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Excerpt: "Governor Christie pushed further into the contentious debate over voting rights than ever before, saying Tuesday that Republicans need to win gubernatorial races this year so that they're the ones controlling 'voting mechanisms' going into the next presidential election."

Governor Chris Christie during a campaign stop Monday in Connecticut for Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley. (photo: AP)
Governor Chris Christie during a campaign stop Monday in Connecticut for Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley. (photo: AP)


Chris Christie Says GOP Gubernatorial Candidates Need to Win So They Can Control "Voting Mechanisms"

By Melissa Hayes and Herb Jackson, NorthJersey.com

22 October 14

 

overnor Christie pushed further into the contentious debate over voting rights than ever before, saying Tuesday that Republicans need to win gubernatorial races this year so that they’re the ones controlling “voting mechanisms” going into the next presidential election.

Republican governors are facing intense fights in the courts over laws they pushed that require specific identification in order to vote and that reduce early voting opportunities. Critics say those laws sharply curtail the numbers of poor and minority voters, who would likely vote for Democrats. Christie — who vetoed a bill to extend early voting in New Jersey — is campaigning for many of those governors now as he considers a run for president in 2016.

Christie stressed the need to keep Republicans in charge of states — and overseeing state-level voting regulations — ahead of the next presidential election. Christie made his push at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event in Washington, D.C., where he ran down a list of states he’s spent time in recently as chairman of the Republican Governors Association questioning whether a Republican presidential nominee would rather have the incumbent GOP governor in power or the Democratic challenger.

“Would you rather have Rick Scott in Florida overseeing the voting mechanism, or Charlie Crist? Would you rather have Scott Walker in Wisconsin overseeing the voting mechanism, or would you rather have Mary Burke? Who would you rather have in Ohio, John Kasich or Ed FitzGerald?” he asked.

Christie’s remarks Tuesday came on another day of intense campaigning for Republican candidates and featured another attack on Democrats and President Obama, this time on raising the minimum wage, an issue, like stricter voting identification requirements, that appeals to conservative voters who hold sway in presidential primaries.

“I’m tired of hearing about the minimum wage, I really am,” Christie said. It was a remark that immediately drew criticism from national Democrats.

Christie — who vetoed a minimum wage bill in New Jersey but was overruled by voters when the question was put on the November ballot — said it’s not something parents are sitting around talking about in the context of their children’s future.

“They aspire to a greater, growing America for their children to have the ability to make much more money and have much bigger success than they have and that’s not about a higher minimum wage,” he said. “We should start talking about what our aspirations are and how we can succeed.”

The governor’s comments to the chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, which advocates for rules and laws to protect companies from lawsuits, come as several states face challenges to their voter identification laws.

The U.S. Court of Appeals this month put a lower court’s decision to strike down Texas’ voter identification law on hold, allowing it to remain in place for the midterm election. Texas, which has a Republican governor and GOP-controlled Legislature, passed a law in 2011 recognizing state-issued photo identification and gun permits but not college identification cards. This month the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled on challenges to voter identification laws implemented by Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin and Arkansas, blocking the first from going into effect until next year and striking down the latter.

In addition to stricter voter identification requirements, states are also restricting early voting and limiting opportunities for voter registration, said Wendy R. Weiser, director of the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program, which focuses on voting rights issues.

“One thing that they appear to all have in common is that they do all fall more harshly on minority voters, low-income voters, seniors and young voters,” she said of the changes.

Courts have found many of these practices to be discriminatory and in some cases racially motivated, but several of the laws will remain in place at least for now because judges ruled it was too close to Election Day to change them.

“Nationally there has been a real significant battle over the right to vote in a lot of states across the country, and in particular many Republican-controlled jurisdictions, particularly ones where there were highly competitive races, have passed new laws that make it harder for eligible citizens to vote,” she said. “This is a fairly recent phenomenon; it really stepped up in 2011 after the 2010 election when there was a real shift in partisan control across the country, and it has continued.”

There are 31 states that require voters to show some sort of identification every time they cast a ballot, according to Vote Riders, a non-partisan, non-profit group that works to ensure citizens can exercise their right to vote. North Carolina is set to implement perhaps the strictest package of changes in 2016. Weiser said the most problematic states are those that severely limit the types of identification accepted.

The National Conference of State Legislators has deemed four states to have “strict photo ID” requirements in place — Georgia, Indiana, Kansas and Tennessee — and four more — Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia — set to follow suit once their laws are implemented. These states severely limit the forms of identification required to vote. Voters who do not meet the standard are permitted to fill out provisional ballots, which are only counted if the voter presents election officials with a valid identification card within days of the election.

Last May, as he was launching his own reelection bid, Christie vetoed a bill that would have allowed early voting in the state by opening polls daily in the 15 days leading up to the election. He said voters can already cast ballots by mail in New Jersey and the new system would have been too costly.

Democrats accused Christie of blocking the bill, which they say would have increased turnout, to advance his own political ambitions. Several other GOP governors have vetoed or scaled back existing early-voting laws, among them, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

Christie said Tuesday the party affiliation of governors will matter in the next presidential contest.

“The fact is it doesn’t matter if you don’t really care what happens in these states, you’re going to care about who is running the state in November of 2016, what kind of political apparatus they’ve set up and what kind of governmental apparatus they’ve set up to ensure a full and fair election in 2016,” he said. “All of those things are incredibly important.”

The governor has said several times that only people who legally have a right to vote should be able to do so, but he hasn’t been outspoken on voter identification laws. When a judge struck down Pennsylvania’s law in 2012, Christie said he couldn’t comment on that state’s law specifically because he wasn’t that familiar with it. But he said states should have the ability to decide what regulations are needed.

“From my perspective, each state makes their own judgments on that in terms of the integrity of their own voting system in their state,” Christie said in 2012. “But I think that’s something that maybe we all could agree on, the only people who should vote are the people who are legally entitled to and those who are not legally entitled to shouldn’t be able to influence the election.”

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