ACLU’s Online Protect the Vote Team

Politicians across the country are trying to silence millions of people by robbing them of their right to vote.  And they’re targeting specific groups of voters: people of color, the poor, and students.

The ACLU is looking for people to step forward and play an active online role in protecting the right to vote.  The November elections are fast approaching and vulnerable voters could lose their voice in this democracy if we don’t act now.

Many politicians, motivated solely by partisan politics, are blocking access to the ballot by requiring forms of identification that are difficult or costly to acquire.  They are cutting back early and late night voting hours, widely used by minority and low-income groups.  And their campaign to suppress the vote has incited vigilante groups to plan on bullying voters at the ballot box.

Help turn back this assault.  Join the ACLU’s online Protect the Vote Team.  Between now and November 4th, they will ask you to defend the right to vote by signing petitions to Congress, sharing the ACLU’s “Know Your Voting Rights” resources, and passing along truth-telling videos about efforts to block the vote.

The ACLU is battling in state after state to protect voting rights.  We need to let politicians know we won’t quit until access to the polls is easy and fair for all citizens.

The time to act is now!

CLICK HERE to join Daily Kos and the ACLU by taking the pledge today.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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The State of Voting in 2014

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law just published a report by Wendy R. Weiser and Erik Opsal on the State of Voting in 2014 in the United States.

As we approach the 2014 election, America is still in the midst of a high-pitched and often highly partisan battle over voting rights.  On one side are politicians passing laws and executive actions that would make it harder for many citizens to vote.  This started after the 2010 midterm elections, when new state legislative majorities pushed a wave of laws cracking down on voting.  On the other side are groups of voters and advocates pushing back — in the legislatures, at the ballot box, and especially in the courts.

In all, voters in 15 states are facing an array of stricter voting rules in a major election for the first time this year.

The laws in six of those states are being challenged in court.

CLICK HERE to read the report.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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The Other Side of Voter Fraud

A recent nationwide analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000 found only 10 instances of in-person fraud. So were is the bulk of fraud coming from that calls into question the integrity of the vote?

It is coming from candidates, their campaigns, and Board of Elections' staff.

So the current state's new voter ID laws, the most frequently proposed measure to combat voter fraud, wouldn't have done anything to prevent the voter fraud that is coming before the courts.

Here are some examples:

In the midst of his 2012 GOP primary campaign for a Massachusetts state House seat, Jack Villamaino changed the party affiliation of nearly 300 people in his town of East Longmeadow. Days later, the same number of absentee ballot requests were dropped off at the town clerk’s office, a list that was almost a “name-for-name match” for those whose registration information Villamaino had altered.

Villamaino pleaded guilty to felony charges of stealing ballots and changing the party affiliation of 280 Democrats during his campaign for state representative. A judge sentenced him to a year in jail, only four months of which he'll be forced to serve behind bars.

The remainder of that sentence will be suspended, and Villamaino will also be required to serve a year of probation. Villamaino's defense attorney had hoped the judge would throw out the felony conviction, while Hampden District Attorney Mark Mastroianni had sought additional felony charges for forgery and perjury.

Villamaino, a former East Longmeadow Board of Selectmen chairman who resigned last year amid the scandal, ultimately lost his Republican primary, and the GOP candidate subsequently lost to the Democrat in the race.

His wife, Courtney Llewellyn, is also facing charges stemming from the scandal, though she has pleaded not guilty and will appear in court later this month.

A conservative judge sentenced Ohio Democratic poll worker Melowese Richardson to five years in prison for illegal voting. She was found guilty of having voted for her sister who was in a coma, as well as for herself, in 2012 and in previous elections.

Colin Small, a young Republican who threw voter registration forms from voters for other parties into a dumpster before the 2012 elections, ended without any legal consequences.

In 2008, the Indiana petition requirement for the Democratic Presidential Primary was 4,500 signatures and at least 500 signatures had to come from the nine U.S. House districts in the state. On April 25, 2013 an Indiana jury convicted two individuals, one the Democratic Party Chairman and the other a Board of Election official, of forging signatures on the Democratic Presidential Primary petition for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Without the fraudulent signatures, neither Clinton nor Obama would have had enough valid signatures in the Second District, so their statewide petitions would have failed. The fraud was committed by four individuals. Two pleaded guilty and their testimony was used to convict the other two.

