Jesse Nevel Unit II Paper

The victory of Barack Obama was a triumph of democracy. There were widespread, nationwide efforts to suppress the vote, but the will of the American people was too strong and the movement for change too powerful. This does not mean that attention should be diverted from the continuous problem of voter suppression. The right to vote has become a fragile thing in America. Americans should not stand by while their rights are destroyed. The efforts to suppress the vote in order to affect the outcome of the election did not succeed, but the issue of voter suppression is still a problem and it must be addressed and it must be fixed.

The history of voter suppression is a story of fear and intimidation. And in many cases, it's a story of racism. In fact, it's impossible to talk about voter suppression without talking about racism because the two phenomena are inextricably linked.

The National Voting Rights Act of 1965 was established to outlaw racist voting practices that had caused the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the United States. The Act prohibits states from imposing any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color," and specifically to outlaw requiring voters to pass literacy tests.

That was 1965. Now, fast forward to 35 years later. It’s the year 2000. The victory of George W. Bush was decided by 537 votes in our beloved state of Florida. Thousands of economically disadvantaged voters and black voters were turned away the polls because their names appeared on a list of felons disqualified from voting. A staggering percentage of these people were not felons. I’m not going to ask you all to relive the confusion and chaos of that election, so instead I’ll briefly summarize the findings of a report issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The Commission concluded that “widespread voter disenfranchisement—not the dead-heat contest—was the extraordinary feature in the Florida election.” I’m quoting here from the executive summary of the report.

“The Commissioners voted unanimously to conduct an extensive public investigation into these allegations of voting irregularities. Toward that end, the Commission held three days of hearings in Miami and Tallahassee and, using its subpoena powers, collected more than 30 hours of testimony from more than 100 witnesses—all taken under oath—and reviewed more than 118,000 pages of pertinent documents.

The Florida legislature's decision to privatize its list maintenance procedures without establishing effective clear guidance for these private efforts from the highest levels, coupled with the absence of uniform and reliable verification procedures, resulted in countless eligible voters being deprived of their right to vote.”

Fast-forward FOUR years... 2004. History almost repeated itself. There was yet another list of purported felons who were to be blocked from voting. It was all set up and ready to go. But then the media, in a rare triumph of investigative competency, decided to take a look into this story and discovered that the list included thousands of black voters and that many people on the list, once again, were actually eligible voters. And so Jeb was forced to deactivate the list.

That doesn’t mean the 2004 election wasn’t problematic. There were many other problems. According to statistical analysis conducted by University of California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor, electronic voting machines in Florida awarded George W. Bush up to 260,000 more votes than he should have received. Since then, Florida has switched to paper ballots.

The Elections Assistance Commission, an agency created by Bush, found that in the 2004 presidential election, over three million votes –3,006,080 to be exact – were cast and not counted. U.S. government experts reported that a black voter’s ballot was 900% more likely than a white voter’s to get “lost” in the system.

This goes back to 2002, when something called the Help America Vote Act was signed into law. The HAVA, contrary to its friendly title, established a new set of obstacles between citizens and their right to vote. For the first time in American history, the HAVA requires voters to provide ID at the polls, a measure taken to prevent voter fraud. Voter fraud is when a person shows up on Election Day with a fake ID and votes under that name. You’d think this must be a pretty huge problem for the President to sign a law forcing people to get a photo ID -- something that isn’t so easy for some people to do. (1/10 Americans don’t have government-issued ID because they don’t have a passport or they don’t have a car, and this number is even higher in black communities.) The truth about voter fraud is that it almost never happens. In a study ordered by George W. Bush, it was discovered that five voters -- 5 voters out of 170 million -- were found to be illegitimate.

In 2006, U.S. Secretaries of State were given the power to reject first-time registrants where officials decide they cannot match your identity to government records. Registration forms have been rejected by the hundreds of thousands. This is a law that targets typically “Latino, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Muslim-surnamed citizens.” The GOP Secretary of State of Florida rejected 85,000 mostly black voters. The Secretary of State of Colorado purged one fifth of that swing state’s voters. She is now the Chairman of the US Elections Assistance Commission.

