Voter suppression has a long history in American politics in the form of poll taxes and literacy
tests that were intended to disenfranchise voters of color.
But today, Republicans have turned to a new method: Voter ID laws.
The concept behind voter ID laws is simple enough: You have to show a photo identification
to be allowed to vote.
For a lot of you, this may sound innocent on the outside, but in practice, it has the
effect of making it much more difficult for millions of Americans to vote -- mostly people
of color, poor people, and old people -- and some are unable to vote at all.
Because of that, it's a form of voter suppression, which goes against everything that a democracy
should stand for.
So, why is it hard for some people to get a photo ID in the United States?
First of all, there's the cost.
A report by the Government Accountability Office in 2014 found that, for 17 states that
had enacted Voter ID laws, the cost for obtaining an ID in those states ranged from $14.50 to $58.50.
For comparison, in 1964, just before poll taxes were deemed unconstitutional, only 5
states had poll taxes enacted, and they ranged from $1 to $2, or in today's money, from
$7.51 to $15.03.
So the poll taxes that we decided were unconstitutional because they created a barrier to voting,
were actually cheaper than the cost of getting a photo ID today.
So when you require someone to have an ID to vote, you are creating a financial barrier
to voting -- even more so than the Jim Crow poll taxes.
On top of that, lots of people, especially those who live in rural areas, do not have
easy access to a government office where they can get an ID.
A report by New York University's Brennan Center for Justice looked at the distribution
of ID-issuing offices in these 10 states where strict voter ID laws had been put into place.
They found that within these 10 states, 500,000 eligible voters didn't have access to a
car and lived more than 10 miles away from their nearest ID-issuing office that was open
more than two days a week.
And those eligible voters mostly lived in rural areas with few public transportation options.
They also found that overall, 10 million eligible voters lived more than 10 miles away from
their nearest ID-issuing office that was open more than two days a week.
As an example of how some offices have extremely limited hours, the report cited a ID-issuing
office in Sauk City, Wisconsin that was only open on the 5th Wednesday of the month, but
in 2012, only four months even had a 5th Wednesday.
For eligible voters who work and have families to take care of, even if there is an office
near them, getting to an office during business hours can often be impossible.
And if you've ever been to a state licensing office, like a DMV, you know that the lines
can be extremely long, meaning that people have to wait for hours.
A trip to the DMV often takes an entire day, which many people can't afford.
This map shows the concentration of eligible Black voters compared to the concentration
of ID-issuing offices and how many hours they're open.
Offices that are open 40 hours a week or more tend to be located
in areas with low percentages of Black Americans.
The three crosshatched areas represent areas where all the ID-issuing offices are only
open for two days a week or less, and unsurprisingly,
they're areas with high percentages of eligible Black voters.
This map of Texas shows the concentration of eligible Hispanic voters compared to the
concentration of ID-issuing offices and how many hours they're open.
As you can, areas that have high concentrations of eligible Hispanic voters tend to have few
or no ID-issuing offices, and the ones that they do have, aren't open for many hours
a week.
Plus, the lack of ID-issuing offices, and the fact that you have to go to a physical
location to get an ID, disproportionately hurts disabled people who physically cannot
make it to an office, or who can make it to an office but can't wait in line for hours.
On top of that, once you get to an ID-issuing office, many people don't have the documents
required to get a State ID.
Many elderly people have issues with their birth certificates, either because there was
a clerical error or because they lost it and the state doesn't keep records that far back.
For example, Hargie Randall is a 72-year-old man living in Houston, Texas.
When he tried to get a state ID, he was told he needed three forms of identification.
He had a Medicaid card, bills, and a current voter registration, but that wasn't enough.
He needed a certified copy of his birth certificate, which meant that he had to travel to the city
where he was born to get that.
Myrtle Delahuerta is an 85-year-old woman also living in Houston.
She tried for 2 years to get a state ID but couldn't because her name was spelled differently
on her birth certificate.
So now she has to legally change her name, a process that costs over $300, to finally
be able to have a state ID.
Birth certificates can vary in cost from state to state, and even from county to county.
I couldn't find any good national record of how much birth certificates cost, but for
one example, to get a birth certificate in Los Angeles County costs $28.
If you're a poor person trying to vote, $28 is a huge fee, and then you still have
to go pay for state ID.
The fact is, no matter how you look at, there are tons of hurdles to getting a state-issued
photo ID in the United States, and these hurdles disproportionately hurt people of color, elderly
people, poor people, and disabled people.
Even in cases where it's technically possible for someone to get an ID, the fact that it's
so difficult can be a deterrent.
And the last thing we want in a democracy is to deter people from voting.
We need to be making it as easy as possible to vote if we want people to actually come out and vote.
How strict are these voter ID laws?
Well, it depends on what state you're talking about.
Currently, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 34 states have some
form of voter ID law.
Some of those allow for a wide range of IDs, including non-photo IDs, while others only
request that voters bring an ID but don't require it.
