Rights advocates raise alarm at over voter suppression

The nation faces an unprecedented threat to voter turnout in this fall’s elections, according to civil rights advocates speaking at a Newsmaker on Friday.

“This is the first presidential election cycle to be conducted without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “The heart of it is pre-clearance for voting rights changes in states with a long history of voter suppression.”

She and others allege that the Supreme Court’s 2013 5-4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder that voided the law has made it possible for partisan election officials to reduce voting by likely opponents.

In a suit by Alabama Shelby County officials, the high court’s Republican majority overturned as unconstitutional congressional requirements that the Justice Department pre-clear major changes in voting law by localities with a history of bias. The court said pre-clearance could be legal if Congress updates its data. But GOP majorities have shown scant support for hearings and otherwise updating the law.

The stakes are high, said Leadership Conference on Civil Rights President/CEO Wade Henderson. “In the United States, voting is the language of democracy,” he said. “If you don’t vote you don’t count.”

He and Clarke agreed that new requirements for photo identifications “are Public Enemy Number One” to those who would like to see the nation’s voting turnout rise from its current position of 31st in a global survey of 34 advanced industrial nations.

Racial minorities are twice as likely as whites to lack proper photo IDs required under a new Texas law, Clarke said. Overall, she said 17 states have imposed new voting restrictions that tend to reduce voting among traditionally Democratic locales and voters.

Some voters in Maricopa County in Arizona had to wait up to five hours to vote in this spring’s primaries because authorities had reduced the number of polling places to 60 compared to more than 300 previously for the more than one million eligible voters. Officials of the predominately Republican county responded, however, that they had tried to distribute polling places equitably.

Maryland State. Rep. Cory McCray, a Democrat, said a new Maryland law easing voting restrictions on those who have completed their parole and probation has enabled 40,000 new voters this year.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, issued an executive order this spring enabling an estimated 200,000 ex-offenders to vote. But opponents vowed to restore the restrictions before this fall’s elections.

“Here we are today in the era of the new ‘Jim Crow’ aimed at minorities, the disabled and the elderly,” said American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein. Such laws blocked voting and other civil rights of blacks primarily in the South until the 1960s Civil Rights era.

As reform, he urged expanded voting by mail. He said 27 states permit mailed ballots in part, and Oregon, Washington and Colorado conduct all their voting by mail. Oregon, he said, has prosecuted just one case of fraud so far. Mailed voting, he concluded, is more convenient for voters and cheaper for taxpayers.

As moderator, Newsmaker Committee Chairman Jamie Horwitz asked panelists to predict trouble spots during this fall’s elections and invited them back this fall to check their accuracy.