Why the Christian Right Believes It Has Once-in-a-Decade Chance to Impose Its Radical Worldview on America

Why the Christian Right Believes It Has Once-in-a-Decade Chance to Impose Its Radical Worldview on America

A change to obscure procedural rules in the U.S. Senate and the upcoming 2014 elections could be a dangerous window of opportunity.

November 26, 2013  

 

AlterNet / By CJ Werleman

Elections have consequences. The Senate Democrats’ detonation of the “nuclear option” has dramatically raised the stakes for secular progressives in 2014, because if there are two issues that juice the Christian Right the most, it’s women’s reproductive rights and judicial activism. On the latter, the Religious Right senses a once-in-a-decade opportunity to impose its radical worldview on America.
Last week, the Senate voted 52-48 to eliminate the ability of the minority party in the Senate to filibuster executive branch nominees and any judgeship below the Supreme Court by changing the requirements for passage to a simple majority vote. It was a historic move made because there was no other alternative, given the GOP’s unprecedented abuse of the filibuster. In the history of the United States, 168 presidential nominees have been filibustered. Half occurred under all presidents from Washington through to Bush. Remarkably, the other half has taken place under just one president: Obama.
Why such aggressive judicial obstructionism by the GOP?
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. writes, “This era’s conservatives will use any means at their disposal to win control of the courts. Their goal is to do all they can to limit Congress’s ability to enact social reforms.”
The Christian Right, which is the GOP’s most reliable and agitated voting bloc, is obsessed with the courts, and the Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit is the nation’s second most important judicial body, which is why Republicans “gave the game away when all but a few of them opposed Obama’s three most recent appointments.”
Now that Democrats were forced into limiting the filibuster, the Christian Right has its incentive to mobilize for 2014. A simple majority control of the Senate gives it an opportunity to pack the courts with judges straight out of the Justice Scalia mold, who once said that separation of church and state would come under scrutiny under a Supreme Court with a Scalia majority. If the Christian Right sweeps Republicans to control the Senate in next year’s midterms, the anti-secularists will take a big step forward toward their stated ideological goals.
The recent Values Voter Summit demonstrated that the likely 2016 GOP frontrunners have a base wish to transform America’s secular state into a tyrannical theocracy — a nirvana absent gays, liberals, immigrants, Muslims and science books. The right-wing media elites are already doing their bit to gin up the far right’s judicial activists with Rush Limbaugh comparing filibuster reform to rape.
Truth in Action Ministries recently released a film titled Freedom on Trial, which features Robert Bork, the failed Reagan Supreme Court nominee, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, and Heritage Foundation vice president Genevieve Wood. The general theme of the documentary is that Christianity is under attack thanks to liberal "activist judges." Bork warns that courts are “teaching the people that religion is evil,” while another conservative attorney claims decisions that go against the Ten Commandments will “destroy the country.”
President Obama’s judicial nominees were being filibustered because they threaten to alter the circuit court’s philosophical balance. The Republican Party has again demonstrated that nullification and obstruction are ready-made weapons to ensure the courts remain dominated by conservatives.

Cass R. Sunstein, author of Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts are Bad for America, writes, “Our courts now represents the most extreme elements of the Republican Party. These reformers include a number of federal judges—radicals in robes, fundamentalists on the bench….some of these judges do not hesitate to depart radically from longstanding understandings of constitutional meaning.” Political analyst James Fallows writes, “Add that to the simply unprecedented abuse of the filibuster in the years since the Democrats won control of the Senate and then took the White House, you have what we’d identify as a kind of long-term coup if we saw it happening anywhere else.”

The end of the filibuster threatens the far right’s stranglehold on our courts. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell warned, “The solution to this problem is at the ballot box. We look forward to having a great election in November 2014.” John McCain warned, “Democrats will regret this.”
For Republicans to take back the Senate, they’ll need to win six seats. Given Democrats will need to defend 21 seats, compared to just 14 for the GOP, and that seven of those 21 Democratic seats are in states that lean Republican, expect the Christian Right to be the party’s primary water carrier in the midterms.
Former Speaker Tip O’Neill liked to say that all politics is local. He was wrong. It’s tribal. The detonation of the nuclear option ensures the always-mobilized theological tribe will turn out in high numbers in 2014. This means America’s secular state will remain in the balance should the secular left tribe do no better than its impotency in 2010.
CJ Werleman is the author of Crucifying America and God Hates You, Hate Him Back. Follow him on Twitter @cjwerleman.

Read More

Scott Walker: Paul Ryan, Reince Priebus And I Are A 'Cheesehead Revolution'

The Huffington Post  |  By Chris Gentilviso Posted: 11/20/2013 10:34 am EST 

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) coined a spirited term over the weekend for a trio of high-powered Republicans from the Badger State.
In a Saturday interview with USA Today’s Capital Download, Walker talked about his friendship with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). When asked if both he and Ryan could run for president in 2016, Walker said it was an "interesting question," adding that "who knows what the future will bring?"
What he was sure of was the success of three big-name Wisconsin Republicans, remarking how he, Ryan and Reince Priebus all grew up within miles of one another.
"Paul grew up 15 miles to the west of me," Walker said. "Reince Priebus, who’s the RNC (Republican National Committee) chair, grew up about 20 miles to the east of me. There must have been something in the water at the time….We say it’s kind of a Cheesehead Revolution."
With nearly three years to go before the 2016 presidential picture hits its peak, HuffPost Pollster's latest compilation of 27 publicly available polls shows Ryan and Walker both in the mix as potential GOP candidates. Ryan, who served as the party's 2012 vice presidential candidate, netted 11 percent of the hypothetical vote, while Walker earned eight percent.

Read More

Voters sign in to vote at the Dr. Martin Luther King Community Center for the U.S. presidential election in Racine, Wisconsin on Nov. 6, 2012.

