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‘Un-American’ Missouri Law Could Cut Off Minority, Senior Votes |
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In an eleventh-hour move, the Republican-dominated Missouri legislature passed one of the nation’s most restrictive voting bills. The new law will require all voters to show a government-issued photo ID card before they can cast a ballot, a move election officials say could disenfranchise as many as 190,000 voters, mainly people of color, seniors and people with disabilities.
“We opposed this bill because it disenfranchises a lot of people who are apt to vote for candidates that support working family issues,” says Herb Johnson, secretary-treasurer of the Missouri AFL-CIO. “They are concerned with issues like unemployment and workers’ comp. I don’t see many business owners getting injured on the job or laid off.”
Johnson says he expects the new law to be challenged in court.
The Republican majority steamrolled the bill through the Senate at 1:30 in the morning May 12, without allowing any debate, and the House approved the measure just minutes shy of the mandatory 6 a.m. deadline to adjourn for the year. The Senate Republicans used a rare and unpopular procedure to cut off debate, only the eighth time that has happened in the Senate since 1970. Gov. Matt Blunt (R) has said he will sign the bill.
“It’s un-American,” House Democratic Leader Jeff Harris told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “When we are trying to bring democracy to the Middle East, in Iraq, we’re taking away people’s right to vote in the state of Missouri.”
State Rep. Connie Johnson, a Democrat from St. Louis, said the bill violates civil rights. In an interview with the Missourian, she said:
People used to get on buses and have freedom rides in (the) 1960s and fought for this right to vote; people were chased with dogs and hosed with water. The same 65-, 75-year-old people, and now we’re about to tell them, ‘You know that right that you marched for, that right that you rode for? Guess what—we’re going to take it away from you, and there is not anything you can do about it.
Only two other states, Georgia and Indiana, have identification requirements as strict as Missouri’s. Georgia passed its ID law again this year after federal courts ruled a previous law was unconstitutional.
This is what Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says about Georgia’s law and other similar laws:
Georgia’s voter ID bill, the most restrictive in the nation, is part of a national GOP effort to shave off small percentages of Democratic voters—enough to make a difference in close races.
This year, the Legislature has put some lipstick and a little rouge on its pig of a voter ID law, hoping to sneak it past the courts. But the strategy behind the law remains the same: Keep those from voting who don’t look like us and don’t think like us. That’s definitely unconstitutional. And un-American, too.
In Missouri, voters who don’t have official photo IDs can cast provisional ballots until November 2008. Provisional ballots will count if the voters sign affidavits, present certain forms of identification, and their signatures match those on file with the election authority.
In an additional effort by Missouri Republicans to restrict the voting process, the bill also eliminates a voter’s option to vote a straight party ticket.
Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, who administers state election laws, wrote to Blunt saying the law is bad for voters. Here’s what she had to say:
Proponents…have argued the legislation is necessary to remedy perceived voter fraud. However, there is no evidence that such voter fraud actually exists or that this drastic measure would solve any existing problem in our elections system.
The proposition that up to 20 percent of seniors and disabled Missourians may be forced to cast provisional ballots in the next general election is completely unacceptable.
The new identification requirements, combined with the elimination of straight-ticket voting, an option used by 1 [million] Missourians, will lead to confusion and longer lines at polling places.
The new law, which will take effect immediately after Blunt signs it, also:
- Requires people to vote at the correct polling place and prohibits counting provisional ballots cast at the wrong polling place.
- Prohibits people who register voters from being paid per name submitted.
- Requires people who register voters to sign up with the secretary of state’s office and be registered Missouri voters.
- Repeals a law allowing those who think they were wrongly removed from the voter rolls to appeal to a court.
- Prevents state courts from extending polling hours.
The union movement is working to ensure that the voting rights of all Americans are protected, and supports renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2004, in the largest effort of its kind, union members across the country educated people on their voting rights and monitored the vote at the polls in key states.
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