While the Obama campaign is facing a barrage of McCain smear ads that also may make "dog-whistle," coded appeals to racists and anti-Christ-fearing evangelicals, he's got an even more systemic challenge ahead to winning in November.
With the smears driving down Obama's support and leading to a deadlocked race, the fate of the election and the next president in the White House may turn on this often overlooked issue:
How will the Obama campaign, the Democratic Party and their progressive allies successfully mobilize millions of unregistered and disaffected voters to turn out to vote while overcoming illegal or vote-suppressing barriers to registration and voting?
One of the biggest obstacles they have to overcome is the stark fact that most states are breaking a federal law, the National Voter Registration Act, that requires state social services agencies to offer voter registration opportunities to clients and applicants. As I reported last week in Alternet:
Millions of low-income and minority voters are being denied opportunities to register to vote by state agencies that are violating a federal voting law, according to members of Congress and voting rights groups.
The ongoing failure has led to a nearly 80 percent drop-off in registering low-income applicants at state social services agencies over a decade, according to a recent report by the non-partisan voter advocacy research groups Project Vote and Demos.
"This noncompliance means the disenfranchisement of millions of low-income citizens, and a widening of the gap between the registration rates of high and low-income individuals," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the chairwoman of a House elections subcommittee that held hearings this spring on the widespread violations of Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA)...
If minorities, who are disproportionately poor, voted at the same rate as whites, there would be 7.5 million more minority voters on Election Day, Project Vote reported last fall...
These disparities are worsened by other state and federal actions that limit access to voter registration and voting.
Battleground states such as Florida also impose draconian restrictions on voter registration groups seeking to register low-income voters. VA hospitals bar on-site voter registration drives of wounded soldiers. And states have toughened voter ID requirements, led by Indiana's photo ID law that was upheld by the Supreme Court in April.
In addition, some states, including Louisiana, are facing challenges to their efforts to hastily purge many thousands of often minority voters from their rolls. In response to these alarming trends, Project Vote declared last week, "Voter purges are one of several problems in the administration of elections that could not only bar legal voters from the polls, but could potentially influence the outcome of close races," including the tight Presidential race.
But there are some hopeful signs that the Obama campaign, at least, understands the magnitude of what needs to be done to register Democratic-leaning constituencies and protect their vote, but it's not clear they have the political savvy to succeed. As Steven Rosenfeld of Alternet, author of the essential new handbook for any voting drive activist, Count My Vote, asks in an important article today:
"Can Obama Turn the Democratic Party Upside Down with the Biggest Voter Mobilization Drive in History?"
Rosenfeld reports:
Barack Obama's presidential campaign is seeking to register "millions" of new voters immediately after the Democratic Convention, according to top campaign officials who say the effort is one facet of a "capacity-building" effort this summer that includes extensively training thousands of campaign workers as community organizers.The voter registration effort is part of a broader strategy to not just elect Obama, but also to alter the political landscape by shifting power from Washington to the grassroots, the officials say, to cultivate a base for significant political reforms. The campaign sees its training and voter registration efforts as the cornerstone of building a new progressive movement like the rise of conservatism during Ronald Reagan's presidency.
Unfortunately, it seems that the Obama registration leaders are paying little attention to the hard-won quality-control lessons learned by advocacy groups, such as ACORN, that have faced a buzz-saw of GOP phony and exaggerated charges over voter fraud because of flawed registration forms turned in by some of their temporary canvassers. With GOP scare-mongers such as Thor Hearne still beating the drum, new charges of "voter fraud" -- the engine behind the Department of Justice U.S. Attorneys scandal -- are likely to surface again, but will be used this year to discredit Obama and his campaign even further.
Is the Obama campaign prepared to weather the barrage of negative ads that will be unleashed if, say, a scruffy-looking young black canvasser gets arrested for falsifying voter registration forms, and can they effectively challenge wild charges by GOP election officials about widespread voter fraud by Obama's troops?
Rosenfeld points out some of the concerns state Democratic officials and voting registration advocates have with the Obama campaign's admirable, if grandiose, plans:
Those [Democratic state] officials said early reviews of Obama's training and outreach efforts were frustrating, with predictable errors on voter registration forms and a reluctance to ask more seasoned campaigners for advice -- despite all the talk of listening to local leaders.
Another voter registration expert predicted that mistakes on the voter registration forms -- an inevitable part of any voter drive -- would be used by the Republican Party to accuse the Obama campaign of voter registration fraud, just as the GOP has repeatedly attacked voter registration efforts by groups like ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) in recent years. It was one thing for a nonprofit group to make these kinds of mistakes, the expert said, but more politically volatile when a presidential campaign errs.
"They have the infrastructure to reach a million voters," said a voter registration researcher. "But do they have the infrastructure to reach a million disenfranchised voters who would not register otherwise?"
Efforts to contact these Obama campaign officials after the Netroots Nation conference to discuss these points were unsuccessful. The campaign aides at the conference did not discuss "quality control" issues, which established voter registration groups say are critical.
Congress won't be doing anything this year to reform any of the myriad of barriers to registration and voting -- from malfunctioning touch-screen machines to hasty purges of hundreds of thousands of voters -- that Obama's target audience of young people and minorities will encounter.
But Obama supporters and other progressives should take advantage of one vital weapon in the arsenal needed to register voters and preserve voting rights: Rosenfeld's own book. It's the most useful guide to the various barriers to voting and registration , and what you can do to overcome them (one key tip: bring along a picture ID and proof of where you live, like a utility bill, even if your state doesn't require them, because often ill-trained poll workers may demand such ID if you're going to be allowed to vote a regular ballot or your name's not on the voting rolls). As the book's promotional page points out:
The book is filled with what people need to know about each state's voting rules, voter ID laws, new voting machines; what to do if you move; and what to do if problems crop up. It has special sections for students and seniors and a state-by-state voting reference guide. But most importantly, it gives voters the confidence they need to handle any problem they might face while voting.
Minorities, especially some African-Americans, are likely to be targeted by a variety of sleazy GOP tactics, including "caging" lists, improper voter challenges and deceptive pratices designed to fool -- or intimidate -- them into not casting a ballot on Election Day. He's got a plentiful list of activist groups and resources to battle the GOP's dirty tricks, including calling the leading voter protection hotlines, such as 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
The most important feature of his book is the state-by-state guide to what you need to know to succesfully register and vote. If voting rights organizations were better-funded and more politically savvy, they'd act quickly to include his state-by-state information in a database to go along with such useful registration websites as VotePoke, which tells you if and where you're registered, or Rock the Vote. Maybe the Obama campaign can pick up the slack to create a one-stop voting registration website that takes from the best information online and in Rosenfeld's book to also inform you if you're registered to vote, and what exactly are your state's voting guidelines.
But don't hold your breath wating for voting rights to be safeguarded or the most useful voting information to be widely available come November.
So it's up to you to protect your own right to vote, since it's not clear that the Obama campaign or progressive groups will be doing everything necessary to ensure that all citizens get to exercise their right to vote in this close election. Rosenfeld's book, Count My Vote, could prove indispensable to ensure that your vote and others in your community do indeed get counted.
***************************
You can hear more about this year's election controversies, voting rights and the latest political trends on "The D'Antoni and Levine Show," with my co-host Tom D'Antoni, a Huffington Post blogger, every Thursday at 5:30 p.m., EST, at BlogTalk Radio. This week, hear SD Sen. James Abourezk and CounterPunch.com Editor Jeffrey St. Clair join us for a discussion of energy policy, McCain's ties to Big Oil, and the Presidential campaign.