Let us know about cases you found in your state.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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The Perfect Storm: Motor Voter Act, Voter ID, and Deportation

This story begins with the plans that would allow people who are in the U.S. illegally or are legal but not citizens, to get driver’s licenses.

The most recent state, Connecticut, is still working on the wording of their bill. If enacted today, about 54,000 immigrants are old enough to apply. Advocates say it would ensure undocumented immigrants are given proper driving tests and allow them to get car insurance and provide additional state revenue from registration fees and car taxes.

The states that allow undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses: Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

The next chapter in our story is The Motor Voter Act.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), popularly known as The Motor Voter Act, compliance did not become mandatory until 1995, is a legislation that required state governments to allow registration when a qualifying voter applied for or renewed their drivers license or applied for social services. This legislation forced state governments to make the voter registration process easier by providing uniform registration services through drivers' license registration centers, disability centers, schools, libraries, and mail-in registration.

The NVRA allows the Department of Justice to bring civil actions in federal court to enforce its requirements. These sections deal with voter registration:

• States should provide individuals with the opportunity to register to vote at the same time that they apply for a driver's license or seek to renew a driver's license, and requires the State to forward the completed application to the appropriate state of local election official. [Section 5]

• States should offer voter registration opportunities at all offices that provide public assistance and all offices that provide state-funded programs primarily engaged in providing services to persons with disabilities. Each applicant for any of these services, renewal of services, or address changes must be provided with a voter registration form of a declination form as well as assistance in completing the form and forwarding the completed application to the appropriate state or local election official. [Section 7 ]

• The Act also creates requirements as to how States should maintain voter registration lists for federal elections.[ Section 8]

The Act applies to 44 states and the District of Columbia. Those states which did not have voter registration requirements or had election-day registration at polling places were exempted from the purview of the Act.

Now comes along more voter ID laws that require people who do not drive go to their motor vehicle office to get a picture ID.

So here is the perfect storm.

Imagine having just arrived as a legal or undocumented immigrant to the United States. With foreign passport and visa in hand, or in some states no documents, you go to your local department of motor vehicles office to obtain a state ID or driver’s licence. To your surprise, a DMV official offers you the opportunity to become an organ donor and to register to vote.

As a result, you walk out of your local DMV, a proud new potential organ donor with state ID in hand. Within a few weeks you receive your voter-registration card in the mail, which you regard as official confirmation of your eligibility to vote. During the next election you happily go to your local polling place to vote, fulfilling what you see as your civic duty in your new homeland.

What you don't know is that your voter-registration card and your participation in a federal congressional election amount to an immigration kiss of death. You soon receive notice from the Department of Homeland Security of your impending deportation.

Sounds like an immigrant's worst nightmare. Unfortunately, thanks to the 1993 NVRA, it's a reality for many immigrants who arrive in the U.S. eager to start a new life.

Motor Voter effectively does away with document requirements and incorporates a convenient voter-registration solicitation as part of the process of issuing a driver's license or state ID. Unfortunately, these immigrants who mistakenly register to vote, then those that vote, risk deportation.

So we have created this perfect storm.

Let me know how you would fix this.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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A New Look at Voter Suppression in 2012

During the 2012 election cycle, all manner of voter suppression was a major topic. But it looks like an uninspired candidate was the reason for the suppression.

Blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home.

Had people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for The Associated Press. Last year’s heavy black turnout came despite concerns about the effect of new voter-identification laws on minority voting, outweighed by the desire to re-elect the first black president.

William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, analyzed the 2012 elections for the AP using census data on eligible voters and turnout, along with November’s exit polling. He estimated total votes for Obama and Romney under a scenario where 2012 turnout rates for all racial groups matched those in 2004. Overall, 2012 voter turnout was roughly 58 percent, down from 62 percent in 2008 and 60 percent in 2004.

