NewsTaco

By Leigh Owens, Huffington Post Latino Voices

Color of Change, the nation’s largest online civil rights organization, is taking on media heavyweight Clear Channel over billboards that the advocacy group claims are attempts at voter intimidation.

Recently, anti-voter fraud billboards have sprung up in swing states such as Ohio and Wisconsin, depicting a gavel and informing passers-by that voter fraud is a felony, punishable by up to three and a half years in prison and fines of up to $10,000. Although the billboards state that they were funded by a “private family foundation,” Color of Change’s executive director Rashad Robinson believes Clear Channel has a responsibility to remove the ads, and has started an online campaign in an effort to force them to do so.

Robinson told The Huffington Post, “For us, these billboards, they create a culture of fear. They’ve only been put up in black and brown neighborhoods, so these are not widespread billboards. They are targeting certain communities, and they’re creating a fear for people going to the polls.”

Robinson also took issue with the anonymity of the billboard’s buyer. “These billboards were funded by an anonymous donor. So unlike the work of Color of Change, when we send out a petition or do a rally, when we take out an ad, people know exactly who paid for it. They know what we stand for, they know who we are,” Robinson said.

Clear Channel, which owns the billboards, was purchased in 2008 by Bain Capital, the company founded by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

In an email to HuffPost, Jim Cullinan, vice president of corporate communications for Clear Channel Outdoor, said, “Clear Channel Outdoor does not comment on our advertisers’ ads. We are committed to ensuring that ads, including political ads, posted on our billboards have the appropriate disclaimer so this situation doesn’t happen…

READ MORE HERE

This article was first published in Huffington Post Latino Voices.

[Photo courtesy Huffington Post Latino Voies]

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

So while the GOP is making noise and guarding the front door against alleged voter fraud – launching voter ID offensives in 22 states of the union, preparing to let loose an army of election observers in key precincts – there may have been some shady voter registration shenanigans going on through their own back door. It turns out  that a Republican funded voter registration and mobilization firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, in under investigation for voter fraud in Florida.

Here’s how the Los Angeles Times reported the story:

In Florida, the state party fired the firm on Tuesday after election workers in Palm Beach County discovered numerous registration forms that appeared to be filled out in the same handwriting, some including wrong addresses and birthdays. Some of the forms switched addresses and party registrations, including changes from Democratic or independent to Republican, said county elections supervisor Susan Bucher.

The company helped identify 106 forms submitted by the same worker.

So the dominoes started tumbling.  Strategic Allied Consulting has been fired in six other swing states. Party big-wigs say they have a zero-tolerance for such bad behavior. According to the same LA Times piece, RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said “When the allegations yesterday were brought to our attention, we severed our relationship. We acted swiftly and boldly.”

Here’s the thing, though: back in 2004 there were allegations that employees of Strategic Allied Consulting were registering Democratic voters and throwing those registrations in the trash. Wouldn’t that have been the proper time to act swiftly and boldly?

[Photo By The Rachel Maddow Show]

By Hector Luis Alamo, Jr., Being Latino

Latinos are not a monolithic group, but some people sure like lumping us together:

From the NationalJournal:

“In a lengthy, sweeping decision, a federal court in Washington on Tuesday unanimously struck down Texas’ new congressional map, ruling that the plan was enacted with ‘discriminatory purpose’ against Hispanics protected under the Voting Rights Act. The ruling will not affect this year’s elections, but barring successful appeal, Texas would have to redraw its maps before 2014.

The three-judge panel ruled that Texas legislators drew a map that intentionally denied fair representation to Hispanic voters during the state’s decennial redistricting process. On a narrower, 2-1 basis, the court also ruled that the new map ‘does not entitle minorities to proportional representation.’ “

And here’s the lumping part from Huff Post Latino Voices:

“After Texas won four new seats in the 2010 reapportionment process — something which was due almost entirely to growth in the state’s Latino population — its state legislature attempted to circumvent the Voting Rights Act. In a November 2010 email obtained by the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and presented as evidence in court, a Texas legislative staffer suggested drafting new districts by identifying communities with a large number of voters with ‘Spanish’ surnames and low voter turnout, then lumping them together into an opportunity district.

Staffers drawing the state’s new congressional districts pushed areas with a large number of very active Latino voters into mostly Republican and non-Hispanic white districts. With these maps in place, the impact of the more active and largely Democratic-leaning Latino voters would be minimized and Republicans in these areas could be safely reelected. With the new districts in place, it became highly unlikely that candidates preferred by minority voters would hold any of the state’s new congressional seats.”

