Voting is the latest red-blue casualty

CARL LEUBSDORF

It ought to be the life blood of democracy, but in America, it has become another issue that divides the parties.

FOUR YEARS AGO, a record number of Americans voted. This year, the total may be lower.

One reason reported is diminished enthusiasm. Another could be the effort by Republicans in many states to make voting harder.

Voting ought to be the life blood of democracy. In the United States, it’s become another issue that divides the parties.

Democrats have mostly sought to facilitate voting — with same - day registration, longer early registration, simpler procedures. In 1993, a Democratic Congress and administration passed the “motor voter” law requiring states to allow registration when residents apply for driver’s licenses.

By contrast, most of those trying to tighten voting laws are Republicans. Their main stated motive is to reduce voter fraud, though investigations, including one by the Bush administration’s Justice Department, have uncovered only scattered illegality.

Whatever the motive, the practical impact could be to reduce voting among groups that generally vote Democratic. And that’s nothing new. A 2004 report by Rice University professor Chandler Davidson and three associates for the Center for Voting Rights and Protection, after noting Southern Democrats once suppressed black voting, detailed decades of GOP “ballot security” programs aimed at discouraging black voters. In 1993, Republican consultant Ed Rollins conceded an effort to suppress black turnout in the New Jersey governor’s race.

These efforts accelerated after Republicans won many governorships and legislatures in 2010. President Barack Obama’s Justice Department is challenging several efforts under the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1993 law.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law says 18 states have implemented restrictions that fall most heavily on “young, minority and lowincome voters, as well as voters with disabilities.” Fifteen of the states have Republican governors.

Texas and Florida exemplify what’s happening. Both states need federal approval of voter law changes under the Voting Rights Act, the landmark measure that ended many legal barriers to voting, especially in the South.

A federal court in Washington is scheduled next month to consider the new Texas law requiring voters to have a specified type of official identification: a driver’s license, passport, concealed handgun permit or military permit. Student IDs aren’t valid.

The Justice Department blocked enforcement, declaring the law could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Hispanics. Texas responded by challenging the Voting Rights Act’s legality.

Last week the Houston Chronicle reported efforts to purge nonvoters from voter registration rolls in Texas had resulted in the erroneous suspension of thousands of eligible voters.

In Florida, a federal judge has blocked officials from enforcing a new law designed to restrict voter registration drives by requiring groups like the League of Women Voters to submit completed registration applications within 48 hours.

The law “imposes burdensome record-keeping and reporting requirements that serve little if any purpose,” Judge Robert Hinkle said.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department advised Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner that state efforts to identify noncitizens with driver’s licenses and send the names to county voter officials to purge them from the rolls appear to violate the 1993 law’s provision preventing changes in voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election.

It also noted these procedures in five counties violate provisions in the Voting Rights Act that require approval by the Justice Department or a federal court.

Florida officials said they would continue the effort, which has mainly targeted Hispanics for removal from the rolls.

On the surface, requiring a driver’s license or other state - issued ID seems reasonable. But thousands of Americans don’t have them, mainly the elderly, minorities and the poor, and getting them is often a hassle.

Current Florida efforts are hardly without precedent. The Brennan Center’s Myrna Perez likened them to the 2000 Florida campaign purging voters with criminal convictions that “led to, by conservative estimates, close to 12,000 eligible voters being targeted for removal.”

For those who have forgotten, 537 votes decided the 2000 outcome in Florida and, with it, the presidency.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Contact him at carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com.