The analysis also used population projections to estimate the shares of eligible voters by race group through 2030. The numbers are supplemented with material from the Pew Research Center and George Mason University associate professor Michael McDonald, a leader in the field of voter turnout who separately reviewed aggregate turnout levels across states, as well as AP interviews with the Census Bureau and other experts. The bureau is scheduled to release data on voter turnout in May.

Overall, the findings represent a tipping point for blacks, who for much of America’s history were disenfranchised and then effectively barred from voting until passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

But the numbers also offer a cautionary note to both Democrats and Republicans after Obama won in November with a historically low percentage of white supporters. While Latinos are now the biggest driver of U.S. population growth, they still trail whites and blacks in turnout and electoral share, because many of the Hispanics in the country are children or non-citizens.

The 2012 data suggest Romney was a particularly weak GOP candidate, unable to motivate white voters let alone attract significant black or Latino support. Obama’s personal appeal and the slowly improving economy helped overcome doubts and spur record levels of minority voters in a way that may not be easily replicated for Democrats soon.

Romney would have erased Obama’s nearly 5 million-vote victory margin and narrowly won the popular vote if voters had turned out as they did in 2004, according to Frey’s analysis. Then, white turnout was slightly higher and black voting lower.

More significantly, the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states remained the same.

“The 2012 turnout is a milestone for blacks and a huge potential turning point,” said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University who has written extensively on black politicians. “What it suggests is that there is an `Obama effect’ where people were motivated to support Barack Obama. But it also means that black turnout may not always be higher, if future races aren’t as salient.”

Whit Ayres, a GOP consultant who is advising GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a possible 2016 presidential contender, says the last election reaffirmed that the Republican Party needs “a new messenger and a new tone.” Change within the party need not be “lock, stock and barrel,” Ayres said, but policy shifts such as GOP support for broad immigration legislation will be important to woo minority voters over the longer term. “It remains to be seen how successful Democrats are if you don’t have Barack Obama at the top of the ticket,” he added.

The numbers show how population growth will translate into changes in who votes over the coming decade:

-The gap between non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black turnout in 2008 was the smallest on record, with voter turnout at 66.1 percent and 65.2 percent, respectively; turnout for Latinos and non-Hispanic Asians trailed at 50 percent and 47 percent. Rough calculations suggest that in 2012, 2 million to 5 million fewer whites voted compared with 2008, even though the pool of eligible white voters had increased.

-Unlike other minority groups, the rise in voting for the slow-growing black population is due to higher turnout. While blacks make up 12 percent of the share of eligible voters, they represented 13 percent of total 2012 votes cast, according to exit polling. That was a repeat of 2008, when blacks “outperformed” their eligible voter share for the first time on record.

-Latinos now make up 17 percent of the population but 11 percent of eligible voters, due to a younger median age and lower rates of citizenship and voter registration. Because of lower turnout, they represented just 10 percent of total 2012 votes cast. Despite their fast growth, Latinos aren’t projected to surpass the share of eligible black voters until 2024, when each group will be roughly 13 percent. By then, 1 in 3 eligible voters will be nonwhite.

-In 2026, the total Latino share of voters could jump to as high as 16 percent, if nearly 11 million immigrants here illegally become eligible for U.S. citizenship. Under a proposed bill in the Senate, those immigrants would have a 13-year path to citizenship. The share of eligible white voters could shrink to less than 64 percent in that scenario. An estimated 80 percent of immigrants here illegally, or 8.8 million, are Latino, although not all will meet the additional requirements to become citizens.

“The 2008 election was the first year when the minority vote was important to electing a U.S. president. By 2024, their vote will be essential to victory,” Frey said. “Democrats will be looking at a landslide going into 2028 if the new Hispanic voters continue to favor Democrats.”

Even with demographics seeming to favor Democrats in the long term, it’s unclear whether Obama’s coalition will hold if blacks or younger voters become less motivated to vote or decide to switch parties.

Minority turnout tends to drop in midterm congressional elections, contributing to larger GOP victories as happened in 2010, when House control flipped to Republicans.

The economy and policy matter. Exit polling shows that even with Obama’s re-election, voter support for a government that does more to solve problems declined from 51 percent in 2008 to 43 percent last year. Whether the economy continues its slow recovery also will shape voter opinion, including among blacks, who have the highest rate of unemployment.

