voter ID bills, but also the regulation of groups who register voters, the shortening of early voting periods, and other issues. And these efforts were not limited geographically. Restrictive voter access legislation was proposed in nearly every state in the country during the six-year period looked at, and at least one restrictive change passed in half the states.**
According to Bentele, the most striking findings came when analyzing only the proposed restrictive access legislation. There were a "handful" of factors associated with the proposal of more bills in recent years, Bentele said, and "they're basically all racial." States that saw higher minority turnout in the previous presidential election, and states that had more African American and non-citizen residents, saw more bills proposed.
What about the great Republican specter of voter fraud?
"If you want to be extraordinarily generous, you could say allegations of voter fraud may have been a very, very small contributing factor," Bentele said, speaking more generally about voter restriction efforts. "But in general, these partisan and racial effects seem to be really, really strongly associated with this outcome."
In the paper, the researchers placed the recent restriction efforts in context, as part of a history of measures "trumpeted as protecting electoral legitimacy while intended to exclude the marginalized for a particular political party's advantage." They argue that the Republican Party has engaged in "strategic demobilization efforts in response to changing demographics, shifting electoral fortunes, and an internal rightward ideological drift among the party faithful."
"I think that this [paper]... sidesteps the specific question of individual people's motives and it looks at the broader context," Bentele said. "Where are state legislatures doing this thing? Where is this broader activity happening? And again it's happening disproportionately where it would be strategic for partisan reasons."
Read the whole paper here.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/study-finds-voting-restrictions-linked-to-minority-turnout
Not to mention harder for women, esp women who are/have been married, because of patriarchal name changes.
DeleteYes, Chris, you seem to have missed a lot of what has been happening over the past few years in red states.
DeleteOne of the problems is that the laws keep being changed to make fewer and fewer kinds of ID acceptable. Many states are refusing to accept student IDs, even from state colleges, but will accept gun permits. Which parties do you think these two groups vote for more frequently?
Years ago, a combination of other types of documentation (utility bills, tax bills, etc) were accepted, especially for elderly or poor people who didn't drive. Now a specific kind of picture ID is required and, while the ID itself may technically be 'free', the documentation and process needed to obtain that ID costs money and time. Many elderly people do not have birth certificates because they were born at home or their official records have been lost over time. They may have been voting for decades but are suddenly suspect and not permitted to vote because they cannot obtain the required type of photo ID.
At the same time, many of these same states are closing the DMV offices in minority neighborhoods, making it more difficult, more time consuming, and more expensive (if not impossible) for people without transportation to get an acceptable form of ID.
As hard as it is to believe, in some states, even military IDs, issued by the US government, are not considered acceptable forms of identification for voting, and any current or former members of the military who do vote using their military IDs are only permitted to use provisional ballots, which may or may not be counted.
In addition, voting times and locations are being reduced or eliminated in minority communities and near colleges, but NOT in middle-class, white suburbs. The voters in FL were forced to wait for hours to vote, which many of them who work cannot afford to do. The long waits in minority neighborhoods are specifically designed to discourage those people from voting. If that doesn't work, conservative organizations are rallying poll watchers to show up in minority areas and question all aspects of ID and voter processes, thereby intimidating people from voting.
Tens of thousands of names have been 'purged' from voter rolls with nothing more than the possibility of having a suspicious-sounding (read Hispanic) name. Most of these people are legal voters but many are not notified of their questioned status until they show up at the polls, when it is too late to do anything. If they vote provisionally, they are often required to return within a very short period of time to produce a valid ID, even though they should not have been removed from the voter rolls to begin with.
Registered Democratic voters have received phone calls and mailed notices claiming that the voting locations or dates were changed so they would not show up at the correct place and on the correct day. Others received threats of arrest for insignificant violations such as unpaid traffic fines if they showed up to vote.
Anything and everything that makes it more convenient for minority or young voters to access the polls is being eliminated to reduce their turnout.
Sorry, but speaking as a middle-aged white woman, this smacks of racism to me.
6 Of The Worst Media Scandals Of 2013
ReplyDeletehttp://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/12/22/6-of-the-worst-media-scandals-of-2013/197368
8:31 Pre registration to vote has been altered in many Republican leaning states i.e. times shortened as to the number of days. The hours of actually voting time have also been cut in many state as to what they were previously.
ReplyDeleteThe required 'type' of voter ID has changed in many Republican leaning states. I have no problem showing ID anywhere. It's just that so many of the minorities are poor - do not own vehicles - so do not have a state license which would reflect a photo.
That is what is now being worked on by the Democratic party. Once obtained for the individual voter, it will allow more of them to vote as they'll be in compliance w/the current laws in their respective states.
Don't think you are a racist 8:31...you appear to just be in doubt. Hope I clarified things for you.
I live in Pennsylvania, and the Republican Governor made it mandatory to have a state issued non driver's ID to present at the voting booth. We worked out butts off getting people compliant. Any idea how hard it is to find an 80 yo and up's baptismal certificate, birth record, naturalization papers etc needed just to fill out the form for the photo id, then to get them a ride to the centers that were slashed from eight hours a day to four hours a day two days a week? As others said, women who marry and take on their husband's names won't match with their baptismal, birth records etc.... No hyphenated names. We lucked out that the court overruled it, Organizing for America along with many others were working their fingers to the bone to GOTV these past two elections.
DeleteThe GOP is playing a dangerous game that will backfire, because "Caucasians" ARE already a minority, and that's their base.
Off subject just a tad - Rick Perry looks like a chipmunk in the above photo. Plus, he has aged considerably since he first came on the scene. He and Palin both have - must be the evilness they both project constantly! It's wearing on them and us. To hell w/both of them!
ReplyDeleteWhen my aunt went to vote in Queens NY, she didn't need her ID. They handed her a ballot and she went to a little desk.
ReplyDeleteAlthough my part of western NY state is red, the state as a whole is a blue state, with a Democratic governor and a huge Democratic majority in the urban areas, particularly NYC. The racist and partisan voter suppression laws that many other states have adopted have not been passed or even proposed here.
DeleteWhen you show up to vote, your signature is listed in the registration records. You sign your name and the poll volunteers compare the signatures. If they match, you're good to go!
Graham took the defensive pose in that photo! Arms crossed in front of him. Asshole and after nothing more than money!
ReplyDeleteHis father would be so disappointed with him IF he actually knew the direction his son has gone!
- Larger numbers of allegations of fraud in 2004, though these had a “much smaller substantive impact relative to partisan and racial factors"
ReplyDeleteI went back and read it several times.
It states that there was large allegations in 2004... but why isn't anyone seeing this? If there was large suspicion of fraud when W was elected...would it have just quit when Obama was elected? Not likely!
I have a problem when it is revealed that deceased individuals have voted, or individuals by the name of Mickey Mouse. ANY fraud is too much! On the surface, I don't have a problem with showing ID. I want all citizens to vote, one time, and for each vote to count. Any fraud will disenfranchise the ACTUAL will of the people.
I don't have all the answers as to how to fix this, but I would be willing to sit down, and adress the concerns.