Now, I don’t share the foaming animosity toward Republicans that some of my left-wing compadres harbor. I believe in republican politics, and so I know that any form of representative government should welcome a wide range of views and ideologies, progressive as well as conservative.

That being said, isn’t it clear that some sections of the Republican Party are determined to suppress the minority vote in 2012?

First, and despite no evidence that voter fraud is anything but an extremely rare occurrence, the Republican Party has made it a part of their platform to push for voter ID laws nationwide. In Pennsylvania, a Democratic-leaning battleground state, voter ID supporters are upholding a law that could potentially disenfranchise 1.4 million voters in the state — 1 in 3 voters in the Philly area alone — even though voter IDers have admitted to having no evidence of voter fraud at the polls.

Photo by Azavea

And in Texas, where the addition of 4.2 million residents since 2000 (or a 20.6 percent increase) is attributed to Latinos, Republicans in the state are trying to redraw district maps as to limit Latino influence in elections.

I promise I’m no conspiracy theorists. But if something walks like discrimination and talks like discrimination, it’s probably discrimination.

This article was first published in Being Latino.

Hector Luis Alamo, Jr., is an associate editor at Being Latino and a native son of Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. He received a B.A. in history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where his concentration was on ethnic relations in the United States. While at UIC, he worked first as a staff writer for the Chicago Flame and later became the newspaper’s opinions editor. Since then he has contributed to various Chicago-area publications, most notably, Hispanically Speaking News and Gozamos. He has maintained a personal blog since 2007, YoungObservers.blogspot.com, where he discusses topics ranging from political history and philosophy to culture and music.

[Photo By simonlyall]

By Felipe Diaz, Being Latino

So far, this election’s most controversial debate (other than the recent return of the birthers) is arguably voter I.D. laws.

Thirty-two states have already implemented some sort of voting identification law, and some of the strictest laws are in places where, according to a Pew Hispanic Centeranalysis of census figures, the minority population has sky-rocketed.

The Brennan Center for Justice has criticized many of the new voter identification laws as discriminatory, estimating that 11 percent of eligible voters lack government-issued identification. I have even come across some of the (admittedly, more absurd) commentators of online news stories that wholeheartedly believe President Obama won his election in 2008 due to deliberate and widespread voter fraud.

Personally, I’ve always been on the fence about voter identification laws. I understand the concerns of both sides. I understand the necessity of verifying votes, especially when we need identification for everything from renting sports equipment to buying alcohol. Yet, I understand the concern of disenfranchising certain populations – Latinos, African Americans, the poor and college students – all groups that are less likely to have acceptable identification and who make up key parts of the Democratic voting bloc.

So, before formulating my opinion, I decided to follow the research to lead me to the most logical outcome.

Take Wisconsin for example. A recent study found that in the 2004 election, the state had a voter fraud rate of 0.0002 percent – all of which involved people with felony convictions who weren’t eligible to vote after being released from prison. No fakers, no deliberate impersonations.

That means actual cases of voting fraud are so rare, that a voter is much more likely to be struck by lightning than to impersonate another voter at the polls.

Those figures didn’t stop Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus from claiming that Wisconsin is “riddled with voter fraud.”

Jump over to Indiana, however, and we see exactly the kind of voter fraud Republicans are trying to protect us from. In February, Republican Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White was found guilty on six felony counts of voter fraud, theft and perjury. This happened despite a 2005 Indiana law that implemented “the strictest voter I.D. requirements in the nation.”

So, there you have it: Republicans are trying to protect our elections from the fraud they commit with their voter identification laws, which have now proven to be completely ineffective anyway.

This is media sensationalism at its finest. James O’Keefe and other Republican campaign strategists have effectively scammed voter fraud into existence.

Even the Justice Department has objected to voting identification laws in multiple states because they would have a disproportionate impact on minority voters. Attorney General Eric Holder has said such laws aren’t likely to make elections insusceptible to fraud.

If Republicans have to make something up in order to prove their point, they probably don’t have a point to make in the first place.

This article first appeared in Being Latino.

Felipe Diaz is a first generation Mexican-American born and raised in Greeley, Colorado. He currently studies at the University of Denver for a B.A. in journalism and political science where he also served as the President of the Latino Student Alliance and Vice-President of the Undergraduate Student Government. He has maintained a personal blog since 2010 where he enjoys writing and discussing topics ranging from politics and communication to culture and entertainment.