Only once in the last 60 years has a political party been successful in holding the presidency more than eight years: Republicans from 1980 from 1992.

With the current dysfunction of congress, will the electorate give Obama the house and senate for the rest of his term?










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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NAN Largest Convention in the History of the Organization

I attended the 15th Annual National Convention of Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN). It took place, April 3-6 in New York City, at the Sheraton Hotel.

It was the largest attended NAN annual national convention and included delegates from over sixty NAN chapters across the United States.

There was a forum on Gun Control, Gun Violence: Addressing the Real Reform, and both the family of Hadiyah Pendleton, the 15-year-old who was fatally shot a week after performing with her high school band at the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, and the family of Trayvon Martin were in attendance. NAN delegates were asked to put pressure on their Senators to vote on stronger Gun legislation that could come up for debate in the Senate this week.

Several officials from the Obama Administration attended in Special Plenary Presentations: Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Regina M. Benjamin, Surgeon General of the United States, Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

Others spoke at ticketed events: Leading members of Congress and activists such as Martin Luther King, III, National Urban League President Marc Morial, NAACP President Ben Jealous, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice President Kerry Kennedy.

The convention concluded with a major announcement by Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and President of NAN, regarding action plans formulated during the convention.

NAN will start an “Alert Watch” since the Supreme Court is deciding on Affirmative Action and Section 5 of The Voting Rights Act. NAN has issued an alert that will go into action in the event that the Supreme Court overturns either of the these policies. NAN will mobilize activists to urge Congressional action and to put pressure on the academic and corporate community if Affirmative Action is lost.

Other highlights of the national convention included the Measuring the Movement forum on the final day that brought together three generations of civil rights leaders to discuss strategies on what can be done to sustain civil rights and the social justice movement regardless of what the court’s decisions may be. The forum featured civil rights leaders and a review by some of the legends of the civil rights movement regarding the progress made and mistakes made in the fifty years since the “March in Washington.” The Forum included civil rights icons Rev. Joseph Lowery, Juanita Abernathy, Otis Moss, Jr., and Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., among others.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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Protecting Our Vote During the Midterm Elections

I just attended a Political Panel called "Protecting Our Vote During the Midterm Elections" at the 15th Annual National Convention of Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN). It is taking place this week in New York City at the Sheraton Hotel.

First, some history about NAN.

NAN was founded in New York City in 1991, as a social justice, social policy, activist organization born of America's historic civil rights struggle. NAN is in the forefront of challenging today's threats to equal treatment under the law, whether it is police abuse, misconduct or racial profiling, economic injustice such as a lack of access to capital and opportunity; or social policy injustice such as education equality, voting rights, immigration reform, gender equality, marriage equality, gun control, health care, housing or worker's rights.

Reverend Al Sharpton is NAN's founding president and has led the organization for 22 years. He is a noted civil rights leader, host of MSNBC's Political Nation, and hosts a weekly radio broadcast on Saturday from NAN's national headquarters in central Harlem. NAN has grown to over 50 chapters across America and maintains offices in Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Atlanta, Georgia; Detroit, Michigan; Las Vegas, Nevada; Los Angeles, California and Miami, Florida. NAN's website is at: www.nationalactionnetwork.net.

Last year, during the national election cycle, NAN took the lead in pushing back the real threat to voting rights by exposing the efforts of many states to suppress the vote of primarily poor, elderly and minority voters through restrictive Voter ID laws. NAN's work was hugely successful as demonstrated by the unprecedented turnout of voters and their refusal to be intimidated or turned away from the polls.

The panel's moderator was Reverend Al Sharpton.

