Enfranchising America's least represented citizens is as simple as following the law: that's the message Project Vote and a coalition of voting rights groups sent today as they filed lawsuits against Indiana and New Mexico for failing to comply with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
In a major victory for voting rights, low-income voters in the state of Missouri will finally have better access to voter registration opportunities, thanks to a lawsuit settlement announced today by Project Vote, Demos, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Recent studies show that a more diverse electorate turned out last November, including historically underrepresented young and minority voters. Since the election, Republican operatives have continued to use the specter of voter fraud to loosen regulations on voter suppression activities while pushing policies to make voting more difficult for the crop of new voters.
I just got back from my longest trip yet on my book tour promoting The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be. Outside of a quick trip to a Netroots Nation regional meeting in Denver, all of my book travel up until now has been to heavily Democratic cities on the east and west coasts, but this trip was right in the heart of the heartland: Missouri (a swing state leaning red), Kansas and Nebraska (2 thoroughly red states), Iowa (a swing state leaning blue), and the most thoroughly blue Midwestern state there is, Illinois.
Adam took some photos from the trip you can check out on our Flickr set here.
After this all-American, politically diverse, trip, I have certain things I can feel confident in reporting on:
• I continue to be heartened by the great response to the book's message - really good crowds, really responsive people, great questions, incredible passion about changing the country. There really is a movement building everywhere - yes, even in the red states - for big progressive change.
• The populist feelings about the banks are very strong. My biggest applause line every place I spoke was "If you are too big to fail, you are too big to exist." Even though I was speaking to strongly pro-Obama audiences, people were very troubled by his banking policies.
• In spite of the economy, people are still fired up enough to be coming to fundraisers. I was a speaker at three different fundraising events - for the Nebraska Democratic Party in Lincoln, the Iowa Citizen Action Network in Des Moines, and Citizen Action Illinois/USAction in Chicago. All of them were successes, with a combined crowd of over 400 people.
• People very much want to be involved in changing America. There was no sense at all that folks are passively waiting for President Obama to take care of things. Every single event I went to - every single one - someone asked a version of the question "What can we do to help change things?"
It was a great trip, and now I'm back in D.C. for a couple of weeks before heading out again. I look forward to continuing to spread the message about the history, and future, of the progressive cause in America.
After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld one of the country's strictest voter ID laws in April, several states rushed to pass similar bills before the year's end. By December, more than 25 states introduced legislation to require voter ID at the polls. Though none of these bills were successful this year, lawmakers in several states are hoping to revive such restrictive requirements in 2009.
Since July of this year, at least seven states have pre-filed or carried over voter ID legislation for the 2009-2010 sessions, including Nevada, Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
(In confluence with Chris's thesis about the growing demographic Democratic base, here's the latest from Project Vote. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
The United States saw dramatic increases in voting from traditionally underrepresented groups, including minorities and young voters, according to a new analysis released this week by Project Vote. If borne out by systematic analysis of the voter rolls, this change in the electorate is evidence of the power of successful voter registration drives and an indication of the strong inclination of voters to participate in the process when candidates address their issues.
OK, this is a thread for being really, really greedy in the--yes, still ongoing--2008 election. The big news is that McCain has dropped below 46.00% in the national popular vote. Woo-hoo!
I had been waiting for this, but as vote totals continue to trickle in, McCain has now dropped below 46.00% in the national popular vote. Right now, Obama stands at 52.7149%, and McCain is at 45.9857%, for a margin of 6.73%. The best part is that McCain is now below 46.00%, and could still, quite realistically, fall to 45.9% in counts that round to the nearest tenth of a percent. I'm still hoping for the overall margin can reach 7.00%, although there are now very few votes still uncounted and / or left to recount. Obama's raw vote margin is currently 8,538,623. Another neat goal would be 9,000,000, although that is even more unlikely than 7.00%.
On a less hopeful note, it is highly likely that Missouri's eleven electoral votes will go to John McCain, making the final electoral count Obama 365-173 McCain instead of Obama 376-162 McCain. McCain currently leads "The Show Me State" by 4,716 votes, with about 6,300 provisional ballots yet to be counted. As such, in order to win the state, Obama will need to secure about 87.5% of the provisional ballots. The reason the networks have not called the state, despite this deficit, is that Obama will gain some votes, and will also have the right to a recount if it so desires. However, given that asking for such a recount might appear a bit petty after he already won a solid national victory, it is unlikely that there will be a fight over Missouri's electoral votes.
A blogger like me can afford to be greedy about the 2008 election. Barack Obama, however, can't spend his political capital in that way. Oh well.
These numbers are a little bit different than the ones you might be seeing at most election results sites. The reason is that I am allocating the Alaska Senate race, Louisiana's 2nd congressional district, and Virginia's 5th congressional district all to Democrats. I don't consider the ongoing counting or runoffs in those districts to have any realistic chance to change the outcome.
The two remaining Senate seats in my chart are Georgia (December 2nd run-off) and Minnesota (recount starts next week). The three remaining House seats are the California 4th (still counting 35,000 provisional and absentee ballots), the Louisiana 4th (December 6th run-off) and the Ohio 15th (still counting 27,000 provisional ballots, pending lawsuit) I discuss the current state of each of those campaigns in the extended entry.