Sara Stathas/Reuters

Wisconsin GOP aims to scrap weekend voting

11/16/13 05:00 PM

By Zachary Roth Wisconsin Republicans are pushing a bill to end early voting on the weekend. The measure would make it harder for people in the state’s most populous areas to cast a ballot—and it would hit blacks especially hard.
But state Sen. Glenn Grothman, a Republican who is sponsoring a Senate version of the bill, told msnbc it’s already easy enough to vote.
“Between [early voting], mail absentee, and voting the day of election, you know, I mean anybody who can’t vote with all those options, they’ve really got a problem,” he said. “I really don’t think they care that much about voting in the first place, right?”
The measure, which passed the state assembly Thursday, would give municipalities two choices for early voting, known in the state as in-person absentee voting: they could offer it either from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays in the two weeks before an election; or at any time on a weekday, but not to exceed 30 hours per week, again in the two weeks before an election.
That would mean a reduction in early voting hours for the state’s two biggest cities, Milwaukee and Madison—which are also its most important Democratic strongholds.
Scott McDonell, the clerk for Dane County, where Madison is located, called the effort a “voter suppression initiative.”
“This is not unintentional,” McDonell told msnbc. “This is part of a whole strategy of limiting the large cities from their ability to vote.”
In 2011, Republicans eliminated early voting on the weekend directly before the election—part of a sweeping voting bill that also included a voter ID provision currently being challenged in court. But they left the weekend before that in place. Last year, around 7,000 voters in Madison and Milwaukee alone took advantage of those two days of voting, according to numbers provided by the election commissions for those cities.
And currently, cities and towns can set their own hours, based on local needs. That’s meant they’ve been able to make game-time decisions to keep polls open during weekdays evenings, if there’s a larger-than-expected number of voters, as Madison did for the 2010 governor’s race, Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl told MSNBC.
In 2012, the city saw more than 1,000 early voters per day, according to Witzel-Behl. She said the reduction in hours, and the loss of flexibility, would make life more difficult for her office – and for voters.
“We always have voters who let us know that if we hadn’t been open on Saturday, they wouldn’t have been able to come in to cast an absentee ballot,” said Witzel-Behl. “If we are not able to have absentee voting on the weekends, and we’re limited during the week as well, we’re going to be under a significant time crunch to get everybody through the lines.”
While hitting big cities hard, the bill leaves voting practices in small towns largely untouched. Many small towns in Wisconsin let people make appointments to cast their ballots at the local clerk’s house, McDonell explained—something they’ll be able to keep doing.
“What this does is, it leaves in place the ability for the small communities to set their hours in different ways, but it shuts down the big cities from having the ability to do that,” said McDonell.
Grothman said his bill is intended to establish “uniformity” between the large cities and small towns. Since it would be both expensive and unnecessary for small municipalities to increase voting hours, the only fix is to reduce the hours offered by big cities.
“We can have some of these ones that are completely out of control, doing maybe 80 hours a week, we can rein them in,” Grothman said.
Asked why uniformity is important if there’s less demand for early voting in more sparsely populated areas, Grothman was indignant.
“The idea of having one set of rules to apply to one municipality and another set of rules to apply to another goes against equal protection of the laws and is contrary to all our country stands for,” he said. “Isn’t it?”
But scrapping weekend voting will hit African-Americans particularly hard, Rev. Willie Brisco, who leads an alliance of Milwaukee churches, told msnbc.
“A lot of people in our community are working two or three jobs, odd hours, having difficulty with childcare,” said Brisco. “So the weekend and the early voting reaches a lot of those people.”
Brisco said his organization ran a “Souls to the Polls” drive last year, encouraging congregants to vote en masse after church on Sunday.
“We really need our community to stay engaged in the political process, and to be a determining factor,” Brisco said. “And there is a concerted effort to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The measure wasn’t the only voting bill that the Republican-dominated Wisconsin Assembly passed Thursday night. On a party-line vote, it also approved a bill that would slightly modify the state’s controversial 2011 voter ID law, in an effort to boost its chances of surviving the court challenge that’s currently underway. Under the new GOP bill, voters would now be able to cast a ballot without ID—if they signed an affidavit swearing that they couldn’t afford ID or had no way of geting their birth certificate.
“This bill says that poor people need to declare their indigency,” Rep. JoCasta Zamarripa, a Democrat, told The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “It’s a scarlet letter.

Read More

If You're a Millennial, Black, or Latino, Good Luck Voting Quickly in 2016

—By Dana Liebelson

| Tue Nov. 19, 2013 3:00 AM PST

 

Bunnicula/Flickr

When I voted last year in downtown Washington, DC, I was able to walk down the street, cast my ballot, and get back to the office in less than 30 minutes. But according to a new report by two voting rights groups, the Advancement Project and OurTime.org, plenty of American voters weren't so lucky. According to their research, African Americans, Latinos, and millennials in Virginia and Florida—two key battleground states—faced significantly longer wait times than older white voters in 2012. This was largely because the former groups are more inclined to utilize early voting, which was restricted in both states last year. And according to the report, this new "time tax"—along with other voting obstacles, like strict ID laws—will likely continue to dampen voter turnout among these groups in 2016.
In 2012, Florida cut early voting from 14 days to 8 days, and lines were so long, more than 200,000 Florida voters gave up and went home, according to data collected by the Orlando Sentinel. The Advancement Project and OurTime.org report focused on 5,196 of the 6,100 voting precincts that were used last November in Florida—which faced some of the longest voting lines in the country—and found that young voters spent a disproportionately longer time waiting to vote. For example, in Orange County, which has the highest percentage of voters younger than 30 in the state (22 percent), precincts closed an average of 86 minutes after the 7 p.m. deadline, with one precinct closing five hours late. The report found that in Orange County, the trend indicated that the more voters under 30 there were at a certain precinct, the later the closing time.
"Regarding the number of people willing to wait in line to vote in 2012, there were others who didn't vote, and there is no guarantee that voters will always be able to wait so long to exercise their fundamental rights," says Katherine Culliton-González, director of Advancement Project's Voter Protection Program. The report makes the case that young voters have less flexibility with their work schedules, and when early voting days are cut, as they were in Florida, lines get longer. Millennials (defined in the report as people between the ages of 18 and 29) are also more racially diverse than the rest of the population, meaning that there is often an overlap between young voters and voters of color. This 2013 MIT report found that voters of color are also more likely to wait in line than white voters:

The conservative Heritage Foundation maintains that African Americans face longer voting times than white voters because they "tend to be concentrated in large urban areas" and "the most populous areas had longer wait times than those living in areas with fewer voters." But Culliton-González, from the Advancement Project, tells Mother Jones that her group's study disproves this, since their research found that there wasn't a clear correlation between longer lines and precincts with dense populations. She says that, in Virginia, for example, "unless a voter can prove they are sick, otherwise disabled, or have to travel for work on Election Day, all voters must vote on the first Tuesday in November. These limits are probably what caused the disparities, as due to socioeconomic factors, many young voters of color have less flexibility in their work schedules." Voting rights groups argue that all states should offer flexible early voting—but some states have done the opposite: North Carolina, for example, is restricting early voting from 17 days to 10 days, starting in 2014.
Culliton-González adds, "We are concerned about 2014, but even more concerned about 2016," since Florida and other states will likely not have enough early voting time so that voters can avoid long lines. (The Advancement Project didn't find evidence of the "time tax" in the state elections earlier this month, partly because voter turnout was so low.)
But even if early voting is taken care of, young voters of color are also more likely to be turned away from the polls because of identification requirements. This was true in 2012, even in states that didn't have voter ID requirements on the books (see chart below). In the state elections that occurred earlier this month, numerous voters complained of being unable to vote because of real or perceived voter ID laws.

According to data collected by the Black Youth Project, an activist group that does research on issues that affect African American youth, only 67 percent of Latino youth and 71 percent of black youth possess driver's licenses, compared to 85 percent of white youth. Additionally, three times more young black voters than white voters said that lack of an ID was the reason they didn't vote in 2012. The Advancement Project and OurTime.org have submitted their report to the Presidential Committee on Election Administration, President Obama's group that is tasked with finding ways to improve voting.

Dana Liebelson

Reporter

Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. Her work has also appeared in The Week, TIME's Battleland, Truthout, OtherWords and Yahoo! News. RSS | Twitter

Read More

Rachel Maddow Nails How Utterly Nutty Wis GOP Has Become (Now With Even More Voter Suppression)

Rachel Maddow Nails How Utterly Nutty Wis GOP Has Become (Now With Even More Voter Suppression)

by PuddytatFollow

 

Must see video (H/T to BruinKid for his comment/tip on how to embed this since the "new" MSNBC video no longer embeds):

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

She nailed it from the extremism to the petty bullying that has infested our State Legislature since the Red Tide election of 2010.
After taking even more extremist anti-abortion legislation off the table as I diaried here, saying they were going to end the legislative session on a lighter note, Republicans in the State Assembly pulled out a brand new shiny Voter Suppression Bill and resurrected a bill to allow state-issued anti-abortion license plates.
They did this because they got into a snit about Assembly Democrats calling for a vote on an already approved bill to honor the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre which passed the State Senate unanimously.  Republicans in the Assembly refused to even consider that bill.  Why?  Nobody seems to know.  So, in retaliation, they brought out more extremist bills including a brand new one to further restrict voting in Wisconsin.  Yes, it's gotten that petty.

