Voting dangers include ‘all-American’ efforts

Bill Knight column for 9-20, 21 or 22, 2018

            While many people’s attention is on some hostile foreign power interfering with the November election, a campaign to exclude qualified U.S. citizens from voting quietly continues.

            It’s not Russia; it’s Republicans – at least, extremists in the GOP, think tanks and the Supreme Court.

            On the heels of widespread partisan redistricting, other obstacles to the right to vote include delays at precincts with considerable minority or poor households (caused by too-few election judges, etc.), or reducing early voting. And in November, 23 states will have new rules like proving citizenship.

            Millions could be affected in the upcoming election, according to a new report by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. which calls another obstacle, voter purges, “one of the biggest threats to the ballot in 2018.”

            Brennan Deputy Director Myrna Perez said, “Purges have increased particularly in a handful of largely southern states which were freed from oversight by the Supreme Court’s landmark 2013 decision in ‘Shelby County v. Holder.’ Before, areas around the country with histories of racial discrimination in voting were prohibited from making election changes without first showing that the change would not make minority voters worse off, or that the change was not enacted with that purpose.”

            No more.

            In June the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision OK’d Ohio’s controversial voter-purge law, blocking thousands of eligible voters from casting ballots. Later that month, the same 5-4 lineup of Republican-appointed Justices upheld Texas legislative districts that a lower court said discriminated against Hispanics.

            Chief Justice John Roberts’ conservative bloc has shown they think states should be free to determine their own voting maps and election practices regardless of concerns about or evidence of bias.

            Meanwhile, between the federal elections of 2014 and 2016, almost 16 million people were removed from the rolls – almost 4 million more than were purged between 2006 and 2008, Brennan said.

            Ohio alone reportedly removed 2 million voters between 2011-2016.

            “Ohio claims 1.5 million voters (20 percent of its registered voters!) have relocated from their precinct or the state,” according to investigative reporter Greg Palast, author of “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of The Stolen Election.”

            Ohio voters who have skipped just one election may be asked via postcard whether they've moved. Voters whose postcards are undeliverable or not returned, and who fail to vote in the next four years, are then purged.

            “We cannot tell how many of those individuals were wrongly kicked off the voter rolls,” Perez said/ "There are legitimate reasons that names get deleted in order to help keep voter rolls up-to-date. Individuals can be removed when they pass away or move, for example. But some states and jurisdictions are using bad information.

            “The problem with voter purges is that they can happen behind closed doors with the stroke of a keyboard, and most of the time people don’t find out about it until it is too late,” she added.

            Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the June ruling's majority, writing that the Supreme Court is “ultimately sanctioning the very purging that Congress expressly sought to protect against.”

            The decision wipes out the rights of “minority, low-income, disabled, homeless and veteran voters," she continued. “Our democracy rests on the ability of all individuals, regardless of race, income or status, to exercise their right to vote."

            Palast has filed a demand to get the list of voter names purged from registration records in the Ohio situation to do a check on the validity of the state’s action.

            “It’s really simple,” he said. “Ask the voter. Call them up, knock on their door: ‘Mr. Webster, have you moved to Virginia?’ ”

            For its part, the Brennan Center suggests three actions: register to vote and check that all information is up to date; make sure local officials have adequate, accurate resources, such as paper backups of electronic ballots and trained poll workers; and cast ballots.