[EL] Madison (WI) new law this week requiring landlords to distribute voter reg forms

Thu Jul 19 11:22:39 PDT 2012

I don't believe states requires all voters to be domiciled in that state in order to vote in that state.  Many court decisions in the 1970's (after voters age 18-20 won the vote) determined that college students may vote at the school residence, even though those voters aren't domiciled there.  

And current law lets U.S. citizens who are living permanently abroad, and who don't expect to ever return to live in the U.S, continue to vote in the state in which they resided before they left the U.S.  

And snowbirders are permitted to vote in a state chosen arbitrarily, usually a state in which they are able to receive postal mail.  

And members of the U.S. military are permitted to vote at the address of their military base, instead of the state they expect to return to some day.

Richard Winger

415-922-9779

PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147

--- On Thu, 7/19/12, Joe La Rue <joseph.e.larue at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Joe La Rue <joseph.e.larue at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [EL] Madison (WI) new law this week requiring landlords to distribute voter reg forms
To: "Lorraine Minnite" <lminnite at gmail.com>
Cc: "Election Law" <law-election at uci.edu>
Date: Thursday, July 19, 2012, 10:39 AM

Lori: I could ask you, "What is the constitutional basis for requiring voters to be domiciled in the state they vote?" 
States are allowed to regulate elections. That can, I believe, include requiring voters to be domiciled in the state in which they vote. Thus, I can't vote for someone in California because I don't reside in California. Similarly, I believe, states can require that only citizens may vote, and that one must prove he/she is a citizen by obtaining a photo ID. And I believe minority race people deserve to be treated with the same respect as White people, and it should not be assumed that they are too stupid or incapable to obtain a photo ID.
But for those who actually cannot obtain an ID, because the state has no record of their birth, help may be needed. Is their a constitutional basis for requiring them to obtain help? I suggest, yes, there is. Art. I sec. 4 allows the states to regulate the "time, place, and manner" for holding federal elections, and the Tenth Amendment reserves all powers not expressly delegated to the federal government to the states, or to the people. Since how a state must hold its state elections is not expressly delegated to the federal government, each state gets to decide how they will do it. And that, I believe, includes making a decision to require a photo ID to vote. 
 Joe
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On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Lorraine Minnite <lminnite at gmail.com> wrote:

I'm curious: what is the constitutional basis for essentially requiring citizens to obtain legal assistance in order to cast ballots?
Lori Minnite

On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Joe La Rue <joseph.e.larue at gmail.com> wrote:

Adam,
I have great sympathy for people like Mrs. Lee, and I acknowledge there are some like her. However, I think progressives have turned the few examples like Mrs. Lee into a parade-of-horribles, in an effort to frustrate a very common sense solution to the possibility that non-citizens may be voting. Let's admit that, just as there are few documented cases of fraudulent voting, there are also few Mrs. Lees. However, there is a great potential for much fraudulent voting so long as we do not have photo ID requirements, but not a great potential for many Mrs. Lees.

 That said, that doesn't help the few Mrs. Lees who are out there. What's the answer for them? May I suggest that those progressive attorneys who spend so much time arguing against voter ID laws instead give some of it pro bono to Mrs. Lee and contact the state of Georgia on her behalf, as well as her Senator and Representative, and get her situation taken care of. It seems to me that would be a better use of time. 

 Joe
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On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 9:55 AM, Adam Bonin <adam at boninlaw.com> wrote:

Joe,

Wilola Lee, 59, was born in rural Wilkerson County, Georgia. She was raised by her grandmother, who moved her to Philadelphia in 1957, where she has lived ever since. Ms. Lee finished the eleventh grade, married, and raised two children, one of whom is a former school principal and now works for the Pennsylvania state government. Ms. Lee worked for the Philadelphia Public Schools for many years, including work with special needs children. Her husband passed away six years ago. Ms. Lee has been voting for decades and worked as a poll worker in the city of Philadelphia. She has been trying for nearly ten years to get a birth certificate that she will need to get a photo ID to vote, but the state of Georgia has told her they have no record of her birth. She’s been voting in nearly every election for the past 30+ years, but cannot get photo ID to vote in PA this year.

She’s not a stupid woman, Joe, and I’ll assume you’re a pretty smart guy.  Tell us how she’s supposed to obtain a photo ID sufficient to comply with Pennsylvania law.