The most severe of the voter suppression measures Republicans passed in 2011, including the presentation of a state-issued ID, are on hold by the courts.  Left in place, however, are measures that restrict early voting and absentee ballots,  as well as a requirement that all voters must sign the poll book.  These measures increase the amount voters who must vote in person as well as increase the actual amount of time poll workers need to spend with each voter.  Of course, this increases the lines of people who vote, further discouraging those with busy schedules or in crowded voting precincts.  And that's the intent of those laws - to suppress the vote in Democratic areas.
That wasn't enough for Republicans, though.  Their brand new shiny voter suppression bill removes ALL weekend voting (their limitation to 1 weekend from 3 in 2011 wasn't restrictive enough to prevent electoral wins by Tammy Baldwin and Barack Obama in 2012) and restricts early voting to ONE WEEK and ONLY during the hours of 7:30 AM - 5 PM (that'll show those folks who try to vote before or after work).
Not only that, but anyone without that ID needs to sign an affidavit that they're indigent and their "vote" is not guaranteed to be counted.  A person who doesn't have the time to go during work hours to get that ID, has no transportation to a DMV for that ID, or who can't obtain the documents necessary for the ID will have to declare their indigent and possibly get their vote tossed if they aren't.
So, here we go again.
On top of all of this, they want to make the Chief Justice position based on the election of the fellow justices (currently it's the most senior Justice and has been done that way for more than 100 years).  Naturally, they want to impose the will of the RW 4 of 7 justices who have bought their seats instead of having moderate Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson as the Chief based on her long history of service on the State Supreme Court.
And they've also succeeded in changing the reasons for recall to the reasons Scott Walker cited during his own recall.   There has been no reason necessary other than the will of the voters.  Now the recalled official must be charged and/or convicted of a felony or ethics violation.  This would make it impossible for Walker to have politically profited from the voter anger that made him Milwaukee County Executive had it been in effect 15 years ago.  It would also make it impossible for us to recall anyone for malfeasance in office or anything outside of criminal behavior.
I think we be "safe" from them for the next year.  They're done with their extremism until after the next election because they can't count on the poor memories of Wisconsinites or the power of their massive money to ensure their re-election.
They know no bottom and know no shame.
.

Originally posted to Puddytat on Sat Nov 16, 2013 at 12:29 PM PST.

Also republished by Badger State Progressive and Friends of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

Read More

30 subpoenas issued, search warrants, investigating Gov Scott Walker’s recall Campaign

November 17, 2013

By Anomaly

Ruh roh. Gov. Scott Walker is surrounded.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Walker’s campaign, the Republican Party of Wisconsin and dozens of conservative political groups are the targets of the Milwaukee County probe. Dozens of subpoenas have been issued demanding documents related to the 2011 and 2012 campaign to recall Walker and state legislative leaders. In all, about 30 groups have been subpoenaed.


The report details those targeted: Copies of two subpoenas we’ve seen demand “all memoranda, email . . . correspondence, and communications” both internally and between the subpoena target and some 29 conservative groups, including Wisconsin and national nonprofits, political vendors and party committees. The groups include the League of American Voters, Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Americans for Prosperity—Wisconsin, American Crossroads, the Republican Governors Association, Friends of Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.
According to the newspaper, one subpoena also demands “all records of income received, including fundraising information and the identity of persons contributing to the corporation.”
Follow the money.
Madison.com reports:

 According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, spending in the 2011 and 2012 recall elections by groups mentioned in the article include:
• Right Direction Wisconsin PAC (Republican Governors Association): $9.4 million
• Club for Growth Wisconsin: $9.1 million
• Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce: $4.7 million
Americans for Prosperity/MacIver Institute for Public Policy: $4.5 million
The liberal Center for Media and Democracy has tracked millions of dollars that has flowed among these groups in Wisconsin.
In an interview Saturday, the group’s general counsel, Brendan Fischer, described it as a “dark money shell game” in which thousands and in some cases millions of dollars from anonymous donors are moved from one organization to another with the goal of influencing elections.

JS Online reports:

Unmentioned in the editorial is that R.J. Johnson is an adviser to both Walker’s campaign and the Wisconsin Club for Growth.
The newspaper said the subpoenas sought records and fundraising information and were related to the 2011 and 2012 recall efforts against the Republican governor and state senators.
The subpoenas come out of a second, secret John Doe investigation of Walker aides or allies. The first investigation was closed in February, but the second one is ongoing. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported on both investigations.
John Doe probes give prosecutors the power to compel people to testify and bar them from speaking about their involvement in the investigations. The Wall Street Journal editorial page reported O’Keefe was willing to discuss his subpoena, saying he “realizes the personal risk but wants the public to know what is going on.”
Search warrants were executed based on affidavits filed by Dean Nickel, according to the newspaper. Nickel served as the special agent in charge for the state Department of Justice’s public integrity unit, and the newspaper reported he has served as an investigator for the state Government Accountability Board.

Just this morning Walker was opining that a governor would be the best choice for a presidential run in 2016.
I know Scott! Maybe you can have all the investigators arrested just as you did protesters, a kid and even a few grannies.
Big thanks to tipster extraordinaire @TomCinmidlife who you can follow on Twitter here. 

Read More

ALEC Battles Voting Rights in Ohio

ALEC Battles Voting Rights in Ohio

Monday, 18 November 2013

Four GOP Anti-Voter Bills Set For Hearings This Week

The House Policy and Legislative Oversight Committee will be meeting in Room 116 this Tuesday to discuss two Republican voting bills.  (editor: It is important to note ALEC’s involvement in the battle for voting rights in Ohio, as all of the Republican politicians noted by Plunderbund are members of ALEC.)
Republican State Senator (member ALEC’s Civil Task Force) Bill’s Coley’s SB 205 prevents the Secretary of State from mailing absentee ballot applications to Ohioans during primary and special elections, and only allows ballots to be sent during a general election if the General Assembly approves funding for the ballots, which they’ll likely never do.   It also prevents any other official besides the Secretary of State from mailing ballot applications.
Secretary of State Jon Husted (R-ALEC) mailed absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in Ohio during the 2012 presidential election. Almost 1.3 million Ohioans cast an absentee ballot that November.  Coley’s bill, if passed, will ultimately end up seeing fewer people voting overall, fewer people voting absentee and more people likely voting in person.
Which is interesting, because Republican State Senator Joe Uecker’s (member of ALEC’s Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Task Force) bill, SB 200, will actually lowers the number of voting machines a county must have available for an election based on the number of votes cast in recent presidential election years.   Uecker’s bill changes the current formula, which is based on the total number of voters in two most recent presidential elections, by requiring counties to subtract the number of absentee voters from this number.
Given the huge number of absentee ballots cast in 2012, and with Coley’s bill likely to increase the number of people voting in person, voting machine shortages around the state could again become a familiar sight around our state for the next 7 years.
Later in the day, the Senate State Government Oversight and Reform Committee will be meeting (at 3:15 pm) in the South Hearing Room to discuss two more voting bills.
Republican State Senator Frank LaRose’s (member of ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force), bill SB 238, aims to cut six days off the beginning of the early voting schedule in Ohio.   This bill would not only reduce the number of early voting days from 35 to 29, it would also eliminate the so-called golden week when voters can register and vote on the same day.
Bill Seitz’s (member of ALEC’s Civil Justice Task Force) bill, SB 216, will reduce the period of time, from 10 days to 3 days, a provisional ballot voter has to provide additional information to their local BOE to get their vote counted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This article is written by Joseph and is entitled Four GOP Anti-voter Bills Set For Hearings This Week.  This article is posted at  http://www.plunderbund.com/2013/11/16/four-gop-anti-voter-bills-set-for-hearings-this-week/

Read More

Suppress the Vote With Lies? Sure, Go Ahead. WTF?

