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Pierce writes: "This is not about laziness or ignorance. This is about institutional barriers placed deliberately in the way of the former group of voters by politicians working on behalf of the latter."

(photo: AP)
(photo: AP)


The Voting Wars Go On

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

20 February 14

 

he good folks at Demos, led by the redoubtable Liz Kennedy, have produced yet another study, this one outlining strategies to roll back the laws passed out in the country aimed at restricting the franchise of groups of people that conservatives and Republicans would rather not have voting, thank you very much. One of the report's many revelations is that, yes, it is being arranged so that the income inequality in our economy and in our society is being replicated at the ballot box -- which, among other things, means that not much will get done within the political system to address the problems of income inequality in the first place. In 2012, according to the report, only 46.9 percent of the eligible voters in the lower income bracket voted, while 80 percent of the eligible voters in the highest income bracket did. This is not about laziness or ignorance. This is about institutional barriers placed deliberately in the way of the former group of voters by politicians working on behalf of the latter.

The proposals therein make an enormous amount of sense on both the macro and micro levels, from easing barriers to registration, to re-establishing early voting and minimizing the use of provisional ballots, to establishing national training standards for poll workers, to designing ballots that are easy to navigate. (Demos suggests "fill in the oval" ballots rather than the "connect-the-arrow" format. All of this, of course, assumes that we're all on the same page as regards the importance of making sure everyone has an equal opportunity to vote and an equal right to have their votes counted. This is not the case.

One of the more fascinating elements of the report is that Demos comes out strongly in favor of returning the franchise to people who have been convicted of a felony once that person has completed his or her sentence. The report illustrates that "felony disenfranchisement" laws have been used as a means to political power -- and used customarily in a racist fashion -- since shortly after the Civil War. Now, as a result largely of drug laws the penalties for which fall disproportionately on African American citizens, one in 13 African American adults have been denied the right to vote through felony disenfranchisement. Although, there is an upside to incarcerated voters, as Demos discovered when it joined a lawsuit involving the strange case of Cranston, Rhode Island.

According to the lawsuit, the bulk of the inmates at this prison are disenfranchised because they are incarcerated due to a felony conviction. The remainder are permitted to vote via absentee ballot in the community they lived in prior to their incarceration, but may not vote in Cranston's Ward 6 unless that is where they previously lived. Yet, when Cranston drew its voting district lines for the six wards, the prisoners were counted as residents of Ward 6 even though the overwhelming majority of them cannot even cast a ballot in that ward. The result is that "without the incarcerated population, Ward 6 has only 10,209 true constituents. Yet those constituents now wield the same political power as the roughly 13-14,000 constituents in each of the other wards."

And, yes, the echoes of the original three-fifth's compromise become deafening. "You can't vote, but those of us who can will use you as a way to empower ourselves. Thanks, crooks."

Read the whole report. The way we run elections in this country continues to be an embarrassment, and it's getting worse, not better. That is, of course, a feature, and not a bug.

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