Important as monitoring or lawyers tracking people down will be, they
will not provide the same list or similar data as an enumeration of
the number of times an ID law prevents a person from casting a regular
ballot or any ballot. I.e., you'd rather have other means of tracking
who police pull over and for what than waiting for a lawyer to find a
plaintiff or for plaintiffs to complain about profiling or similar
violations.
Regarding other measures that in effect give us these data, that is
good, but only if those provisional ballots are noted as being
generated by ID problems, and it still doesn't count people that left
without casting any kind of ballot (I assume this is possible in some
cases).
Of course none of this gets at the issue of who is discouraged from
even showing up, which is a good point. Perhaps there will be a bump
in some responses in the CPS that will hint at this.
Doug
On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 10:33 AM, John Tanner <john.k.tanner@gmail.com> wrote:
Instances of discrimination in voter ID (and other areas) that occur on
election day can be documented (and often deterred) captured by effective
monitoring of the polls, which ain't rocket science but does require people
getting out and getting their hands dirty. I had an article about effective
monitoring.
Of course, that leaves individuals who do not have the requisite ID and
therefore do not bother to go to the polls. Currently such victims have to
be discovered through inquiry and investigation on a state-by-state basis.
Another avenue is post-election analysis of provisional ballots, as Mike
Pitts was or is doing in Indiana. I had an op-ed identifying specific
places/circumstances likely to generate potential victims in TX, where I
think their proposed voter ID law will be highly vulnerable to legal
challenge.
I'd be happy to chat off-list with anyone contemplating an actual lawsuit.
On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 10:08 AM, Doug Hess <douglasrhess@gmail.com> wrote:
I certainly agree that the laws are misguided, but if they must go
forward collecting some data on who is turned away may be the best way
to help demonstrate discriminatory impact, or even than they are
burdensome, or ensure that people's rights are not violated.
Otherwise, we will only be left with a bunch of academics arguing over
regression studies and judges uncertain as to what it all means.
Ignoring the other survey idea (which could be designed to be
non-intrusive through sampling), requiring that some data is recorded
each time somebody is turned away due to ID policy would be one of the
best ways to make sure that people are not improperly turned away in
the future, etc. If we have to live with these laws (which I'd rather
we do not for the reasons many have given in the past).
No?
Doug
On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 9:51 AM, Estelle Rogers <erogers@projectvote.org>
wrote:
I agree that burdening already-streesed pollworkers should be avoided.
That's just one more reason that onerous, unnecessary, and
politically-motivated ID laws are such a bad idea!
Estelle H. Rogers, Esq.
Director of Advocacy
Project Vote
202-546-4173, ext. 310
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On Apr 6, 2011, at 9:39 AM, John Tanner wrote:
I believe there was such an order in Arizona
More data would be great, but I am wary of assigning additional
responsibilities to poll workers lest there be delays for voters and
other
foul-ups that generally accompany any new element in the polls.
On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 6:59 PM, KRISTEN CLARKE <KCLARKE@naacpldf.org>
wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Hess <douglasrhess@gmail.com>
To: election-law <election-law@mailman.lls.edu>
Sent: 4/5/2011 6:11:38 PM
Subject: [EL] What to attach to ID laws
I don't know if the voter ID bills floating around will make
additional headway this year, but if any go forward it would be
helpful to attach a requirement that precincts collect data on each
person turned away, or asked to go through additional steps, so that
the impact of the law could be studied. Do any states currently
collect data or retain records on who is affected by the laws? Even if
just the names were kept that would be helpful.
That actually brings up another point: given how many people show up
on elections, it would be useful for some states to include a random
sample survey as a part of the election day experience, either as an
attachment of a question or two to the ballot or a separate short
survey that is handed out with the ballot and collected before the
voters (or voters turned way) exit the precinct. Do any states or
counties do this? Seems a "customer survey" is something people are
familiar enough with that it would be useful. (E.g., determining where
lines were long, machines were malfunctioning or confusing, people
asked for ID where they shouldn't be, etc.)
Doug
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