Suppress the Vote With Lies? Sure, Go Ahead

By: Katie Fleming

March 23, 2012 

The Denver Post is out with an editorial that proudly supports the defeat of Senate Bill 147, which would have made it a felony to spread falsehoods about election procedures or voter eligibility. Their reasoning? Outlawing false speech has a chilling effect on non-false speech. What?

Let’s be clear: In no way do we condone robocalls that attempt to scare voters from the polls, or efforts to undermine voters’ belief in their eligibility to cast a ballot.
Our concerns center on the chilling effect of criminalizing speech. It is easy to envision how such a law, if it had passed, could have been used to threaten not only the dishonorable, but even well-intentioned voter participation advocates who maybe weren’t exactly right in summarizing complex election law.
Why does it matter? Free speech is a precious constitutional right, and any law that attempts to curb that right — particularly one that makes speech a felony — must be considered very carefully. …

The best defense against such deception is an informed electorate. Voters must take steps to root out the truth, and the media can help them.
(Denver Post Editorial Board. March 22, 2012. Punish lies at the ballot box. Denver Post.)

Instead of outlawing the deception and trickery involved in voter suppression, the Denver Post Editorial Board thinks the speech of voter supressionists is so important that they’re willing to sacrifice the right to vote for people who don’t happen to be informed enough not to believe liars.
Instead of saying “You’re going to jail for telling students they can’t vote until Wednesday,” they’re saying “Sure, suppress the vote by bowing to false claims by unknown special interests, we think struggling media outlets with shrinking newsroom budgets and owned by just a handful of companies with their own interests at heart can make sure voters are informed.”
Not very compelling.

Read More

Rick Scott's dirtiest deeds

By Lisa Rab Thursday, Jul 14 2011

 

"I've seen the mountaintop!" shouted a woman blowing a whistle and marching in combat-style boots down Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach.
"We shall overcome Rick Scott's tyranny!" added a man who followed closely behind, limping a little.
At least 50 members of the disgruntled masses gathered outside the Palm Beach County Convention Center on this brutally warm March morning, when Gov. Rick Scott was about to give a speech. Scott had just introduced some of the budget proposals that would earn him the wrath of citizens across the state. Teachers, police officers, advocates for the disabled, retirees — people from all walks of life would soon be unified in their hatred of Florida's most powerful politician.

