Yesterday, the Justice Department announced an agreement (PDF) to bring Arizona's Department of Economic Security, which administers Food Stamps and TANF, into compliance with the public agency registration provisions of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).  The agreement comes three months after Project Vote and Demos sent  Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer a notice letter (PDF) advising her that the state was not in compliance with the law and asking her to take steps to improve compliance to avoid litigation.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

America's Democratic Promise
The history of democracy in the United States is one marked by the steady, though intensely contested, expansion of the right to vote. Where once only male landowners were permitted the right to choose their representatives, the United States now proudly extends that right to all adult citizens. The most recent expansion of the franchise were the result of years of struggle through the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement. The seminal Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the 26th Amendment ratified in 1971 created enforcement mechanisms to protect minority voting rights and extended the right to vote to 18 year olds.

By Nathan Henderson-James

X-Posted to Project Vote's Blog Voting Matters

Steve Rosenfeld, writing in the journal Social Policy, has authored a comprehensive look at the recent history of partisan attacks on the voting process itself and the unfolding attempts to roll back all of the voting rights gains of the past 50 years that have gained speed and urgency under the Bush Administration.  

Pointing out that modern voter suppression attempts and larger projects to reshape the entire electorate to favor conservatives no longer rely on the open fear and intimidation that characterized past practices from American history, Rosenfeld opens his in-depth survey with this observation,

"Jim Crow has returned to American elections, only in the 21st century he is apt to be a lawyer carrying a folder filled with briefing papers, proposed legislation and talking points about "voter fraud" and protecting the sanctity of the vote."  

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

By Erin Ferns

A year has passed since the U.S. Attorneys scandal first gathered steam for the firings of nine federal prosecutors - at least two of whom claim being "pressured by Republicans to bring charges of voter fraud against people who intended to [vote] for Democrats." But the issue is far from settled. This week, the phantom issue of "voter fraud" emerged in the guise of news stories, editorials, memos, blogs, legislation, and even a Senate hearing either extinguishing or inflaming the alleged election integrity problem, particularly regarding voter identification requirements. Ultimately, what has become most evident in the last year is how far partisans are willing to go in order to legalize voter suppression tactics through the smoke-screen of "voter fraud."

February 26 was not a good day for Asheesh Agarwal, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U. S. Department of Justice. During a hearing of the House Committee on the Judiciary, the bookish bureaucrat was raked slowly over the hot coals by several irate members of Congress.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

Harper's Magazine has released an examination of Republican efforts to politicize the Justice Department and argues that these efforts have propagated a scam on the American public - voter fraud - in order to ensure Republican victories in future elections. Long-time readers will recognize this issue from numerous past blog postings and can find longer discussions of attempts to subvert the machinery of elections for partisan gain in recent Project Vote publications, The Politics of Voter Fraud and Caging Democracy: A 50-Year History of Partisan Challenges to Minority Voters.

Some choice quotes from Scott Horton's exhaustive article:

   "The Republican project of the past seven years has been to build on [the Supreme Court decision in Bush vs. Gore], to transform the legal apparatus of the United States into an instrument of partisan force."

   "The former political director of the Texas Republican Party, Royal Masset, actually told the Houston Chronicle in 2007 that it is an `article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections,' but then acknowledged that such faith was unfounded. What he did believe, according to the Chronicle's paraphrase, was that `requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a drop-off in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote.'"

   "The American system of democracy has many defenses, and the Bush Administration overcame each of them in turn. It was not enough simply to control the bureaucracy. High officials as well had to understand that their function was not to enforce the law but rather to express the will of the president."

The full report may be read here.

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

From the technological glitches to voter intimidation reports to well-hyped charges of "voter fraud," American voters are well aware of problems in our system of casting and counting ballots. However, a range of these problems are often confused and conflated with "voter fraud" in media stories, trumped-up accusations, and, most insidiously, in voter suppression attempts. The truth of "voter fraud" is much simpler than many people would have us believe. This proves to be an inconvenient reality for those individuals engaged in systematic attempts to disenfranchise specific voting populations, much like the efforts that have been laid bare at the Department of Justice over the past eight months.

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

Confirmation hearings for President Bush's nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, brought promises by the nominee to "block political meddling at the Justice Department," and the expectation by senators  that the Justice Department will regain public confidence, which was shaken by he U.S. attorney scandal. Questions  from senators on both sides of the aisle stressed the need for the Justice Department to be independent of partisan political interests of the President. Of particular interest to voting rights advocates is finding Mukasey's approach to the enforcement of voting rights laws in the wake of revelations about the DOJ's use of US Attorneys and the Voting Section to pursue partisan voter suppression tactics.