However, 7 of those states have strict photo ID laws, and 2 of those states have strict
non-photo ID laws.
These laws are so strict that some people who think they can vote, can't.
Several voters in Wisconsin couldn't vote in the 2016 Presidential election because
they didn't have the correct form of ID.
Gladys Harris is a 66-year-old woman who showed up to the polling place with her Social Security
card, her Medicare card, and a county-issued bus pass with her photo on it.
She was not allowed to vote.
Sean Reynolds, a 30-year-old Navy veteran, wasn't allowed to vote using his valid Illinois
state ID, because it wasn't a Wisconsin state ID.
He was given a provisional ballot, which meant that he needed to return with a valid Wisconsin
ID within 3 days, but he couldn't take time off work on such short notice to go transfer
his ID from Illinois to Wisconsin.
Margie Mueller was an 85-year-old woman who let her license expire after she couldn't
drive anymore in 2010.
She wasn't allowed to vote with her expired license, and her nearest ID-issuing office
was 15 miles away.
She had cancer in her lymph nodes and lungs, and wasn't physically able to make the trip
to the office, so she didn't vote.
Catelin Tindall, a 24-year-old recent college graduate, brought her Ohio ID, copies of her
lease and utility bills, and her student ID when she tried to vote.
She was allowed to cast a provisional ballot and told to return within 3 days with a new Wisconsin ID.
She took an Uber to the DMV and was told her ID would arrive the next day by express mail.
But by then, she had to work and couldn't go back to the county clerk's office to
prove she had gotten a Wisconsin ID.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Extremely strict voter ID laws, like the one in Wisconsin, prevent tons of people from
being able to vote.
How are voter ID laws legal?
Well, I would argue that they're not, and several Federal judges would agree with me.
In July last year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas's strict voter
ID law discriminated against minorities and poor people.
Then, in April of this year, a Federal judge named Nelva Gonzales Ramos ruled that the
Texas voter ID law intentionally discriminated against Black and Hispanic voters.
Also in July of last year, Federal Judge James Peterson found many aspects of Wisconsin's
voter ID law were unconstitutional.
Around the same time, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that North Carolina's
voter ID law had "discriminatory intent" and was meant to stop Black people from voting.
The thing is, the only reason we have so many voter ID laws recently is because the Supreme
Court, in a 5-4 decision, struck down several major parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013.
One of those parts required certain states with a history of discrimination to get preclearance
before changing any laws in regards to voting.
After that part of the Voting Rights Act was struck down, many southern states quickly
moved to adopt voter ID laws.
Texas's discriminatory voter ID law was actually passed in 2011 but didn't go into
effect until 2013 when the preclearance provision was struck down.
If the Voting Rights Act had stayed in tact, it's doubtful that many of these voter ID
laws would've gained any traction.
Many of the various voter ID laws across the country are still being contested in courts,
and it's likely that we'll see more and more judges finding them to be unconstitutional
over the next few years.
The ACLU has come out in strong opposition to voter ID laws, and they've led the fight
against them in several states.
Why do Republicans even want voter ID laws?
Well, how about I let some Republicans explain that.
"A lot of us are campaign officials or campaign professionals, and we want to do everything
we can to help our side.
Sometimes we think that's voter ID, sometimes we think that's longer lines -- whatever it may be."
"Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania -- done."
"You know that a lot of Republicans since 1984 in the Presidential races have not been
able to win in Wisconsin.
Why would it be any different for a Ted Cruz or a Donald Trump?"
"Well, I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever
put up, and now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is gonna make a little bit of a difference as well.
"Do you think all the attention drawn to voter ID affected last year's elections?"
"Yeah, I think a little bit.
I think -- we probably had a better election.
Think about this: We cut Obama by 5% which was big.
You know, a lot of people lost sight of that.
He won, he beat McCain by 10%, he only beat Romney by 5%, I think that probably photo
ID helped a bit in that."
The fact is, voter ID laws help Republicans.
The people who are disenfranchised by these laws are usually Democrats.
In a study published in the Journal of Politics, researchers analyzed data from the Cooperative
Congressional Election Study and found that "strict identification laws have a differentially
negative impact on the turnout of racial and ethnic minorities in primaries and general
elections," and they said that "voter ID laws skew democracy toward those on the political right."
This graph shows the data they collected.
For example, in a state with no voter ID law, Latinos turnout to vote about 4.9% less than white people.
However, in states with strict voter ID laws, Latinos turnout to vote 13% less than white people.
That's a dramatic difference, and since people of color overwhelming tend to vote
for Democrats, suppressing their vote makes it easier for Republicans to get elected.
In fact, the researchers looked at the turnout gap between Democrats and Republicans, and
found that in states with no voter ID laws, Democrats turnout to vote 4.3% less than Republicans,
but in states with voter ID laws, Democrats turnout to vote 9.8% less than Republicans.
In a different study published in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics, researchers
looked at the strict voter ID law in Indiana and found that even among registered voters,
Republicans were more likely to have a valid ID than Democrats.