Mark Poutenis

By May, a Quinnipiac University poll put Scott's approval rating at a dismal 29 percent. This week, the Broward Police union is hosting a "Party to Leave the Party" protest against Scott in which cops who are Republicans plan to switch their voter registration and abandon the GOP en masse.
In response to this widespread discontent, Scott has urged supporters to send prewritten letters to the editors of local newspapers."Rick Scott deserves our unwavering and enthusiastic support," the letters say. He also uses recorded phone messages to tout his policy decisions, irritating voters with robocalls about pill mills and government spending cuts.
Born in Illinois, Scott , 58, was raised by a truck-driver dad and a mom who worked odd jobs. For about three years beginning when he was a toddler, his family lived in public housing — a humble beginning Scott emphasized in his campaign. By the time Scott was 10, his family had moved to a three-bedroom suburban house in Kansas City, Missouri, where he attended high school and college.
He earned a law degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and worked for a big firm in town before starting a health-care company called Columbia. He built his fortune at Columbia, eventually merging with Hospital Corporation of America and growing the enterprise to one of the world's largest health-care companies, with more than 340 hospitals and 550 health-care offices in 38 states. But the flush times ended abruptly.
In 1997, as FBI agents raided its offices and hospitals in several states, Columbia/HCA's board of directors forced Scott to resign. The feds alleged the company had paid kickbacks to doctors in exchange for patient referrals and had overcharged Medicare. The U.S. Justice Department called the resulting criminal case the largest health-care fraud in American history. Columbia/HCA pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and paid $1.7 billion in fines. Scott was never charged.
He did, however, testify in a separate deposition in an unrelated civil case against Columbia/HCA in 2000. When asked basic questions, including whether he was ever employed by Columbia/HCA, Scott refused to answer, citing his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. In media interviews, Scott has said, "You have to take responsibility for what happens under your watch." But he also said he didn't know the company was doing anything wrong.
In 2003, Scott moved to Naples with his wife. Last year, the billionaire ran for governor as a political novice, in a surprise campaign funded primarily by $60 million of his own money. Elected in the Tea Party wave that swept the country, he preached about fiscal austerity and promptly took a knife to cherished social safety nets. In a brief, 60-day legislative session, he implemented a wide-ranging conservative agenda.
He slashed funding for public schools, disabled people, and the unemployed; gave health-care companies control of Medicaid; and privatized nearly all of the prisons in the southern part of the state. Meanwhile, he enacted some of the most restrictive voting laws Florida has seen since the 2000 election debacle.
In June, as the public outcry against his policies continued, one of Scott's top staffers resigned and another was transferred to the state Department of Veterans Affairs. The governor, watching his ship sink, hired a Tallahassee insider as his new chief of staff. He also backed off one of his most controversial executive orders, which required state employees to undergo drug tests.
Despite these changes, the influence of Scott's first, combustible legislative session has already been enormous. Here, New Times takes stock of his dirtiest accomplishments.
Outsourced Prisons to His Political Donors
Last year, the private prison industry gave nearly $1 million to political campaigns in Florida, according to the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in Politics. The majority of the cash went to Republicans, and the largest chunk, $822,000, came from the GEO Group, a Boca Raton-based prison company formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections. (GEO also contributed $25,000 to Scott's inauguration party.) The prison lobby's influence on the Republican-dominated Legislature was immediately evident.
In early February, Scott proposed a plan to transfer 1,500 inmates from state-run lockups to private ones. The next month, lawmakers in the state Senate slipped language into their massive budget bill that privatized nearly all of the state prisons in 18 counties, including Broward and Palm Beach. The budget passed in May, opening the door for the GEO Group and other companies to begin bidding for contracts.
Proponents said the prison contracts will go only to bidders who reduce costs by 7 percent, saving the state about $27 million a year. But a legislative analyst who testified before the state Senate in February admitted it was tough to figure out the cost savings, because private and public prisons often operate differently. "They're never apples to apples," analyst Byron Brown said.
And a 2010 study of prisons in Arizona, which also has a cost-savings requirement for its private lockups, questioned whether outsourcing is the cheapest option. The Arizona state auditor found that medium-security private prisons cost $1,200 more per inmate a year than state-run facilities. Reviewing prison studies in other states, the auditor also noted "cost savings from contracting with private prisons... are not guaranteed."
Enacted Jim Crow-Style Voting Laws
After squeaking into office with just 61,550 more votes than his opponent, Scott wasted no time in disenfranchising people who might oust him in the next election cycle. In March, the Florida Clemency Board — composed of Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and other members of his cabinet — passed a ban on felon voting rights, forcing nonviolent offenders to wait five years after completing their sentences to apply to have their rights restored.
The new rule turned back the clock on Florida's voting laws. During the 2000 election, thousands of voters were wrongfully purged from the rolls because they were misidentified as felons. That mishap brought to light the painful fact that Florida had the largest number of disenfranchised felons in the nation — a disproportionate swath of whom were African-American.
Govs. Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist heeded the outcry over this injustice and made it easier for ex-felons to get their voting rights restored. But Scott undid all of their reforms, dismissing the racist implications of his decision.
The felon voting ban dates back to the years just following the Civil War. It was zealously employed — just like poll taxes — to keep African-Americans from voting, says Lance deHaven-Smith, a professor of public administration at Florida State University. "It was used to target and weaken voting rights for blacks, and that is what they're doing with it today," he says.
Scott wasn't done. In May, the Legislature passed new election requirements that can be used to prevent less-wealthy people — those who work long hours and move frequently — from voting. The law makes it tougher for get-out-the-vote groups to register new voters, requires voters to use a provisional ballot if they have moved from one county to another and not registered the address change before Election Day, and reduces the number of early voting days from 14 to eight.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit in Miami seeking to block implementation of the new law. Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida branch of the ACLU, called the law "a trifecta of voter suppression."
Mandated Drug Testing for State Workers and Welfare Recipients
You know something has gone terribly wrong when a concerned group of Key West citizens feels the need to send a communal vat of urine to Florida's governor.
The group, called the Committee for the Positive Insistence on a Sane Society (PISS), collected the urine samples to protest an executive order that Scott issued in March, requiring all state employees to submit to drug tests. "Floridians deserve to know that those in public service, whose salaries are paid with taxpayer dollars, are part of a drug-free workplace," he said at the time.
In June, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit calling the pee test unconstitutional. Scott suspended the order, pending the lawsuit, although state Department of Corrections employees will still be tested.
He campaigned on, and delivered, a separate law signed in May that requires prospective recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — cash welfare for families with children — to pass a drug test. This rule struck close to home for Scott. He has a brother in Texas who has struggled with bipolar disorder, has a criminal history that includes drug possession, and now receives social security insurance.
With this law, Florida might be repeating an old mistake. Thirteen years ago, the state launched a pilot program to drug-test recipients of cash welfare, and it was an utter failure. Only 3.8 percent of the 8,800 people who took the test failed it. This little government experiment cost the state $2.7 million, and the program was ultimately scrapped, according to PolitiFact.com.
How's that for fiscal austerity?
Fought the Prescription Drug Database
At first, Scott seemed determined to allow Florida's deadly pill-mill addiction to flourish. In February, he proposed repealing the law that created a prescription drug database designed to track the sale of narcotics. He argued that the database, intended to help spot patients who are "doctor-shopping," was an invasion of privacy. His backers in the Legislature also argued that the database didn't solve the problem because doctors weren't required to check it before dispensing drugs.
Still, in a state where seven deaths a day are blamed on prescription drug abuse, Scott's opposition to the database seemed bizarre. Lawmakers and police officials around the country — particularly in states such as Kentucky, whose OxyContin drug trade is fueled by Florida's pill mills — bellowed in protest. Even Scott's fellow Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi fought to keep the database. Finally, Scott reversed course and agreed. In June, he signed a law that strengthens criminal penalties for overprescribing drugs, requires pain clinics to register with the state, and prohibits most doctors from dispensing narcotics.
Privatized Medicaid
In Broward County, doctors and patients have been participating in an experiment with privatizing Medicaid since 2006, when then-Governor Bush enacted reforms he said would control skyrocketing costs and improve care through competition. The pilot program hit many pitfalls, but that didn't stop Scott from signing a law to expand it statewide. Now 3 million of Florida's poorest citizens, including children, pregnant women, and elderly residents of nursing homes, will learn the joys of dealing with HMOs.
Currently, Medicaid patients either enroll in a state-contracted HMO or visit doctors who accept Medicaid's fee for the services they perform. Under the new plan — proposed by Scott's transition team and sponsored by Sen. Joe Negron (R-Stuart) — patients must enroll in private HMO plans. The HMOs will have more power to change the "scope, duration, and level of benefits," says Laura Goodhue, executive director of the community health advocacy group Florida CHAIN. She fears the HMOs will limit services and deny claims.
In the pilot program that has been operating in Broward and four other counties since 2006, the results have been troubling. According to a 2008 Georgetown University review of the program, a majority of doctors complained that their patients were having a more difficult time getting care because of the maze of paperwork and limited benefits.
