The Brawler, following Cory Liebmann, wishes to congratulate the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel edit board for taking a stand against Voter ID requirements and calling them what they are: transparent attempts by Republicans to dampen turnout. It was a nice rebuke of the RPW's ongoing efforts to get a voter ID law in Wisconsin.
(No doubt the MJS edit board was inspired by this piece from the Brawler! Now all we need is for the news department to investigate the RPW's penchant for bogus calls of voter fraud!)
The Journal Sentinel did this as the Supreme Court prepared to hear a case concerning a strict Voter ID law in Indiana. Talking Points Memo highlighted how the law's defenders say it's necessary to defend against ... well, the total absence of any evidence that voters pretending to be other people (the questioner is a journalist and Todd Rokita is Indiana's secretary of state):
Q: ...Have there been cases in Indiana where people represented themselves as somebody else in order to be able to vote?
Rokita: Oh yeah, we suspect it happens all the time.
Q: You suspect?
Rokita: Mm hmm.
Q: Have you got any cases proven?
Rokita: Well, are you saying you want to define whether or not there’s fraud based on whether or not it’s prosecuted? Is that the question?
And that's about the sum total of the GOP's case for why we need voter ID laws. It's a fairly low evidentiary standard, quite the inverse to Republicans' need for proof of human impact on global warming, say, or the need for ergonomic standards in the workplace.
TPM goes on:
It bears mentioning here that the Justice Department under George Bush has indeed made prosecuting voter fraud a priority -- and came up empty. That fact hasn't stopped voter ID law proponents from claiming hundreds of demonstrated cases of voter fraud. It's quite a morass of innuendo, but the Brennan Center (which has filed an amicus brief with the law's opponents) undertook the staggering task of disproving every one of those claims one by one. It's a 75 page document (pdf).
As noted by Hasen, it seems that the Supreme Court is likely to uphold the stringent Indiana law.
Which certainly would be music to the ears of Patrick McIlheran, who, with no little smarm, takes shots at the edit board for its stance. Though he doesn't do so directly. Instead he takes a shot at a New York Times editorial that makes largely the same points.
Bluntly, Paddy's pissing inside the tent while telling everyone he's actually tinkling outside. It's not a very persuasive position.
Paddy launches into the old laundry list of why we need voter ID. Paddy -- who routinely bemoans the weight of regulation on business and even once suggested how rinsing out containers for recycling is a huge time suck for people -- suggests adding an additional level of burden to voting wouldn't suppress turnout. (He cites two studies he says back his point and overturn all previous research.) Indeed, we might do people a favor by forcing them to get IDs!
The strength of Paddy's argument can be gleaned by the supporting evidence he musters for the necessity of voter IDs, and how he presents it.
He talks about a the drip-drip of voter fraud convictions around the country -- including Milwaukee! He fails to mention the biggest "problem" in Milwaukee has been felons voting, which wouldn't be fixed by voter IDs.
Or he refers to "schemes to gin up 1,800 fake voters in Washington by the “community action” group ACORN."
If Patrick were a news reporter -- as he was for two years many years ago in the bustling town of Winona, Minn. -- this phrase would be the subject of a big fat correction.
If you read the story you find that it was a voter registration issue -- i.e. ACORN-hired canvassers were getting paid for registering voters. So some just made up names. Obviously this is wrong. Just as obviously, these names would be of little use to ACORN -- or Democrats -- since these fake people weren't going to show up at the polls. From the story:
The defendants faked cards as an easy way to get paid, not as an attempt to influence the outcome of elections, said King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg. None of the phony registrations led to illegal voting.
So clearly we need voter IDs!
But as for why Paddy would need to write a correction: it's the canvassers-- not ACORN -- that have been charged in this case. There's no evidence ACORN had a scheme to gin up fake names. (Although ACORN agreed to pay investigation fees and signed a 5-year agreement recognizing it needed to beef up training and fraud reporting procedures and could be liable for fraud if these shenanigans occurred again).
But what's a little mangling of facts when you're trying to drive the party line?
But perhaps the most laugh inducing part of Paddys column is his outrage that the NYT edit board (and by extension the MJS edit board) suggests that Republicans are using the laws as a means to suppress the vote.
One fascinating part of the argument over whether voters should have to adequately identify themselves is how easily one particular side throws accusations of ill will. ...
It is an easy slander, and one that itself suits partisan purposes — for one, maintaining the fiction that Republicans just can’t stand minorities. For the slander to hold up, one must believe there are no credible reasons at all to suspect that someone might do his part to stuff a ballot box, that there are no credible reasons to fear that loose or absent identification requirements are an invitation to fraud.
Paddy shifts the subject. This isn't about how "Republicans just can't stand minorities" it's about how Republicans look for ways to prevent people who lean Democratic from voting.
And given that George Bush's brother purged the rolls of qualified black voters in Florida in 2000; that the Bush Administration could care less about voting-related civil rights abuses; and Republicans have continued to push disenfranchsisement strategies in Florida and elsewhere, the onus is on McIlheran to demonstrate why his edit board's charge is a "slander" at all.
I agree with much of your premise but...
You stated that "the biggest problem in Milwaukee would be felons voting".
This so misses the point!
The biggest problem with Wisconsin's electoral system is that we are spending $20 million to keep felons from voting for often years while living, working, raising families and paying taxes in Wisconsin!
In IL, MI, IN, OH, PA and 9 others states felons are automatically restored their right to vote upon release from prison.
In Maine and Vermont, they bring the voting booths into the prisons and EVERYONE VOTES.
Research shows that felons who vote, reoffend at a substantially lower rate...
This is a state by state issue and Wisconsin could choose to save $20 million taxpayer dollars, and a lot of hassle and frustration on the part of state employees in the Election Commission as well as our American Democracy Heroes the poll workers trying to sort all this out on election day.
Its expensive, unnecessary, racially biased and most importantly un-American to deny citizens the right to vote. Last I heard, we fought a war over taxation without representation!
Posted by: Renee Crawford | January 10, 2008 at 08:52 AM
Why the hell does the MJS op-ed insist on giving us wall-to-wall Paddy?
If this is to attract more readers in the authoritarian burbs forget it. Despite evidence to the contrary (and these are people who as we know don't respond well to evidence to any kind) these folks who spend four fours on a Saturday mowing their lawns will not pick up a MJS subscription, while at the same time the MJS is making themselves look like fools to the rest of us for running this moron non-stop.
But we are the one's who oddly buy the paper.
Posted by: kr | January 10, 2008 at 09:25 AM