WASHINGTON – They came with studies, they came with polls, they came with statistics. And after more than two hours of a congressional hearing Monday, they walked away no closer to agreeing on how voting restrictions affect ballot access.
Democratic and Republican members of the House Administration Committee stuck largely to their talking points during a hearing on the effect that voter ID laws, proof-of-citizenship requirements and lack of language assistance have on elections.
Republicans dismissed suggestions that voter ID laws have a disproportionate impact on minority voters, pointing to the turnout in the 2020 elections as proof.
“In 2020 we saw more people cast a vote than any other presidential election in history, further dispelling the myth that voting ID requirements deter people from legally voting,” said Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wisc.
But Democrats and some witnesses at the hearing pointed to a long list of studies that they said demonstrate, in the words of Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., that, “Voting ID laws have been shown to disproportionately decrease minority turnout.”
The committee debate comes as the Arizona Legislature is considering several election bills that echo the national debate, with one side saying the changes protect and the other side saying they restrict voting.
The state had 23 restrictive voting bills for the 2021 legislative session, the third-most in the nation, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. It also had 15 Democrat-backed voting-expansion bills, but those were quickly killed in the Legislature.
State lawmakers have already passed one measure that would stop the practice of automatically mailing ballots to voters on the state’s Permanent Early Voting List – now called the Active Early Voting List – if they had not voted in at least one election over a four-year period. Gov. Doug Ducey signed that bill into law on May 11.
Democrats blasted the measure as an effort to purge voting rolls. But Ducey said the move only brings Arizona into line with other states that have early voting lists, like California, and that the law requires election officials to reach out to those voters, who can still request a mail-in ballot.
Another pending proposal would stiffen voter ID requirements for absentee ballots. Voters would have to provide their date of birth along with either their driver’s license number or a voter registration number.
Sponsors of the bill did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday, but critics said the measure, if passed, would confuse voters and increase the chances that their ballots would be thrown out for minor errors. It would also make mail-in voting harder for minority voters, thousands of whom do not have driver’s licenses.
“Driver’s license possession is skewed towards wealthier and white voters,” said Ryan Snow, an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who said voting needs to be treated as a right, not a privilege. “This new restriction will have a disproportionately higher burden on minority groups, which is very concerning.”
Snow also said that under the mail-in voting bill, SB 1713, enrolled members of Native American tribes who can now use their tribal ID as a valid form of identification at a polling place would be prohibited from using it to vote by mail.
Aaron Payment, the vice president of the National Congress of American Indians, called the proposed mail-in voting requirement little more than “the haves wanting to prevent the have-nots from receiving the American Dream.”
“Wealthy people have been filling out absentee ballots for a long time now, the privileged class has been doing it for generations,” Payment said Monday. “Now that lower-income and people of color are doing it and we’re watching politicians complain about it while they cast their absentee ballot.… It’s a special brand of American politics.”
But, in Washington, witnesses and lawmakers at the House subcommittee hearing differed on the impact tighter election security laws have on voter access.
Each of the nine witnesses cited studies or surveys to back up their case, with Republicans arguing that election security laws do not disenfranchise anyone when applied evenly, and Democrats arguing that color-blind application is rarely the case.
Matt Barreto, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said his studies have shown that white voters were statistically more likely to have the ID required for voting than any other racial or ethnic group in the country.
Butterfield said that something as simple as the cost of getting a government-issued ID for voting – as well as that costs to get the documentation needed to apply for that ID – can pose financial barriers that prohibit minority voters, who are otherwise eligible to vote, from casting a ballot.
Harmeet Dhillon, founding attorney for Dhillon Law Group, agreed that costs can be a factor for such voters, but that does not mean the law should be relaxed.
“If cost barriers do exist, and I see that as true, then the government should work to eliminate the barriers and not the safeguard,” Dhillon said.
This article appears in May 20-26, 2021.
Why don’t they give every registered voter an id card that can be scanned? Stop all the fraud on both sides. The computers will catch fraudulent scans. Instead we always have to make it about race. This would take race out of the equation.
They really don’t want solutions do they?
Making elections secure and fair is the smoke and mirrors hiding efforts by some to pass laws that will allow voters’ votes to be overturned when the outcome challenges those in power.
This is one of the most serious threats to face the people of the United States since the American Civil War. One side of the argument is trying to make us believe it is about security and fairness when their actions clearly demonstrate it is about retaining power at all costs, to include denying the truth, casting doubts on elections and threatening to use “laws” to take away the voices of all the American people.
“I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters, and to all of the people of the United States, that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win.” — Donald J. Trump
Trump made that comment because he already knew democrats were cheating with the violation of State election laws.
That’s before we get to the voting machines hooked to the internet.
He was right.
Trump made that comment in 2016, before he lost the popular vote and stumbled into office thanks to the Electoral College, but it was indicative of his future behavior, e.g., if it is in my favor, it is “fair” and “legal”; if it is not in my favor it is fake, a fraud, etc.
“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.” — H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The popular vote is not what we used to elect our Presidents. The electoral college was established for…wait for it…racists. Right?
VV, true. We should give every US citizen a voting card or number, like a SS number, at the age of 18. Every citizen. But to clarify, no one has found any significant in person voter fraud in the US after 46 republican investigations over the last 20 years. Our problem has not been too many, but too few voting. Also, when you put in voter ID laws that say, hunting licenses are good but college ID’s are not, you’re doing it to restrict one parties voters and favoring the other’s. Racism? Oh, you mean like white neighborhoods in red states have no waiting lines while black neighborhoods have 3-8 hour lines and a shortage of booths and ballots. That racism?
We need to get real about the problem. The journalistic both-sides-ism here is really exasperating.
One side–the party of wealth and white power–is simply continuing a long tradition of suppressing the voting rights of people of color. We passed the Voting Rights Act in the 60s to address this symptom of systemic racism in our society, made some progress, but then Republicans dismantled that law, so now we’re going backward again. Now they’re free to revive all sorts of Jim Crow voter suppression tactics at the state level to suppress the votes of people of color without judicial or federal interference, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.
And it’s painfully obvious why they’re doing it. The demographics of this country are changing to the point where the Rs, with their exclusive wealth-oriented white supremacy platform, will no longer be able to win national elections without suppressing the votes of people of color who are targeted and harmed by their racist, corporation friendly policies.
There is no rational debate to be had on the purpose of these laws. They are SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to suppress the votes of young people and people of color who traditionally vote Democratic in large numbers, for the sole purpose of retaining wealth and power for the white men who run the Republican Party.
That perspective is not a conspiracy theory. Plenty of Republican leaders have been caught on video and audio admitting that that’s exactly what they’re doing. Wringing our hands in this both-sides debate while ignoring that context is journalistic malpractice, at best.