"The complexity of the program has grown, causing confusion and increased administrative burdens for consumers and providers," the report says. "Access to needed services appears to be worsening, according to both physicians and beneficiaries."
"The only way to save money is to delay and deny care," Goodhue says. "People are getting the runaround."
A state-funded study by University of Florida researchers shows that Medicaid expenditures decreased in Broward and Duval counties during the first two years of the pilot program but cautioned, "It is not known whether these savings are sustainable over time."
The saving grace might be that before it can be implemented statewide, the reform plan must be approved by federal officials, because more than half of Medicaid's funding comes from the federal government, Goodhue says.
Acted Sketchy About Solantic
Let's say you're a billionaire who amassed his wealth running a health-care company and then decided to run for governor. Immediately after taking office, you begin proposing and supporting legislation regarding health-care issues: privatizing Medicaid, requiring drug tests for state workers and welfare recipients, opposing a database that would track the sale of addictive prescription drugs. Unfortunately, the citizens of Florida are not total morons, and they realize that you, as governor, might actually profit from some of these proposals.
Turns out you still own a chain of urgent-care clinics that happen to offer $35 drug tests! Technically the $62 million investment in Solantic is in your wife's name. You moved it to the Frances Annette Scott Revocable Trust a few days before taking office. But it's tough to believe you're not still raking in the dough.
So do you apologize? Do you stage a public mea culpa and admit your conflict of interest? Not if you're Rick Scott. Instead, you wait for the media and the public to get so angry that someone files an ethics complaint against you. Then you rush to sell off your shares in the company. That's not suspicious at all.
Axed Funding for People With Disabilities
Need to trim your budget? There's no swifter solution than taking money from people who are physically incapable of fighting back.
The state Agency for Persons With Disabilities was running a $170 million deficit this spring when Scott decided to start slicing. Tasked with supporting 30,000 people with developmental disabilities, the agency had never been good at living within its means. Since 2005, it has shifted 5,000 clients from its waiting list to its roster but has never sufficiently increased its budget, says Kimberley Thompson, director of community relations for Sunrise Community, a Miami-based nonprofit agency that serves the disabled. Scott insisted he was rescuing the agency by forcing it to tighten its belt.
He issued an emergency order cutting payments to caregivers — the behavioral therapists, nurses, and others who care for people with cerebral palsy, autism, and other disabilities — by 15 percent. The government sets their fees based on the service they provide — anything from driving clients to the grocery store to speech therapy — so the impact of the payment cut varied widely. But some smaller, nonprofit providers said the cuts would put them out of business, Thompson says.
After a storm of protests from concerned parents and advocates, the state Legislature found a way to temporarily fill the budget gap, and Scott rescinded his emergency order. The agency's funding was restored for 2011, but it now must make 4 percent cuts for the fiscal year that starts in July.
Thompson is glad Scott changed his mind but says the governor and legislators need to learn more about how the agency for the disabled is run and where the money goes.
"I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he didn't intentionally harm thousands of people around the state," she says. "Once he was educated, he did make a better decision."
Gave Tax Breaks to Businesses; Cut Jobless Benefits
The day after winning the election, Scott announced Florida was "open for business." He wasn't kidding.
In the budget proposal he made public in February, he suggested lowering the state's corporate income tax rate by 2.5 percent, or $459 million. But an ounce of sanity prevailed in the Legislature, and in May, Scott was forced to settle for a measly $30 million cut. This translated to an average savings of about $1,100 a year for small businesses, although it also gives tax breaks to larger corporations.
Scott and the Republican-dominated Legislature were far less generous to the state's legions of laid-off workers. Florida already has some of the most meager unemployment benefits in the nation — $229 a week — and now those sparse checks will end sooner, after 23 weeks instead of 26. Even more frightening, in the future, benefits will be tied to the unemployment rate, decreasing as the jobless rate goes down.
Yes, you read that correctly. If more people have jobs and are paying taxes, unemployment benefits will go down. For example, when the state unemployment rate is at or below 5 percent, the unfortunate few without jobs can collect unemployment for only 12 weeks. If the Florida unemployment rate reaches or exceeds 10.5 percent (as of May, it was at 10.6 percent), laid-off workers can collect their full 23 weeks of benefits.
This slap in the face to jobless workers was accompanied by a 10 percent cut in the unemployment tax paid by businesses. Thoughtful, no?
Shuns Emails, Reporters, and the Sunshine Law
Rick Scott doesn't hide his disdain for Florida's open government laws. In February, he invited three powerful state Senate leaders to his mansion for a private dinner. They discussed, among other topics, his budget proposal.
This was strange, because when three senators gather to discuss legislative business, Senate rules require the meeting to be open to the public. But the citizens of Florida didn't get a dinner invitation.
In March, Scott scheduled a coffee date with ten legislators. When a Miami Herald reporter inquired about who would be attending and what the politicians would discuss, Scott's spokesman snapped at him, saying the event was "purely social." Then he canceled the coffee date.
Scott, meanwhile, told workers at the Department of Elderly Affairs that he doesn't use email — which is a convenient way to avoid creating a public record of his conversations.
"I don't have email," he said in March. "It's easier if I never get emailed. I get embarrassed by it that way. It's not as easy to communicate."
Before publishing this article, New Times called Scott's press office three times to request an interview. On the third phone call — 11 days after the original request — Scott's press secretary gave a nonanswer.
"We have received your multiple requests, and if we can accommodate that, someone will let you know," Lane Wright said.
But clearly, no one had let us know. Instead, a government spokesman — whose entire job is to answer questions from the public — was employing the silent treatment. "We are not gonna be commenting for this story," Wright finally conceded.
Shocking.
Lied About High-Speed Rail Money
A proposed high-speed bullet train between Tampa and Orlando wasn't a politically sexy idea. Some critics questioned how many people in this gas-guzzling, highway-loving state would ride a train to Disney World.
But Florida's own transportation department predicted the train would make money from the start, and the federal government was willing to pony up $2.4 billion of the estimated $2.6 billion in construction costs. As gas prices reached $4 a gallon, the train looked more and more like sound public policy.
But Scott chose to believe a study by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank partially funded by oil companies, that called into question the number of people who would ride the train. He feared taxpayers would be on the hook for future costs. His general counsel, attorney Charles Trippe, had told the Florida Supreme Court that $110 million in state funds had already been spent on the proposed rail project.
So Scott sent the money back to Washington.
Only later did the citizens of Florida learn that Scott was fudging the numbers. Turns out the state had spent only $31 million. Trippe apologized to the court, but the money was already gone by then.
About $400 million of Florida's train funds were rescinded by Congress and used to solve the federal budget crisis. The other $2 billion was redistributed to rail projects in the Northeast, Midwest, and California. So our friends in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are benefiting now from Scott's creative accounting.
Meanwhile, Scott angered his Tea Party backers by approving the $1.3 billion SunRail, a slower, commuter rail line in the Orlando area. Scott said he feared he'd lose a legal battle if he axed the project.
Gutted Environmental Protection Programs
While campaigning for governor, Scott called the Department of Community Affairs, the state agency charged with overseeing local development projects, a "jobs killer." He said he'd heard complaints that development permits were issued too slowly. (That building boom? It was a myth.)
Once he was elected, his transition team made the unabashedly prodevelopment suggestion of merging community affairs with the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Transportation, forming a new entity called the Department of Growth Leadership.
That plan never materialized, but the Legislature followed Scott's lead and began gutting programs. In May, the state Senate quietly passed a bill that killed the Department of Community Affairs, farming out its various duties to other government agencies. The Legislature also agreed with Scott's proposal to chop property tax funding for local water management districts — including a 30 percent, $128 million budget cut for the South Florida Water Management District, the agency charged with restoring the Everglades. (And he appointed onetime incinerator czar Juan Portuondo to the SFWMD.)
Scott was also determined to end funding for the state's Florida Forever program, which buys land to conserve for parks and forests. State lawmakers proposed a way to rescue the program by selling off surplus land in order to buy more. But in May, Scott used his line-item veto power to ax that plan from the budget.
Slashed Public Education Funding
Public schools lost about $542 per student in this year's education budget — an 8 percent funding cut that wouldn't seem so troubling if it weren't accompanied by so many other changes to the education system.
Florida teachers, already some of the lowest-paid in the nation, will now see their raises and job security tied to students' test scores. They will be fired if their annual evaluations are "unsatisfactory" two years in a row, and they will have to contribute 3 percent to their pension funds, a change they consider a pay cut. The merit pay bill, known as the Student Success Act, was a top priority for Scott and was the first to get his signature in March.
Maribah Haughey, a retired teacher who spent 21 years in Palm Beach County schools, was livid about the pay cuts. "All of this is going to drive a lot of young teachers out of Florida," she said. "The salaries suck anyway. What are they making, $30,000 a year?"
Meanwhile, virtual charter schools — which are privately run and publicly funded — were approved under a "Digital Learning" bill that also requires all students to take one online course before graduating. In addition, high-performing charter schools got a break on the fees they must pay to school districts. After signing these school-choice bills in June, Scott promoted them in private and charter schools across the state, telling reporters he now wants to create savings accounts that allow parents to pull their kids out of public schools and pay for private school instead.
Yes, it seems Scott would rather invest taxpayer money in private and charter schools — which are now, thanks to his policy reforms, subject to less public oversight — instead of trying to help the struggling public classrooms where most kids spend their days.