Just looking at registered voters, 87% of Republicans had a valid ID, while only 83%
of Democrats had a valid ID.
That may seem like a small percentage, but if a swing state enacted this kind of voter
ID law, it could determine the outcome of an election.
And that's only counting registered voters.
Most people who don't have a valid ID are not registered voters.
But obviously, most Republicans don't like to admit that they're pushing voter ID laws for partisan reasons.
The typical defense is that they're fighting "voter fraud", but there's never actually
been any proof of widespread voter fraud in the United States.
So let's look at this myth of widespread voter fraud.
Study after study has found that while voter fraud does happen, it's very very rare.
Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and an expert in constitutional
law and the law of democracy, has investigated every credible allegation of voter fraud from
2000-2014 in all the general, primary, special, and municipal elections in the United States.
In that time period, over 1 billion votes were cast, and yet he only managed to find
31 credible allegations of voter fraud that could have been stopped by a voter ID law.
That means that less than 0.0000031 percent of the votes cast may have been fraudulent.
Levitt actually thinks that several of those might not be voter fraud because mistakes
happen a lot in the voting process, like someone accidentally signing the wrong line, or two
people having the same name, or just a basic data entry error.
He also found 13 cases of voter fraud that would not have been stopped by voter ID because
many forms of voter fraud are still possible even when you require people to show an ID.
Voter ID laws are by no means a foolproof way of preventing voter fraud.
For example, double voting can happen when someone registers in two places and votes
in both of them, or when someone orders an absentee ballot, votes using that, and then
goes to the polls and casts a second ballot in-person.
That kind of voter fraud can't be stopped by voter ID laws because the person voting
is who they say they are -- they're just voting multiple times.
In the 2016 election, the Washington Post found only 4 cases of documented voter fraud,
and 3 potential cases.
Being generous and saying there were 7 cases of voter fraud in the 2016 election, about
139 million people voted, so about 0.000005% of the votes cast in that election were potentially fraudulent.
The Brennan Center issued a report called The Truth About Voter Fraud, in which they
reviewed elections from multiple states that had accusations of voter fraud.
Most of them could be traced back to some kind of innocent mistake like clerical errors.
Even so, the report found voter fraud rates of between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent,
which is nowhere near widespread.
Project Vote, a nonpartisan nonprofit 501 organization, published a report called The
Politics of Voter Fraud.
They tracked voter fraud rates for 2 years and found that when the rare case of voter
fraud did pop up, it could usually be traced back to some kind of human error.
Researchers from Dartmouth College analyzed the 2016 election and concluded by saying:
"We have explored in particular fraud allegations that involve non-citizens and deceased individuals,
and we have not uncovered any evidence that there was a widespread, anti-Trump fraud effort
that relied on either of these sources."
I could keep listing studies and reports that have found no evidence of widespread voter
fraud, but I think I'll just link to them in the description, otherwise we'd be here
for another hour while I list more sources.
You may have heard a claim that up to 5.7 million undocumented immigrants voted in the 2008 election.
This number was based on an extremely poorly done study by the conservative-libertarian
think tank Just Facts.
They used data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which surveyed 32,800 people
after the election and asked them over 100 questions.
Out of those, 339 people said they were noncitizens.
Of those, 39 said they voted in the 2008 election.
The think tank then extrapolated those 39 people out to represent 5.7 million people.
That was just one of the flaws with their methodology, and lots of people have since
pointed that out.
An open letter from over 100 different political scientists from universities and colleges
across the country said, "The scholarly political science community has generally
rejected the findings in the Richman et al. study and we believe it should not be cited
or used in any debate over fraudulent voting."
If you search on the internet, it's easy to find false claims of widespread voter fraud.
But rumors and internet conspiracies don't make something a fact.
There still haven't been any legitimate investigations that have turned up evidence
of widespread voter fraud.
If you make a claim, especially a claim as huge as millions of people voting illegally,
you have to be able to back that claim up with evidence.
Claims require evidence.
And currently, there is no evidence for widespread voter fraud.
So, to recap, voter ID laws are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, and
in the process, they're disenfranchising tons of voters, mostly voters from marginalized communities.
We have to be fighting voter ID laws at the state level and refusing to support political
candidates who support voter ID laws.
I don't think this should be a partisan issue.
Everybody should be able to agree that we want more people voting, not less.
We should be working to make our election system easier, not harder.
We should automatically be registering voters, we should be making early voting more accessible,
we should be making absentee ballots more accessible, we should be voting on a weekend
-- these are all things we could do to improve our voting system.
Trying to prevent non-existent voter fraud is not one of them.
Anyway, thanks so much for watching this video, and I'll see you next time.
For more infomation >> PLANTAS QUE TE AYUDARÁN A DORMIR MEJOR - Duration: 2:26. 
For more infomation >> Movie Trivia LIVE
For more infomation >> Kına Gecesi Makeup Tutorial/ Polskie napisy || A.G - Duration: 18:15. 
No comments:
Post a Comment