The panel members were:

Barbara R. Arnwine - President and Executive Director, The Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Nicole Austin-Hillery - Director and Counsel, The Brennan Center for Justice
Bishop Victor T. Curry - President, NAN, Miami-Dade County, Florida Chapter, Pastor, New Birth Baptist Church, Miami, Florida
Patrick Gaspard - Executive Director, Democratic National Committee
Bishop Bobby Hilton - President, NAN Cincinnati, OH Chapter
Rep. Marcia L. Fudge - Chairwoman, Congressional Black Caucus, 113th Congress
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries - Congressman, 8th District of NY
Rep. Gregory W. Meeks - Congressman, 5th District of NY
Laura Murphy - Director, Washington Legislative Office, American Civil Liberties Union
Rep. Charles B. Rangel - Congressman, 13th District of NY
Rep. Alicia Reece - State Rep., 33rd House District of Ohio
Rep. Joseph Crowley - Congressman, 14th District of NY

During the first round the panel talked about these issues: Voter ID Laws, Reduced Early Voting and Church Sunday Voting, Reduced Polling Places, Forced Provisional Ballots that are Not Counted, and Misinformation Tactics. The other issue was the Supreme Court June decisions about the Voting Rights Act Law and Section 5 Preclearance.

Then each panel member gave their ideas for the upcoming 2013 and 2014 elections and called this the "New Civil Rights Movement".

Some of the ideas were:

- Calling out corporations that are using shareholder's money to fund organizations that are responsible for the above tactics, using the term "There has to be consequences".

- Get involved in local Judge elections since they will be deciding some of these issues.

- This is a national issue, but now it is more important to get involved locally in a state by state fight.

There will be work to create a state by state agenda to first decide how to fight current situations and also preempt new ones. The Brenner Center had a three part program: reform the election system, increase early voting, and create national standards for each part of the election process.

The Justice Department has been preparing their ideas about changing our voting system. 

Assistant Attorney General Perez spoke at the George Washington University Law School Symposium on Friday, November 16, 2012. He discussed the Civil Rights Division’s work to protect the fundamental civil right that is the lifeblood of our democracy: the right to vote.

Some of the changes addressed what we can do both to protect the right to vote, and to improve the voting process:

1. Ensure that every eligible person entering a social service office can register to vote.

2. It should be the government’s responsibility to automatically register citizens to vote, by compiling, from databases that already exist, a list of all eligible residents in each jurisdiction. Of course, these lists would be used solely to administer elections and would protect essential privacy rights.

3. Election officials should work together to establish a program of permanent, portable registration – so that voters who move can vote at their new polling place on Election Day. Until that happens, we should implement fail-safe procedures to correct voter-roll errors and omissions, by allowing every voter to cast a regular, non-provisional ballot on Election Day. Several states have already taken this step.

4. Same-day registration is a reform we should be considering seriously – it would both facilitate election administration and promote electoral participation. For the 2012 election, eight states plus the District of Columbia had same-day registration in place. (Two more states have recently enacted it and will implement it next year – California, and Connecticut.) And we know that it increases participation: in both the 2008 and 2010 general elections, each of the eight states with same-day registration had higher turnout of the voting-eligible population than the national average. In fact, for the 2008 presidential election, five of the six states with the highest turnout in the country were states with same-day registration. Preliminary turnout estimates for the 2012 election show that this pattern will likely continue.

5. Voter fraud is not acceptable. But we also need to reform deceptive election practices and dishonest efforts to prevent certain voters from casting their ballots. Over the years, we’ve seen all sorts of attempts to gain partisan advantage by keeping people away from the polls – from literacy tests and poll taxes, to misinformation campaigns telling people that Election Day has been moved, or that only one adult per household can cast a ballot. Senators Schumer and Cardin recently introduced legislation that would deter and punish such harmful practices. This bill has sparked and helped to advance a critically important dialogue across – and beyond – Capitol Hill.

6. Provisional ballots - In some states and elections, large segments of the electorate are required to cast a provisional ballot instead of a regular ballot on election day, for any of a number of reasons. The Justice Department will be considering whether we need to propose concrete solutions, such as national standards for counting provisional ballots for federal elections, to ensure that voters are not disenfranchised by moves close to an election, by appearing in the wrong polling place or precinct, or by poll worker errors.

7. It’s time to rethink our largely partisan system of state and local election administration. We risk leaving our election processes open to partisan mischief – or to the perception of such mischief. We should have a serious conversation about solutions to this risk, including developing an entirely professionalized and non-partisan system for administering our elections.

What are your ideas about changing the election process?










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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