voter registration

Myrna Pérez 2-25-2020

Illustration by Michael George Haddad

ELECTIONS ARE A chance for voters to throw their support behind leaders they think are going to best bring about our hopes and visions for what this country can be. But there are a lot of reasons why eligible Americans may have a hard time casting a ballot that counts. One reason is sloppy purges of the voter rolls.

Purges are a practice—often controversial—of election administrators removing or cancelling voters from registration lists in order to update state registration rolls. We all benefit from clean and accurate voter rolls, which are used by poll workers to identify who is registered to vote. There is no real dispute that people who are not eligible should be removed from the rolls. Too often, however, purge processes are shrouded in secrecy, prone to error, and vulnerable to manipulation.

Part of the reason purges are so controversial is because more voters are being purged than in the past, and there is no satisfying explanation as to why. Between 2006 and 2008, the U.S. purged about 12 million voters. Between 2016 and 2018, however, the U.S. purged about 17 million voters. That’s an increase of more than 33 percent—during a time when total population growth was about 6 percent and the number of registered voters increased by 18 percent.

Another reason purges are controversial are their locations. Battleground states like Ohio and Wisconsin have had recent purge flare-ups. Ohio has a practice whereby voters who miss one election are put on a track for removal from the rolls. While voters can take steps to get themselves off that track, many believe that starting the process after missing only one election is too aggressive.

Police officers stand in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC, U.S., January 19, 2018. REUTERS/Eric Thayer/File Photo

Voters purged from registration rolls who sued to challenge the policy in the Republican-governed state argued that the practice illegally erased thousands of voters from registration rolls and disproportionately impacted racial minorities and poor people who tend to back Democratic candidates.

the Web Editors 5-15-2017

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal by Republican leaders of a federal court ruling that removed ballot restrictions in North Carolina, due to the restrictions being discriminatory along the basis of race, reports Bloomberg News.

Image via REUTERS / Dominick Reuter / RNS

Religious groups ranging from black Protestants to Latino evangelicals to Reform Jews are gearing up for massive voter registration activities to boost turnout on Election Day.

PICO National Network, a faith-based organizing network, announced its “Together We Vote” plan to work with allies to seek new voters who are especially concerned about racial justice.

The Rev. William Barber, leading a Moral Monday demonstration in July 2013. Photo courtesy of twbuckner/Wikimedia.

Faith leaders who sit to the left in American politics say they won’t let the religious right claim the moral mantle in the elections of 2014.

On Sept. 9,  they announced a new campaign to boost voter registration and encourage voters, particularly in poor and immigrant communities, to go to the polls.

On a conference call to reporters, Ted Strickland of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, an ordained Methodist minister and former Democratic governor of Ohio, said he and others leaders will go door to door and church to church to press their message: that people of faith should pursue a public policy that is fair and just.

The Rev. William Barber, leader of North Carolina’s “Moral Monday” movement, which has long protested acts of the state’s conservative legislature, quoted Isaiah 10: “Woe to those who make unjust laws.”

Lisa Sharon Harper 10-08-2012
Voting illustration,  gst / Shutterstock.com

Voting illustration, gst / Shutterstock.com

Editor's Note: This is the third article in Lisa Sharon Harper’s election season blog series, Watch the Vote. You can read the last article here

With 28 days to go until our nation chooses its 45th president, a string of court victories have knocked down Jim-Crow-style barriers to voting that have been erected in states across the nation. But 13 states are still under the oppressive weight of laws designed to suppress the vote.  

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, starting in early 2011, 41 states introduced legislation to restrict voting laws. Nineteen quietly passed 25 laws and two executive actions, some of which require government-issued photo IDs, proof of citizenship, fewer early-voting days, the elimination of Election Day voter registration, created barriers to voter registration drives, and created more obstacles for citizens with past criminal convictions. 

The good news is that over the past few months we have seen one court case after another block the enactment of the worst provisions of these new Jim Crow laws. According to a recent Brennan Center study, 10 courts have blocked or blunted restrictive voting laws — and the Department of Justice blocked one more — since Oct. 3.

African-American clergy are joining forces with civil rights groups to push for increased voter registration ahead of the November election, spurred on by new voter laws they say restrict opportunities for minorities to enter the voting booth.

"We must vote because we must counteract the corrupt and diabolical strategies of those who are trying to take away our vote by passing laws to suppress and diminish our voting rights," said the Rev. Julius Scruggs, president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, at a news conference Wednesday (Sept. 5) during his denomination's Annual Session in Atlanta.    

Scruggs, leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and top officials of four other black Baptist groups gathered to rally against the new laws and continue longtime efforts to get blacks registered to vote.    

More than two dozen new voter laws have passed in 19 states since 2011, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Some have been overturned but others remain on the books, such as a voter ID law in New Hampshire and proof of citizenship requirements in Alabama, Kansas and Tennessee. Proponents say they prevent fraud, while opponents say they are reducing access to the polling booth.    

The voting laws — through which some states have reduced early voting or required government-issued identification to enter the polls—  have changed some of the clergy's voter education initiatives.  

the Web Editors 6-13-2012

Florida’s governor instituted a law requiring that new voter registration papers had to be turned in within 48 hours of being written. The reason, they say, is to cut down on the amount of voter registration fraud.

John Oliver takes an investigative look into this case, and the results end with a giant pool party.

via The Daily Show

 

Lisa Sharon Harper 6-08-2012

Monday marked the 93rd anniversary of the congressional passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution on June 4, 1919.

After 71 years of movement forward and pushes back, the proposed Amendment to guarantee every woman in the United States the right to vote prevailed in the Senate. But it still had 36 more hurdles to jump before ratification; 36 of the then 48 states had to pass the Amendment in their state legislatures. On August 18, 1920 Tennessee became the 36th state to pass the Amendment and on that day women’s suffrage became the law of the land.

Florida missed that boat. The sunshine state had never voted on the 19th Amendment before it was ratified. A year later, the Florida state legislature passed its own law guaranteeing the vote to all citizens, but Florida’s legislature didn’t actually ratify the 19th Amendment until it took a symbolic vote in 1969.

As a woman I am grateful for the fact that in 1969 someone thought it might be a good idea to at least symbolically say, “Yeah, man, we’re cool with the ladies voting. We can groove with that.” But the current news about Florida’s voter purge has me wondering what happened in the 43 years between Florida’s symbolic thumbs up for suffrage and today’s current voter suppression?

The answer: The year 2000 happened.

[Editor's Note: Voter registration has now started for South Sudan's January 9 referendum on independence -- an event whose occurrence is threatened by North S