 

Read More

Everything That’s Happened Since Supreme Court Ruled on Voting Rights Act 

by Kara Brandeisky and Mike Tigas
ProPublica, Nov. 1, 2013, 11:24 a.m.

Last year, we wrote extensively about photo ID laws and the Supreme Court’s decision to strike a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, with gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and the debt ceiling and healthcare debates already shaping the 2014 midterms, we’re revisiting voting policies to see which states have enacted tougher restrictions since the Supreme Court ruling in June.
Remind me – what is Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act?

Under the Voting Rights Act, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination needed to get permission from the federal government to enact any changes to their voting laws, in a process called “preclearance.” As of June 2013, nine states, mostly in the South – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia – needed to get any new voting laws pre-approved. Some counties and townships in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota and Michigan were also subject to preclearance.
Section 5 first applied to states that imposed literacy tests or other unfair devices, and had low voter registration or turnout. Congress later expanded the law to add jurisdictions with sizable minority populations and English-only election materials.
States and localities could “bailout,” or get off the preclearance list, after 10 years of elections without any problems. Several smaller jurisdictions bailed out over the years, including parts of Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Wyoming, Hawaii, and Colorado.
Of course, some of the biggest voting law battles of the 2012 election were in states not covered by Section 5 at all, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.
What did the Supreme Court strike down in Shelby County v. Holder?
The Supreme Court decided, 5-4, that the preclearance formula was unconstitutional under the 10^th  Amendment, which gives states the power to regulate elections. The Court ruled that the coverage formula was “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day.”
From the decision:

Cite as: 570 U. S. ____ (2013)

3

Syllabus
cial discrimination in voting" that had "infected the electoral process
in parts of our country for nearly a century," Katzenbach, 383 U. S.,
at 308. At the time, the coverage formula--the means of linking the
exercise of the unprecedented authority with the problem that warranted 

it--made sense. The Act was limited to areas where Congress
found "evidence of actual voting discrimination," and the covered 

jurisdictions shared two characteristics: "the use of tests and devices
for voter registration, and a voting rate in the 1964 presidential 

election at least 12 points below the national average." Id., at 330. The
Court explained that "[t]ests and devices are relevant to voting 

discrimination because of their long history as a tool for perpetrating
the evil; a low voting rate is pertinent for the obvious reason that
widespread disenfranchisement must inevitably affect the number of
actual voters." Ibid. The Court therefore concluded that "the coverage 

formula [was] rational in both practice and theory." Ibid.
Pp. 12-13.
(3) Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically.
Largely because of the Voting Rights Act, "[v]oter turnout and 

registration rates" in covered jurisdictions "now approach parity. 

Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority
candidates hold office at unprecedented levels." Northwest Austin,
supra, at 202. The tests and devices that blocked ballot access have
been forbidden nationwide for over 40 years. Yet the Act has not
eased ?5's restrictions or narrowed the scope of ?4's coverage formula
along the way. Instead those extraordinary and unprecedented features have 

been reauthorized as if nothing has changed, and they
have grown even stronger. Because ?5 applies only to those jurisdictions 

singled out by ?4, the Court turns to consider that provision.
Pp. 13-17.
(b) Section 4's formula is unconstitutional in light of current conditions. 

Pp. 17-25.
(1) In 1966, the coverage formula was "rational in both practice
and theory." Katzenbach, supra, at 330. It looked to cause 

(discriminatory tests) and effect (low voter registration and turnout), 

and tailored the remedy (preclearance) to those jurisdictions exhibiting both.
By 2009, however, the "coverage formula raise[d] serious constitutional questions." 

Northwest Austin, supra, at 204. Coverage today
is based on decades-old data and eradicated practices. The formula
captures States by reference to literacy tests and low voter registration and 

turnout in the 1960s and early 1970s. But such tests have
been banned for over 40 years. And voter registration and turnout
numbers in covered States have risen dramatically. In 1965, the
States could be divided into those with a recent history of voting tests
and low voter registration and turnout and those without those char-

 

One important technical point: the Supreme Court actually left Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – the part of the law that describes how preclearance works – intact. Instead, the Court struck down Section 4, which explains which states and localities are subject to preclearance. If Congress amends Section 4, the Justice Department can start enforcing Section 5 again.
Why does this matter?

Takeaways

• Seven preclearance states have announced new restrictions since the Supreme Court rolled back the Voting Rights Act.
• Last year, a federal court called Texas's photo ID law "most stringent in the country.” Now, it's in effect.
• Two months after the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, North Carolinacut early voting and eliminated same-day registration.
• Are you registered to vote? Virginia has purged 38,000 voters, and Kansas has suspended registration for 17,500.

While literacy tests are a thing of the past, voting rights advocates say that statutes that limit early voting and registration, require voters to show photo ID, and purge voter rolls still disproportionately affect poor and minority voters.
The Supreme Court’s June 2013 decision also effectively shifted the burden from states to citizens. Before, a state subject to preclearance had to demonstrate that a new voting law was not discriminatory and let voting law experts in the Justice Department evaluate it before it could be implemented. Now it is up to voters to challenge voting laws by filing lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination.