[Photo by jasleen_kaur]

By Rafael Anchia, Texas State Representative, District 103

On March 12, 2012 the Department of Justice (DOJ) stood up for Texas voters by refusing to pre-clear the strict photo ID legislation that Texas Republicans passed during the 2011 legislative session. According to the DOJ’s ruling, the state of Texas has failed to prove that the new law will not disenfranchise Hispanic voters who lack a state-issued identification card. Since July of 2011, the state has twice submitted data from the Department of Public Safety office indicating that between 600,000 and nearly 800,000 Hispanic registered voters do not have a state-issued ID card.

For those not familiar with the term “pre-clearance,” it means that, under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, changes to Texas’ election laws must be reviewed to ensure that the laws do not have discriminatory effects. Immediately following the end of last session, several voting rights advocacy groups sent letters to the DOJ stating that the new law will disenfranchise many Texas voters, including seniors, college students, the disabled, and ethnic and racial minorities. The restrictive nature of the bill defies common sense. For example, a college student in Texas who holds an out-of-state driver’s license, but is registered to vote on campus will not be able to use that driver’s license or even their college photo ID to vote. Even worse, a Korean war veteran who no longer drives and does not have a government-issued photo ID such as a valid passport or concealed handgun license will not be allowed to vote with their voter registration card, despite the fact that his service to his country was supposed to ensure that very right for his fellow Americans.

I have always argued that any photo ID law contain vote-saving provisions ensuring no duly-registered Texas voter is left behind. In Idaho, among the reddest of red states, the photo ID law allows duly registered citizens without photo ID to issue an affidavit under penalty of perjury in order to vote. In Florida, the Republican photo ID law allows voters without photo ID to cast a ballot that undergoes a signature match (like we do with mail-in ballots in Texas). During the debate on the House floor, I offered amendments based on these models, but they were rejected.

At the risk of saying, “I told you so,” it comes as no surprise to those of us who predicted that the DOJ would take issue with the more onerous provisions of this legislation. During the house debate, I also offered an amendment that would have delayed enactment of the strict photo ID law until the SOS had furnished the very type of data that formed the basis for the DOJ objection. Disturbingly, no voter impact analysis had been conducted by the State of Texas and, during the debate on this bill, I introduced studies suggesting that between 150,000 and 500,000 registered voters in Texas do not have the kind of photo ID that would be required to vote. As it turns out, I was too conservative in my estimates, and in fact we now know that up to 800,000 Texans might not be able to cast a regular ballot under the new law.

You would think that, before pushing for this legislation, the authors would have asked how the bill adversely affects Texans’ right to vote. What was their acceptable threshold for disenfranchisement? Was it 100, 100,000, or 800,000 Texas voters? To put 800,000 voters in context-that’s about the number of people who live in the entire state of South Dakota . It seemed as though Texas Republicans never really wanted to answer that question. Despite the studies predicting that the bill would adversely affect the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of Texans, undoubtedly among them thousands of Texas Republicans, the authors of the bill simply ignored these inconvenient data points.

What has become clear to me is that this legislation was not intended to deal with voter fraud – in fact, the only kind of voter fraud that regularly occurs, mail-in ballot fraud, is not touched by the photo ID legislation. A multi-year investigation by the Texas Attorney General has borne out that impersonation of a voter at the ballot box is extremely rare in the state of Texas. The real problem is not voter impersonation, it’s that too few people are voting. In the 2010 mid-term general elections, Texas was dead last among the 50 states in registered voter participation. So instead of trying to find ways to encourage more participation by voters, Texas Republicans passed legislation that would discourage voter turnout.

As legislators, we need to ensure that fundamental individual rights are protected. Now that the DOJ has decided not to pre-clear the strict photo-ID bill, we may get another shot at this legislation. And if we do, we need to act responsibly and pass legislation that will make voter participation a top priority.

Rafael Anchia is the Texas State Representative for District 103 in North Texas.

At last count 14 state legislatures have passed a total 19 voter restricting laws; there have been another 2 executive orders and dozens of bills pending that would in one way or another infringe on the voting rights of US citizens. But who’s counting?

Truth is that until recently, no one was. Republican led state legislatures from across the country have been approving individual voting laws at the state level and at best those of us who follow these things had only an eerie feeling that something was up; they happened so quickly that they piled on each other and didn’t leave room for deliberate scrutiny. We at News Taco have been writing about this for a few months, but it wasn’t until researchers at the Brennan Center for Justice compiled a list of the laws and the orders and the bills that a pattern came into focus.