(Similar examples here: http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/applewhiteetalvcommonwealt/voteridclients.htm)

 Adam C. Bonin

The Law Office of Adam C. Bonin
1900 Market Street, 4th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103
(215) 864-8002 (w)
(215) 701-2321 (f)

(267) 242-5014 (c)

adam at boninlaw.com

http://www.boninlaw.com

From: Joe La Rue <joseph.e.larue at gmail.com>

To: Dan Johnson <dan at kchrlaw.com> 
Cc: Election Law <law-election at uci.edu> 
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2012 6:40 AM

Subject: Re: [EL] Madison (WI) new law this week requiring landlords to distribute voter reg forms 

I laugh aloud at the silly progressives, like those who issued this press release, who assert that Republicans push for voter ID is un-American and a war on voting. What rhetoric! And what complete nonsense. 

 This supposes that placing sensible restrictions on who can vote is contrary to our American values. Yet we've always had such restrictions. The Founders created a system in which many states allowed only property owners to vote. Were the Founders un-American? Today, in every state and federal election, only those 18 and older may vote, and only those who live in the jurisdiction in question may vote. Are we all un-American for those requirements?

 In this age in which we have some 12 million people in our country illegally and therefore ineligible to vote, Republicans are trying to institute a common sense safeguard. Requiring voter ID helps assure only citizens cast ballots. Efforts to block voter ID only frustrate that goal. Perhaps that's the true progressive end game: perhaps they want non-citizens to be able to vote. Regardless, their fight against common sense voter ID laws makes it more likely that some will.

 Contrary to progressive claims, Republicans aren't trying to keep minorities from voting. Unlike progressives, we believe minority citizens are smart and capable and certainly not too stupid to figure out how to get an ID if they don't already have one. In short, we Republicans believe minority race citizens are just as capable as white people and so do not need to be coddled. Progressives, though, have such a low view of minorities that they cannot imagine them having the intelligence and capability to acquire IDs, and instead insist that ID laws will disenfranchise them. I, for one, abhor that type of prejudice.

On Jul 18, 2012, at 11:35 PM, Dan Johnson <dan at kchrlaw.com> wrote:

Innovative news on the voter registration front (the attack back in the War on Voting continues)...

From: Progressive Advocacy <dan at ProgressivePublicAffairs.com>

Date: July 18, 2012 7:14:51 PM CDT
To: dan at ProgressivePublicAffairs.com
Subject: Progressive Advocacy

Progressive Advocacy 

Madison WI and Washington State attack back on the war on voting 

Posted: 17 Jul 2012 10:45 PM PDT

Fantastic news.

Progressive state and local governments are attacking back on the Republican's anti-American war on voting by implementing forward-thinking laws and policies that reduce the barriers between citizens and their ballots.

Yesterday, the Madison (WI) City Council passed an ordinance adding the voter registration form to the pile of paper documents that landlords must distribute to tenants when they move in. This is now law, just in time for the August move-in for UW-Madison students. Half the housing units in Madison are rental units and a large percentage of those units turn over every year.

As Alder Bridget Maniaci, the lead sponsor of the proposal explains, providing voter registration information to citizens when they move into a new place makes sense, since that's when people are changing their address (and they are probably unaware that they must proactively tell some obscure unit of local government they have moved in order to vote months later). From the Isthmus:

The way citizens in the United States vote is based on where they live, Maniaci adds, which means it is sensible to provide them with voting information when they change addresses.

"To provide to tenants voter registration forms at the time they move in, when most individuals are in the process of changing all of their other household information, everything from Netflix to their post-office address to the DMV, that's a very natural time to do this," she says.

As a bonus, getting citizens to register to vote early is cheaper for the city clerk to process than registering people in the crunch leading up to the election, so distributing these voter registration forms will save taxpayers some money.

On the West Coast, Washington State's Secretary of State is unveiling an app that will allow users to register to vote through Facebook. Since Washington State already uses online voter registration, pulling the data from a user's Facebook account and importing it into the voter registration program will make it easier for people to register -- and people can tell their friends about how they registered to vote, creating more of a social norm of democratic self-governance through participation.

Congratulations to Washington and Madison (named after two Founding Fathers, coincidentally) for further implementing the great democratic spirit of our American Republic.

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