But most court cases involving Section 2 have been limited to redistricting, not other controversial voting measures, says Yale University law professor Heather Gerken.
“With redistricting, there’s always one very wealthy political party or another who can hire some very good lawyers and go into court and challenge it,” Gerken said. “But a lot of the types of things that were challenged under Section 5 were smaller questions, like, ‘Can you change a polling place? Can you shut down early voting hours in ways that might affect the black community?’ There are things smaller than redistricting that can fall through the cracks.”
What have preclearance states done since the Supreme Court ruling?
a NORTH CAROLINA: Two months after the Supreme Court decision, North Carolina passed a number of measures, including strict new photo ID requirements. The law also eliminates same-day voter registration, shortens the early voting period by seven days, and specifies that ballots cast at the wrong polling station will be thrown out. Some changes will be phased in starting in 2014, and the photo ID provision goes into effect in 2016.
The North Carolina NAACP and a civil rights group called the Advancement Project have filed a lawsuit challenging the changes. The Justice Department also filed a suit of its own. But the suits venture into some new legal territory.
“What North Carolina did was definitely at the extreme of practices in this country,” Gerken said. “So if anything is vulnerable to a suit, it’s likely to be the North Carolina law. But again, the case law was built around redistricting cases. It wasn’t built around this kind of work.”
q TEXAS: Last year, a federal court rejected Texas’ voter ID law, calling it “the most stringent in the country.” The panel also rejected the state’s redistricting maps, finding that they protected white incumbents while altering districts with minority incumbents.
But on the very day of the Supreme Court ruling, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the state would “immediately” enact both measures.
The photo ID law requires voters to present an approved form of photo identification, where before they could present mail, utility bills or other proof of voter registration. The Justice Department had refused to approve the law based on the state’s findings that Hispanic registered voters were far less likely to have the approved photo IDs. The new law also requires the photo ID presented on voting day to match the state’s voter rolls — complicating voting for some married women and others with name changes.
The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against the newly enacted photo ID requirements and joined an ongoing lawsuit against the disputed redistricting maps.
I FLORIDA: After the Supreme Court ruling, Florida resumed its plans to remove non-citizens from its voter rolls using the federal SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database. The Department of Homeland Security database helps government agencies check the immigration statuses of people applying for government benefits like drivers’ licenses, housing assistance, or Medicaid.
But opponents of Florida’s measure say that SAVE data is faulty and not meant for elections, and that using the database to verify voter rolls will disenfranchise eligible voters. (Colorado legislators rejected a bill to purge rolls based on SAVE data for this very reason, but that didn’t stop Secretary of State Scott Gessler from moving ahead with the plan.) The Miami Herald found that Florida voters flagged for verification were disproportionately Hispanic, and most turned out to be citizens. The Department of Justice has also said that SAVE is not meant to be “a comprehensive and definitive listing of U.S. citizens,” especially since it doesn’t include data about people born in the United States.
A nonprofit group has challenged the law, but a federal court dismissed the lawsuit after the Supreme Court ruled that Florida was no longer subject to preclearance. Another group has appealed a similar case to the 11^th Circuit.
s VIRGINIA: Virginia passed a number of voting laws this spring that seem likely to go into effect in wake of the Supreme Court ruling.
The Virginia legislature passed a photo ID law last year (which the Justice Department approved), but the more recent measure goes further to limit what kinds of voter identification are acceptable. Voters can no longer show utility bills, bank statements, government checks or paychecks before they vote, but they can get an ID for freeif they don’t already have one.
The new laws also require the Virginia State Board of Elections to remove ineligible voters by comparing state voter rolls with the SAVE database and other states.The Democratic Party of Virginia has sued the state over the interstate crosschecks, contending that the database has erroneous information and the law will disenfranchise poor, elderly and minority voters, but a federal judge rejected the suit for lack of evidence. As of Oct. 17, the Board of Elections had already purged more than 38,000 voters.
n SOUTH CAROLINA: In October 2012, a federal court blocked the implementation of South Carolina’s photo ID law until 2013. The court found that although the law was not discriminatory, there was not enough time to implement changes before the 2012 election. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said the Supreme Court ruling now allows states to “implement reasonable election reforms, such as voter ID laws similar to South Carolina’s.”
Y MISSISSIPI: Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said Mississippi will enact a strict photo ID law by 2014. The state says it will provide free transportation to government offices where voters will be able to obtain free photo IDs.
B ALABAMA: Secretary of State Beth Chapman said Alabama would also enact changes to its photo ID law by 2014. Like Virginia, Alabama used to accept other kinds of non-photo identification, such as utility bills and Social Security cards. But the new law requires voters to present photo IDs (the state will also provide free voter IDs to those who don’t have them). Legislators passed the measure in 2011, but Alabama stalled in submitting the law for preclearance.
D ARIZONA: The Supreme Court issued another significant ruling on voting laws this summer: In Arizona et al. v Intertribal Council of Arizona, Inc. et al., the Court ruled that Arizona, formerly a preclearance state, could not unilaterally require voters to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote in a federal election. But the Court said Arizona could sue the Election Assistance Commission to get the federal voter registration form amended to require proof of citizenship. Now, both Arizona and Kansas have sued the commission.
In case their legal challenges are unsuccessful, the states are setting up two-tiered systems of voter registration, requiring proof of citizenship for state and local races but not federal ones. So far, Kansas has suspended registration for about 17,500 voters until those they submit proof of citizenship.
o SOUTH DAKOTA: Four Directions Inc., a Native American voting rights group, has asked the Justice Department to investigate why Secretary of State Jason Grant has so far refused to use federal money to fund satellite voting centers for registration and early voting on some Native American reservations.
What about non-preclearance states?
The 35 states that were not subject to any kind of preclearance were unaffected by the Supreme Court decision. But several of those states have also moved to tighten voting rules this year.
C ARKANSAS: This spring, Republican legislators overrode the governor’s veto to pass a law requiring voters to show photo IDs. If voters don’t have them, they can cast provisional ballots and return with IDs by the Monday after the election. The state will also provide free IDs to people who do not already have them.
L IOWA: In late March, Iowa implemented an administrative rule allowing Secretary of State Matt Schultz to begin a voter roll purge using the SAVE database. Activists have sued Schultz in an attempt to stop the purge.
O INDIANA: In May, Indiana enacted a law requiring officials to check voter rolls for individuals registered to vote in other states. The advocacy group Project Vote worries that the measure could lead to voter purges.
Z MONTANA: After Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock vetoed a measure that would have eliminated same-day voter registration, the legislature decided to let the people decide. In 2014, Montana citizens will vote in a referendum on whether to keep same-day registration. Backers of the measure say it will cut down on lines at the polls.
c NEBRASKA: This spring, Nebraska shortened early voting by 10 days. Voters will still be able to vote in the 25 days leading up to an election.
b NORTH DAKOTA: North Dakota is the only state without voter registration. In April, the state strengthened its voter ID law to no longer allow people without photo ID to vote by affidavit.
p TENNESSEE: This spring, Tennessee passed a bill restricting the kinds of IDs that can be used to vote. Previously, voters could show student IDs, out-of-state IDs, library cards, or any other IDs issued by counties or municipalities. Now only photo IDs issued by the state of Tennessee or the federal government are acceptable. The Green Party of Tennessee has sued the state over the law.
So, where does all of this leave the Voting Rights Act?
The Supreme Court left it up to Congress to write new preclearance criteria. In a July hearing, House Republicans showed little interest in rewriting Section 4. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., says there’s actually quiet Republican support for the issue. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., made headlines when he publicly supported restoring the law.
“There is at least one Republican, and you’ll find out in the future a lot more, that is committing to putting life in this most important civil rights act that got a stab in the back from the Supreme Court,” Sensenbrenner said.
Gerken, the law professor, isn’t optimistic that Congress will come up with a new Section 4 formula. But she said there are other actions Congress could take. For example, she has advocated that Congress adopt an “opt-in” approach and allow civil rights groups to file simple complaints for the Justice Department to investigate. Then the agency could halt the implementation of discriminatory laws as necessary.
Yale law professor Travis Crum has also suggested a “bail-in” measure, by which Congress could instead strengthen Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, letting courts put states under preclearance if their voting laws violate the 14^th or 15^th amendments.
As part of the Justice Department’s lawsuits against Texas and North Carolina, the federal agency has asked the courts to put those states back under preclearance.
This post will be kept up-to-date. Has your state or local government restricted voting rights since June 2013? Tweet at me, email me at kara.brandeisky@propublica.org or leave a comment below.

MAP METHODOLOGY: This map tracks state voting laws before and after Shelby County v. Holder on four key issues: photo ID, early voting, same-day registration and voter roll purging. States with the most restrictive voting measures involving these four issues are the darkest; each state earned one point per restrictive policy. So a state with restrictive policies in all four areas would have a score of four and appear the darkest. The “before” map reflects policies in place on June 24, 2013, the day before the Shelby County v. Holder ruling. The “after” map reflects policies in place as of Oct. 31, 2013, even if the changes are pending implementation. Details on scoring per issue follow.

Photo ID: States received a point if they will require photo ID in upcoming elections (even 2014 or 2016) as of Oct. 31, 2013. States that require ID but also accept non-photo IDs, such as paychecks or utility bills, didn’t receive a point. Likewise, states that have passed photo ID legislation but have been unable to enact the law because of a court order (such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania), didn’t get a point.
Early voting: States received a point if they don’t allow in-person voting before Election Day, or require an excuse for absentee early voting. States that have shortened early voting didn’t get a point as long as they still allow some early voting.
Same-day registration: States received a point if they don’t allow registration on Election Day.
Voter roll purging: States received a point if they have asked for access to, or support using, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE)database to maintain state voter rolls. Not all states that have requested access have actively begun purging voter rolls.

 

Read More