[EL] secret ballot
JBoppjr at aol.com
JBoppjr at aol.com
Tue Dec 27 10:56:49 PST 2011
The reasons for trials and evidence is to test the validity of allegations,
so I take with a big grain of salt claims in amicus briefs not presented
through admissible evidence and tested by trial. The Dems in Indiana tried
to present evidence of certain voters not being able to vote in future
election but the trial court found that they all could vote.
Of course, the irony here is that the opponents of Voter ID cite "studies"
that claim hundreds of thousand of disenfranchised people but, when they
actually have to prove just one, they come up with all sorts of excuses for
why they cannot find even one. Well, there cannot be hundreds of thousands
of disenfranchised voters (or even dozens) if they cannot find just one
after months of trying. Jim Bopp
In a message dated 12/27/2011 1:40:28 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
levittj at lls.edu writes:
Any time Jim uses italics...
He's absolutely right, of course, that the plaintiffs in Indiana did not
present evidence of individuals who had attempted to vote but were prevented
from voting because they did not have the right kind of ID. Indiana's
_challenged bill_
(http://www.in.gov/apps/lsa/session/billwatch/billinfo?year=2005&request=getActions&doctype=SB&docno=0483) was passed by the
legislature on April 19, 2005, and signed into law on April 27, 2005. William
Crawford's original suit in state court was filed on April 28, 2005; the Indiana
Democratic Party's suit in federal court was filed on May 2, 2005. The
law's effective date was July 1, 2005, and the first statewide election in
which it was applied was, I believe, May 2, 2006 -- approximately one month
after the federal district court issued its (April 14, 2006) decision.
That is, the case had been filed and litigated at the trial level before
the ID law went into effect. The primary reason that plaintiffs didn't
present evidence at the trial court of people who had already been prevented
from voting because of the law was that they didn't have access to a
_DeLorean DMC-12 with a flux capacitor_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLorean_time_machine) . Indiana's pre-enforcement legal challenge didn't feature
individuals who had been disenfranchised by the law. That appears to have been
a strategic litigation decision. But either way, it doesn't contradict
Morgan's point.
The Indiana plaintiffs did present evidence of individuals who alleged
that they would have difficulty obtaining the form of photo ID required by the
state. On appeal, amici (primarily but not exclusively the _League of
Women Voters of Indiana_
(http://www.brennancenter.org/dynamic/subpages/download_file_50864.pdf) ) presented the names of individual people who related
great difficulty obtaining the form of photo ID required by the state, some
of whom were unable to do so in time for one or more elections. (I've
compiled more _here_
(http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/pdf/11-9-8LevittTestimony.pdf) , from Indiana and elsewhere.) And South Carolina's Attorney General,
in a _formal opinion_
(http://www.scag.gov/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/andino-m-os-9319-8-16-11-Photo-ID-Voter-ID-legislation.pdf) interpreting South
Carolina's new law, stated in August of this year that the state's
provision for an exemption in the event of reasonable hardship makes "allowances
for those voters who have a valid reason, beyond their control, which would
prevent them from obtaining a Photo ID. One such reason which is obvious
is that there are numerous South Carolinians, generally over age 50, who do
not have a birth certificate."
This affects real votes, too. Indeed, at the Supreme Court, _county
respondents_
(http://www.brennancenter.org/dynamic/subpages/download_file_50977.pdf) in the Indiana case stated "In the 2007 municipal election, some votes
of otherwise-eligible individuals were not counted because they did not
comply with the Voter Identification Statute." Since 2007, Mike Pitts has
documented (_here_ (http://ssrn.com/abstract=1465529) and _here_
(http://ssrn.com/abstract=1287735) ) hundreds of provisional ballots cast in Indiana
elections that were rejected because of the photo ID law. We already know
of at least _one_
(http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/article_99e4f7b7-45eb-54de-8c3b-38196a4abe43.html) 2010 Indiana election that appears to
have been decided by the photo ID law, where a provisional ballot wasn't
counted because the right ID card hadn't been shown. And all of that is limited
to individuals who actually voted despite lacking the correct ID, leaving
out those who would rather not spend the time waiting in line to complete a
ballot that they know won't be counted.
To bring the discussion full circle, legal provisions preventing
disclosure of identifying information of provisional voters make follow-through
particularly difficult here (Mike's articles recount the difficulties in more
detail). It may be difficult to see the proven impact of photo ID laws on
real individuals, because the identity of those whose provisional ballots
are uncounted because of photo ID laws is itself kept confidential...
Justin
On 12/27/2011 5:03 AM, _JBoppjr at aol.com_ (mailto:JBoppjr at aol.com) wrote:
A big lie repeated over and over again does not become true:
"we should also realize that in the U.S., the secret ballot was widely
used, as the voter identification measures currently are, to disfranchise
poor, uneducated people,
especially African-Americans in the South."
When put to the test, the Plaintiffs in Indiana could not come up with one
person who was disenfranchised. No not one. Jim Bopp
In a message dated 12/26/2011 5:23:32 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
_kousser at hss.caltech.edu_ (mailto:kousser at hss.caltech.edu) writes:
In relation to Mark Scarberry's post, we should also realize that in
the U.S., the secret ballot was widely used, as the voter identification
measures currently are, to disfranchise poor, uneducated people,
especially African-Americans in the South. By disfranchising
African-Americans, it also greatly diminished the vote of the party to
which they overwhelmingly adhered at the time, the Republicans, and
partisan and racial purposes, then as now, could not be easily
disentangled. As the (Democratic) Little Rock Arkansas Gazette wrote
after the first election (1892) in which the secret ballot was used in
that state:
The Australian ballot works like a charm:
It makes them think and scratch.
And when a negro [sic] gets a ballot,
He has certainly met his match.
That was two years after the longest Senate filibuster in history up
to that time had defeated the second strongest voting rights act that
Congress considered before 1965, the Lodge Fair Elections Bill. (The
strongest, in most respects, was the Enforcement Act of 1875, also
defeated by a filibuster.) If the Supreme Court were to strip voters of
the protection of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case,
a potential South Carolina voter id case, the Kinston or Alabama or
Arizona or even Texas cases, then future election "reforms" might more
overtly target their racial and partisan objects, as the secret ballot
did more than a century ago.
Morgan
--
Prof. of History and Social Science, Caltech
surface mail: 228-77 Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125-7700
phone 626-395-4080, fax 626-405-9841
home page:< _http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~kousser/Kousser.html_
(http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~kousser/Kousser.html) >
. . . without the clarity that makes doubt productive, historians will
never be able to fulfill their highest moral responsibility, to build a better
world . . .
-- from "The New Postmodern Southern Political History"
Perfection . . . in any institution is a dangerous myth; there is only the
repeated correction of imperfections. As long as there is discrimination,
there will always be more work to do.
-- from "The Strange, Ironic Career of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act"
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Justin Levitt
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Loyola Law School | Los Angeles
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Los Angeles, CA 90015
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_justin.levitt at lls.edu_ (mailto:justin.levitt at lls.edu)
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