The study, titled Voting Law Changes in 2012, went a little deeper than a simple count of the states and the laws.

Some states require voters to show government-issued photo identification, often of a type that as many as one in ten voters do not have. Other states have cut back on early voting, a hugely popular innovation used by millions of Americans. Two states reversed earlier reforms and once again disenfranchised millions who have past criminal convictions but who are now taxpaying members of the community. Still others made it much more difficult for citizens to register to vote, a prerequisite for voting.

The citizens directly affected by these laws are minorities (I despise that word, but I use it here because it’s useful), students, the disabled, low income voters and the elderly. Here’s a list of what the Brennan Center study says these laws will accomplish:

• These new laws could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.
• The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
• Of the 12 likely battleground states, as assessed by an August Los Angeles Times analysis of Gallup polling, five have already cut back on voting rights (and may pass additional restrictive legislation), and two more are currently considering new restrictions.

Now read the list again, only this time do it with an eye on which voters are affected and which are omitted.

All of this is done in the name of combating voter fraud. The implication is that if you’re a minority, or a student, or disabled, or poor, or elderly, you’ll more than likely commit fraud at the polls. And if that’s true, who do these laws imply won’t commit fraud?

If you’re wondering if any of these laws will affect you, where you live, click HERE. The Brennan Center put together a good list of each state and the laws they enacted. If your state is not on the list, you may not be out of the woods. The study’s executive summary ends on a somber note:

This snapshot may soon be incomplete: the second halves of some state legislative sessions have begun.

[Image via Tom Arthur]

It’s not like we didn’t see this one coming. What with the Texas GOP reading population tea leaves, fighting for dear life in the redistricting process and seeing their waning popularity in the growing Latino community, they’re going for broke.

The Republican dominated state legislature approved a voter ID bill that’s all but a done-deal awaiting only Governor Rick Perry’s signature to become law. Bloomberg reports that the signature is imminent:

Republican Governor Rick Perry plans to sign the measure tomorrow, according to an e-mailed statement today. The second most-populous state joins six others including Florida and Indiana that demand a photo ID from voters at the polls.

Sponsors of the law say it will combat voter fraud and increase voter participation. So lets look at each one separately.

In 2008 the Texas House Elections Committee met to hear testimony about voter fraud. Here’s an excerpt from the official report:

A representative from the Office of the Attorney General (AG), Criminal Justice Division and Criminal Prosecution Division, offered testimony to the committee on factual historical data on voter fraud in Texas. Since mid-August of 2002, the AG has received 108 referrals for potential election code violations. Of those, 60% came from the Secretary of State’s Office, 12% from local prosecutors, and the remainder from local election administrators. The investigations led to 22 prosecutions. Fifteen cases were fully adjudicated and seven are awaiting trial. Of the 22 prosecutions, 14 cases resulted from unlawful use of the mail-in ballot process, 1 case involved a campaign finance violation, 3 cases involved unlawful conduct at a polling place, and 4 cases involved other forms of non-compliance of the election code. One case involved two non-citizens voting in an election. Many of the referrals were not prosecuted because it was determined there were no election code violations.

One case, over a 6 year span, in the entire state of  Texas where people voted claiming to be someone they were not.

And what about the claim that voter ID will increase voter participation? That comes from the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Patricia Harless, (R) Spring. According to the Bloomberg report she says that the law will “boost Texans’ confidence in elections.” Be my guest, read between the lines. Increase who’s confidence? And why?

Already there are planned challenges to the law.

Opponents plan to challenge the measure in court, said Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project. The Austin-based nonprofit group, which advocates on behalf of minorities, says the law is unconstitutional and aimed at making it harder for Latinos to vote. Republicans who dominate the Legislature say it will survive judicial review.

And then there is the matter of cost, that not too many people are talking about. When the state is strapped for cash and cuts are made to public education this bill adds spending at the county level. Voters who don’t have an ID will be given provisional ballots. And according to Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacquelyn Callanen, who spoke to the San Antonio Express-News,

Those casting provisional ballots would add to the Election Department’s workload after an election, and depending on the bill’s final version, could require keeping offices open on weekends, Callanen said.

Texas Governor Rick Perry listed Voter ID and a ban on sanctuary cities as emergency items at the beginning of the state’s legislative session. The budget and the state’s educational system were not on his list of priorities.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda

[Photo by joebeone]