Learning from Missouri: Can Progressives Get a Fair Election?

With the presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain heading towards a close, hotly-contested election, it's up to progressives at the state and local level to make sure that it's a fair one. That's why the recent victory of a fast-acting Missouri voting rights coalition in defeating a proposed photo ID measure is so important: it shows progressives who are confronting right-wing policies how to rise up and effectively challenge them.

As the new article in Alternet points out:

Why did progressives succeed this year despite the U.S. Supreme Court decision -- and how did they pull off an organizing campaign against the measure so quickly? It's a remarkable victory with lessons for progressives and Democrats who are often out-maneuvered by conservatives everywhere from the Florida 2000 recount dramatized recently on HBO to the U.S. Congress to Republican statehouses.

Ultimately, as Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan underscores, there was a smart messaging strategy behind the coalition's success: "We told stories about real people who wouldn't be eligible to vote. Putting a human face on the issue was more important than talking abstractly about the myth of voter fraud." Yet that latter argument is often the key talking point of progressives in their mixed record in fighting ID laws in legislatures and in courts. For instance, in the Indiana Democratic Party's failed legal challenge to the 2005 Indiana law, the lawsuit was filed before the law took effect, so there weren't any individual plaintiffs who suffered grievous harm, weakening the case on appeal before the Supreme Court.

After recounting the lobbying and insider politicking, I point out in the article:

Yet, amid all the backroom deals and publicity and organizing, it was the real-life stories of people like Lillie Lewis [a Mississippi-born woman notified by that state that she had no birth certificate] that may have made the biggest difference. After the bill was defeated, she said, "I am relieved that I will be able to vote this fall. I've been voting in every election since I can remember, but if I needed my birth certificate, that would be the end of that. I hope this is the last we hear of this nonsense." Unfortunately, it probably won't be the end of the story: Half a dozen states are still considering similar photo ID and citizenship bills this year, and the issue is sure to re-emerge when state legislatures reconvene in early 2009.

But right now, if the lessons of the Missouri victory aren't learned by activists in other states, the omens are poor that all those citizens drawn to the Obama campaign -- and who are eligible to vote -- will actually be able to register and vote in large enough numbers to propel Obama to victory. Nor can they expect that their votes will be counted accurately and fairly. Congress won't be taking any meaningful actions to fix our broken election system before November, so as I previously reported in Alternet:

As a result of Congressional inaction, look for more long lines, failed machines, questionable voter purges, election-day dirty tricks, GOP challenges to minority voters and ill-trained poll-workers who, following the Supreme Court's Indiana photo ID court decision, are even more likely to ask for photo ID where it's not required, among other voting obstacles.

But it's heartening to see the way a progressive coalition in Missouri that also included such mainstream groups as AARP and the League of Women Voters beat the GOP's fear-mongering photo ID drive in a Republican-dominated state.

Many other states have laws and policies that could deny the right to vote to minorities, the poor and students. Nearly 30 states have Missouri or Indiana-style proof of citizenship or strict photo ID voting bills pending, with half a dozen in play this year, but virtually any state or locality where highly partisan Republican officials are in control could pose a risk to fair voting, because of a plethora of vote-denying schemes. These include vote "caging," improper photo ID requests, blocking registration drives for disabled vets, unaccountable purges, unreliable touch-screen machines, and outright intimidation and deception -- and these measures have to be resisted by well-organized state and local activists. That's in large part because you can't count on the state or national Democratic Party, Congress, or Republican Secretaries of State to stand up for your voting rights this year.

Activists, then, have to turn to resources like Project Vote to stay informed, and to join with coalitions such as Election Protection 365 and other leading groups to preserve voting rights. Otherwise, Obama won't get the chance for a fair, accurate and honest election that he, and progressives, deserve.

Comments

[magen]

Obama needs to address the issue of black voter suppression in many states starting NOW.

[BLinCincinnati]

The trick is to simply register as Republican, then you never get purged off the lists. Then you can vote democratic down the ballot without problem.

[pcplz]

I have a voter's registration card and present an identification card along with it. You have to do that to get anything in this world. To cash a check, to get a room, to rent a car or get on an airplane.....why is it too much trouble to present some sort of ID to vote. I am afraid that I just don't understand it. We have 5 months in which to help anyone who does not have an ID...like miss Lilly....have someone with an ID vouch for her in the voting district where she lives and issue her a non driving ID......how difficult is that?? This is where we need to be setting up programs to help. Now with so many Iowans without homes and possibly the same type of ID problems.......there needs to be ways around the birth certificate problem.

C 'mon People!

[Art Levine - Huffpost Blogger]

The above comment , and similar ones, ares based on the mistaken assumption that there's a legitimate reason to demand a birth certificate. The Republicans behind it don't want people to be able to come up with embossed, government -issued birth certificate -- poor people and minorities, and others more likely to vote Democratic, are those who are at higher risk of not having these documents, so GOP vote-suppressers are comfortable making sure there are as many barriers as possible between those constituents and getting their vote counted. Voting is a constitutional right that shouldn't be easily blocked -- buying a bottle of liquor isn't a constitutional right, so the situation isn't analogous at all.

[sdskelton03]

Here in St. Louis we believe in voting early and often.

I am disenfranchised when my vote is negated by all the damn dead people who vote here.

[LCRover001]

The problem is you guys don't see the big picture.

ID or not it isn't going to stop people from voting early and often. It isn't going to stop the dead from voting, they vote absentee.

Those who vote more than once only do so because there is no system to see how many times some one has voted. If a person owns property in two different districts of the same county, or state all that person has to do is flash their ID twice. If a person owns property in two different states all they have to do is flash their ID twice.

Funny how voter ID is important but the voting machine issues aren't. Mainly a paper trail that creates a fail safe to the machines, which even an 11 year old kid can hack.

News flash people the Mexicans don't vote there hasn't been the first proven case of it. However it has been proven that the voting machines have had double to triple the votes than the district has. This doesn't prove that the people in those districts voted 10 times or one person voted thousands of times it proves that the machines were screwy, or had been screwed with.

[SilviaMaria]

"As a result of Congressional inaction, look for more long lines, failed machines, questionable voter purges, election-day dirty tricks, GOP challenges to minority voters and ill-trained poll-workers who, following the Supreme Court's Indiana photo ID court decision, are even more likely to ask for photo ID where it's not required, among other voting obstacles."

Why the national news do not report on this? This is really important and very informative. The election system in this country should be fixed, but I think it should be unified, meaning all the states should have the same requirements for registration and voting. In Spain before the election is set we all received a card in the mail (although I do not live there now, I am registered at the Embassy and I received my voting card), and when all go to vote we have to bring it with us, or if something has changed you can go and report it before election day. This is why I do not understand this election system where all states have their own requirements. I am worried because I have always read about fraud here and there (Florida in 2000 comes to mind) but we should be alert this year because there is a lot at stake.

[pcplz]

I agree that we definitely need to look seriously at the voting machines....with the technology available to us there is no excuse for what we work with.