AARP: Can We Still Vote?

AARP: Many older Americans will not be allowed to vote this year.
by Marsha Mercer

The midwife at the 1949 home birth in rural South Carolina delivered a healthy baby girl but didn't file a birth certificate. Donna Jean Suggs grew up, got a Social Security card and found work as a home health aide. Try as she might, though, she couldn't get a birth certificate. That meant she couldn't get a driver's license or register to vote.

"I fought with them and fought with them," she said of the local and state officials. "I prayed and prayed." In time, said Suggs, 62, who lives in Sumter, S.C., "I gave up on things" — like voting.

Having a driver's license or photo identification card is commonplace for most Americans, but about 11 percent of adult citizens — more than 21 million people — lack a valid, government-issued photo ID, according to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

Increasingly, this puts their right to vote at risk. A year ago, only Georgia and Indiana required photo ID cards to vote. Since then, 34 states have introduced voter ID laws. Five enacted them, governors in five other states vetoed them, and other states are considering them.

"What's new is the no-photo-no-vote" laws, said Jennie Bowser, a senior fellow specializing in elections at the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures. "The 2010 elections' big shift toward Republican control of state legislatures was certainly a piece of that."

Older voters most affected

The trend alarms voting advocates like Lawrence Norden, acting director of the Brennan Center's Democracy Program, who said photo ID laws hit older people, the poor, African Americans and students the hardest. "This is the first time in decades that we have seen a reversal in what has been a steady expansion of voting rights in the United States," Norden said. "There's no question that citizens over 65 will be particularly impacted. The older you get, the more likely you won't have an ID."

Nearly one in five citizens over 65 — about 8 million — lacks a current, government-issued photo ID, a 2006 Brennan Center study found. Most people prove their eligibility to vote with a driver's license, but people over 65 often give up their license and don't replace it with the state-issued ID that some states offer non-driving residents. People over 65 also are more likely to lack birth certificates because they were born before recording births was standard procedure.

Strict new photo ID laws could make voting this year more difficult for 3.2 million voters in Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin, if the new laws stand, according to the Brennan Center.

Voter Registration Cards On Hold Until High Courts Draw Redistricting Lines

If you are a registered voter with an expired [voter registration] card, then you will not receive a new one until the courts decide on how the Texas congressional and state house lines will be drawn. [County election officials may also have to wait until the U.S. Dept. of Justice, and possibly the federal courts rule on Texas' new voter photo ID law.]

“A lot of voters are calling because their cards are expired,” Kristi Allyn, Taylor County Elections Administrator, said. All Texas voter registration cards expired at the end of 2011.

Usually, election officials mail out new cards [in December], but this year, things are a little different. “We will be sending out new cards, we’re not sure when,” Allyn said.

Election offices across the state are on hold until the redistricting limbo is all settled. “We’re just waiting at this point to see what districts we’ll have to put on the cards,” Allyn explained.

Full Article: Voter Registration Cards On Hold Until High Courts Draw Redistricting Lines – Abilene News Story – KTXS Abilene.

Will USDOJ Approve Or Reject Texas' Voter Photo ID Law?

Within the next ten days we should know whether the U.S. Department of Justice will approve or reject Texas' new voter photo ID law.

On November 16, 2011 Christian Herren Jr., the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) Civil Rights Division Voting Section Chief, informed the Texas Secretary of State’s office by letter that the state has yet to provide the voter photo ID related information the USDOJ requested at the end of September.

In the letter, Herren informed the Texas Director of Elections, Ann McGeehan, that without the requested information the USDOJ is unable to determine if the voter photo ID law will “have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.” The USDOJ must make that determination before the law may be implemented.

Texas has 60 days from the date of Herren's Nov. 16th letter to respond. If Texas does not return the requested information to the USDOJ by Jan. 16, 2012, the USDOJ will likely reject Texas application for preclearance of SB14 - Texas' voter photo ID legislation. The USDOJ will likely state roughly the same objections it stated to reject South Carolina's photo ID law on Friday, December 23, 2011. Texas, then, would likely appeal the rejection through the courts.

In early December, this blog published an article asking, "Does Texas Want the USDOJ To Reject Its Voter Photo ID Law?" Given Texas still has not replied to Herrin's letter of Nov. 16th, it is becoming ever clearer that Texas wants to the USDOJ to reject its voter photo ID law, so the state can appeal the USDOJ's rejection to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) challenging the constitutionally of the preclearance rule, included in Section 5 of the VRA. Texas and South Carolina undoubtedly will jointly take their "constitutionally" arguments to the SCOTUS.

"Now the REAL Debate Can Begin: How DOJ's SC Voter ID Objection FINALLY Brings Data to the Discussion" - by Doug Chapin, Humphrey School of Public Affair - Program for Excellence in Election Administration:

Is Section 5 On The Line Right Now?

Scotus Blog

A lively discussion that has gone on among those following the Texas redistricting cases — coming up for argument in the Supreme Court next Monday afternoon — has focused on whether the Justices might say something in those cases about the constitutionality of the key voting rights law’s provision that is centrally involved in the cases. That is Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and how it is enforced is what the three Texas cases are all about. In a new brief filed Tuesday, the state of Texas has given a very broad hint that Section 5′s validity could actually be on the line right now.

Read the full story @ Scotus Blog