by James Parks, Jan 17, 2008

During the famous 1965 Selma, Ala., march for black voting rights, Martin Luther King Jr. said:

Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom….Let us march on ballot boxes, march on ballot boxes until race baiters disappear from the political arena, until the [Alabama Gov. George] Wallaces of our nation tremble away in silence.

King spearheaded efforts that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which removed the right of states to impose restrictions on who could vote in elections. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to make fundamental changes that could effectively take away the hard-earned right to vote for millions of the elderly and people of color.

King’s legacy of fighting for voting rights for all is high on the agenda of the 900 participants in the AFL-CIO Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration this week in Memphis, Tenn. Tomorrow, Ronald Walters, a leading political analyst and professor at the University of Maryland, will discuss the importance of the 2008 elections for people of color, and AFL-CIO Political Director Karen Ackerman will address how workers can win in 2008. Participants also will spend almost four hours Friday afternoon in get-out-the-vote training sessions.

Voting rights are on the line after the High Court earlier this month examined the constitutionality of laws requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot. The case stems from a challenge to Indiana’s voter ID law, the toughest in the nation. If the court upholds the law, it could become the model for the rest of the country. The AFL-CIO, along with its civil rights allies, opposes such laws because they suppress the vote of people of color, the poor and seniors, as they often do not have driver’s licenses or other government identification. Such inviduals are the most likely to be unable to afford the money to pay for multiple IDs or don’t have access to transportation to travel to motor vehicle bureaus or other government offices that provide them.  

Deborah Goldberg, director of the Democracy Program for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, says making the Indiana law the model could have a serious impact on voting rights in the country and open the gates to allow legislators to use the “unproven allegations of fraud” to justify widespread suppression of voting right (see video above).

The Indiana law requires anyone voting in person to present a current government photo ID. If you don’t have one, you can vote provisionally at the polls, but you must present the required ID at an appropriate government office within 10 days or your vote will not be counted. People who don’t have IDs can get them free from the state, but they must have other documents, such as a certified birth certificate and other secondary proof.

Since the 2000 election, Republicans in many states have pushed for voter ID laws, claiming voter fraud is rampant. But studies have shown the problem does not exist.

Tova Wang, a fellow at the Century Foundation, who co-authored research and filed a federally mandated report on the question, told National Public Radio (NPR):

We found that although there is fraud in the system, it doesn’t take place at the polling place.

Royal Masset, a consultant who by his own estimate has been involved in some 5,000 Republican campaigns in Texas, told NPR:

My experience is that in-person voter fraud is nonexistent. It doesn’t happen, and if you really analyze it, it makes no sense because who’s going to take the risk of going to jail on something so blatant that maybe changes one vote?

Voter fraud does exist, say the experts, but in more systematic ways, through ballot box stuffing, voter machine manipulation, registration list manipulation and absentee balloting.

Click here to hear the entire NPR report.

So, why the big push for voter ID? With the White House and the Congress at stake, Republicans are trying to suppress the vote of those voters who support Democrats—seniors, young people, the poor and people of color.

Consider this study by the Brennan Center of the impact of Indiana’s law on the Hoosier State’s voters:

• Some 21.8 percent of black Indiana voters do not have access to a valid photo ID, compared with 15.8 percent of white Indiana voters.
• When non-registered eligible voter responses are included, the gap widens to 28.3 percent of eligible black voters in the state who do not have valid photo IDs, compared to 16.8 percent of eligible voting age white Indiana residents.
• The study found  younger voters and older voters were both less likely to have valid IDs, compared to voters in the middle categories. Some 22 percent of voters 18-34 did not have IDs, nor did 19.4 percent over the age of 70.
• Some 21 percent of Indiana registered voters with only a high school diploma did not have valid IDs,  compared with 11.5 percent of Indiana voters who have completed college.
• Republicans are much more likely to have valid IDs. Among registered voters with proper IDs, 41.6 percent are registered Republicans, 32.5 percent are Democrats.

 Meanwhile, in other voting rights actions: The Privileges and Elections Committee of the Virginia Senate deferred until 2009 consideration of a constitutional amendment to allow non-violent felons who have completed their sentences to be able to vote. Under existing law in Virginia, all felons are permanently disenfranchised and may have their right to vote restored only by the governor. There are approximately 380,000 Virginia residents who cannot vote because they have been convicted of a felony. About 300,000 of them have completed their sentences. Some 50 percent of the disenfranchised voters in Virginia are racial minorities. 

In Florida, a federal judge blocked a law that prevented people from registering to vote if election officials could not match the person’s Social Security or driver’s license number to a state database. That ruling came after introducing evidence that as of October 2007, 14,000 applications were in danger of being rejected because of the law. A similar “no-match, no-vote” law was previously thrown out in Washington State.

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