The HAVA also created the provisional ballot. The provisional ballot gets handed to you if you’re told at the polls that you’re not eligible because your records don’t match up, your information doesn’t match your registration info. Then you’re expected to go home, get your proper documentation, and mail it in. It sounds like they’re being nice and giving you a second chance to vote if you don’t make it in the first time. Well, that’s not the case. Approximately three million voters nationwide cast provisional ballots in the 2004 election. A third of those provisional ballots were thrown away.

I mentioned the fear of voter fraud before. That’s been a huge issue in the past several months as both campaigns have accused each other of committing voter fraud. McCain and the national media made a huge fuss about ACORN. ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. They register people particularly in low income communities. What happened is that the Board of Elections in 9 different states received thousands of fraudulent registration forms from ACORN. Dead people’s names showed up, names were repeated, the names of seven-year-old girls appeared on the forms, even Mickey Mouse tried to register. Everyone freaked out. Obama’s past connections to ACORN came under scrutiny. Lou Dobbs on CNN asked his viewers, “Are the Democrats trying to steal this election through radical, left-wing organizations like ACORN?”

I’ll tell you now exactly what I yelled at Lou Dobbs’s face on my TV screen. I know how ACORN works because I worked for ACORN. Over the summer, I registered people to vote in Broward County. We got paid hourly to register people and we had a quota we had to fill each day (20 registrations per day was the minimum). ACORN has a serious, intensive quality control department: at the end of each workday, every form is checked for possible signs of fraud. If something looks suspicious, our employer would call the number on the form to verify the person's identity. If the form turned out to be fraudulent, the employee would be fired immediately. I watched this happen once. And our boss emphasized, over and over and over: "Fraud is illegal and you will be fired if you commit fraud." Simple as that.

Here's the thing: according to ACORN policy and according to the law, ACORN is required to send all registration forms to the Board of Elections, even the ones they have designated as being problematic. It is then the responsibility of the Board of Elections to discern the authentic forms from the fraudulent forms. That's why ACORN sent those fraudulent registration forms to the Board of Elections. It's the law. And furthermore, registering "fraudulent" voters is pointless because a person who doesn't actually exist cannot vote. Dead people can't vote. Seven-year-old girls can't vote. Mickey Mouse can't vote.

The sad thing about all the media attention given to ACORN is that it distracts people from the real voter suppression occurring in states all over the country.

There’s something new every single day.

Article in the New York Times, October 9, 2008: “Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law.”

Article in the Inter Press Service, October 14th, 2008: “An alleged purge of registered voters, many of whom lost their homes to bank foreclosure, in the state of Michigan has prompted a lawsuit and calls in for a Justice Department investigation.”

PBS did a special on voter caging, which has often been used to target minority voters in heavily Democratic precincts. “Caging is a practice whereby a political party or campaign sends mail that can't be forwarded to a targeted group of registered voters—often minorities. A ‘caging list’ of those whose mail is returned ‘undelivered’ is then used as the basis for getting them taken off the voter rolls, on the grounds that the voter does not live at the address where he or she is registered.” There are many reasons why mail might return undelivered. Mail problems might ensue. The person might be serving in the military overseas. But those political operatives assume that the person’s registration information is outdated and shred their right to vote into pieces.

Combatting voter suppression can only prevail if voters are equipped with knowledge of their rights. Here are a few basic facts about voting:

You’d think from all the felon ineligibility talk that if you actually are a felon, you’re screwed. But truth is, FELONS CAN VOTE if their rights have been restored. If you know a felon or you are a felon, go to www.restorerights.org to find of how to get your voting rights restored. Homeless people can vote too. All you need to do is identify a place of residence – for example, a street corner, a park, a shelter.

You must show photo ID before you receive a ballot. Accepted forms of ID include a Florida driver’s license, a Florida ID card, a US passport, a debit or credit card with your photo on it, a military or student ID, a retirement center ID, a neighborhood association ID, or a public assistance ID. And if it has your photo but not your signature, make sure you have some other form of ID with your signature on it. If possible, do not accept a provisional ballot because it probably won’t be counted. Demand adjudication from poll judges on the spot. Demand a call to the supervisor of elections. Or go home and get acceptable ID. But don’t accept a provisional ballot.

The most important thing is to spread information. Communicate to your friends, neighbors, lovers, enemies, everyone you know – let them know what their rights are and what they can do. Democracy is about the empowerment of the people. We have to do everything we can to make sure our rights are upheld, our votes are counted, our voices are heard. It is our responsibility as citizens and voters to protect our democracy.