A Supreme Setback for Voting Rights

April 28, 2008. Today the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s restrictive voter ID law. On this same day, the New York Times ran an article about ongoing voter suppression tactics in Florida. These two stories are very much related. Each represents a triumph for conservatives who have used allegations of voter fraud to push measures that disenfranchise the most marginalized members of our society. To reverse this assaut on voting rights, we need a long-term democracy agenda.

In a 6 to 3 ruling, the Supreme Court declared that requiring photo identification at polling places is not, on its face, unconstitutional. The majority argued that, while the law does place some burden on voters, its overall burden is “minimal and justified” because the state has a “valid interest” in deterring fraud. The dissenting justices argued that the Indiana law “threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting rights of tens of thousands of the state’s citizens.”

The law in question, which was passed by Indiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature in 2005, has nothing to do with actual voter fraud. Indiana has no recent cases of voter fraud. This and similar voter ID laws around the country are part of a well-coordinated campaign to subvert meaningful voting rights reforms. Conservative efforts began in earnest after the 2000 presidential election. In the face of overwhelming evidence of voter suppression, moderate and liberal civic leaders and lawmakers began calling for reform. These efforts came together in the form of the federal ‘Help America Vote Act (HAVA),’ which aimed to set up a uniform guide for voter registration. Republicans in Congress made sure the bill focused more on a non-existent problem, voter fraud, than on the very real problem of ballot access. The version of HAVA that passed in 2002 actually opened the door for states to adopt more restrictive measures. Conservatives succeeded in redirecting the conversation away from voter suppression to ‘ballot integrity,’ which is their ‘double speak’ for voter fraud. [See my April 9 blog for more details on the conservative war on voting rights at grassrootspolicy.org].

Today, the ‘ballot integrity’ frame predominates. As in any framing contest, the facts don’t matter a lot, even for Supreme Court justices. Justice Stephens had to reach way back in time in order to find compelling examples of voter fraud in U.S. history. To rebut factual arguments about how rare fraud is today, Stephens cited New York City’s 1868 Tammany Hall elections. 1868? The Supremes are flogging the ghost of Boss Tweed.

Back to a more contemporary set of voting problems: Florida is in the news again. Since 2000, the Republican-controlled legislature has passed several laws that make it harder to vote in Florida than in any other state [see Pew’s electionline for more analysis]. One such law prevents voters from correcting mistakes or omissions on their registration forms in the final month before an election. The forms contain confusing questions that increase the likelihood of omissions and mistakes. Another law targets groups that register voters, imposing fines for lost or late registration forms. The desired effect of such a law is to deter groups from conducting voter registration drives. Because of this law and the vagueness of how it will be applied, the League of Women Voters is prepared to cease all voter registration activities in Florida.

The conservative war on voting rights helps explain what happened to liberal and progressive efforts to win reforms after the 2000 election. But it is not the whole story. The window of opportunity for reform shut quickly in part because we on the progressive/left did not have a bold, proactive plan. We were (and still are) up against well-coordinated and well-funded opposition. But, instead of responding with a coherent ‘democracy agenda’ that reclaims and expands opportunities for citizen participation (using the broadest meaning of ‘citizen’), we reacted in our usual piecemeal fashion.

Many of us got behind HAVA, only to be disappointed. We pushed for other kinds of reforms like same-day registration. Others argued for important reforms in the electoral system, like proportional representation or instant run-off voting. Some of us waged campaigns to win fusion voting in select states. Some argued that we should focus on building viable third parties. Others geared up for better ‘Get Out the Vote’ efforts and more strategic approaches to electoral engagement. While some groups saw voting rights as an ongoing civil rights issue in need of renewed emphasis, others avoided the civil rights angle. We have debated the role of base-building and leadership development as part of long-term electoral strategy. Each of these points, and each issue area, is worthy of serious debate and discussion. How do we coordinate our efforts, make priorities, support each other's efforts? How do we make it all add up to something greater than the sum of its parts? What would a genuine, multi-faceted democracy agenda look like? With a greater sense of the whole we could begin to develop a shared strategy. With a shared strategy we can coordinate our different efforts toward advancing a broader agenda. Without this level of coordination, we can do little more than respond to the Right’s onslaught of voter suppression measures. It’s time we gained the upper hand in framing voting rights as an essential part of expanding democratic participation in all forms and in every sector of society.