National Popular Vote (122M votes in): Obama 52%-47% McCain
Electoral College
Obama 364, McCain 162, Too Close to Call 12
Swing State Returns All times eastern. First poll closing time listed.
State
Reporting
Obama%
McCain%
EVs
Missouri
99%
49%
50%
11
NE-02
100%
49%
50%
1
Update 4: McCain narrowly leads in NE-02 with 100% reporting, but it finishes close enough for a recount. Will the Obama campaign seek one? I'll keep in undecided until we hear final word.
Update 3: I'm calling Montana for McCain, based on exit polls showing him ahead and the counties with 0% reporting. This is the final presidential update for the night. Your total: Obama 364, McCain 163, recount 11 (Missouri).
Update 2: Missouri will be listed as too close to call for the rest of the night. We shall see where it is in the morning.
Update: Obama wins Indiana. The source on the projection is me, myself and I. The remaining precincts in Indiana are not enough for McCain to pull it off. This will cost me a Mac Book over at Daily Kos (I was perfect up till now, because last night when I entered I still had NC for Obama), but that's OK. A Mac Book is nothing compared to the work of the Indiana volunteers.
(It's "voter fraud" fraud Saturday here at Open Left, and I'm quite pleased to promote this diary from Project Vote, which covers a lot of the key facts, so that I can freely build out from them in some diaries to come. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Scaling the Mountains and Molehills of the "Voter Registration Fraud" Controversy
Weekly Voting Rights News Update
By Erin Ferns and Michael McDunnah
With a constant barrage of allegations against ACORN and other voter registration organizations coming from the McCain-Palin campaign and the Republican National Committee in recent weeks, it's worthwhile to take a look back at this ongoing war between partisan forces on the right and community based voter registration drives-a war that has largely been fought in the media and nowhere else, and which has threatened to drown out real issues in these crucial weeks before the election.
As history has shown, there is a difference between submitting a voter registration application and finding your name on the rolls when you go to vote. With registration coming to a close, Project Vote is conducting emergency efforts to ensure that no one who wants to vote is left out on Election Day.
Project Vote's Registration Repair Program is an intensive and urgent effort to collect and rectify large numbers of registrations that have been rejected by boards of election. We have been working all over the country to obtain disqualified applications and to contact would-be voters to repair applications with missing or erroneous information.
To distract myself from the inevitable pain that will be watching the Patriots beat the snot out of the Chiefs, I'm going to share some impressions on the ground of what is going on in Missouri and speculate as to why Obama is devoting resources to my state.
1. The McCaskill factor. She was with Obama early and strongly. She lost in 04 when she ran for governor and followed the D.C. establishment's plan for how to campaign in Missouri. And she lost to a total tool. When she ran for Senate in 06, she rejected the outsiders advice and spent an enormous amount of time and resources campaigning in out-state Missouri. She won by trimming Talent's margins in out-state. (The divide in MO is not urban vs. rural as much as KC/St.Louis/Columbia and "out-state," which represents the other half of the population and much of which manages to maintain certain "rural" attitudes despite being sizeable populations in cities full of colleges - see Springfield).
The national trend from Pollster.com shows Obama ahead by 2.4%, although that will probably eke up slightly with the addition of the new Gallup numbers (Rasmussen's numbers from tomorrow, not today, will be added into the average).
With a new poll yesterday, McCain's advantage in Missouri has grown to 2.8%, both in the four-poll average an in the regression trend line. In Michigan, where there was also a new poll yesterday, Obama's advantage has dropped to 3.2% in the four-poll average, and 5.4% in the regression trendline.
The state of the campaign continues to hover between a statistically significant Obama lead, and a statistically insignificant Obama lead. A complete, 50-state survey of the four-poll averages can be found at my Presidential Forecast, and a complete survey of regression trendlines can be found at Pollster.com.
(Okay, so this post covers a lot of the ongoing horror story of how the media continues to uncritically repeat baseless GOP "voter fraud" claims, but eventually it DOES deliver on the promised morsel of good news from Virginia--hopefully a sign that the tide is starting to turn. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
We spend a lot of time in these news updates showing how charges of voter fraud are used to discredit voter participation efforts and prime the pump for voter suppression efforts, such as the passage of voter ID bills, pushing for proof of citizenship, engaging in draconian voter purge efforts, and imposing sever restrictions on voter registration drives. We have also spent a lot of time carefully delineating the politics behind these efforts, starting with our March 2007 report The Politics Of Voter Fraud and continuing on in these diaries to name but two venues.
"Hispanic and African-American communities are being deprived of the opportunity to register to vote at a higher rate than anybody else," Kettenring said. "So this is a fairness issue, but it's also a civil rights issue."
Is Missouri really a swing state anymore? Has it even been a swing state in recent history? In reporting the result of his latest poll Rasmussen calls Missouri a "classic swing state in Presidential Elections that almost always awards its Electoral College Votes to the candidate who wins the White House." While there is no denying the fact that Missouri has given its EVs to the eventual President in 23 of the 25 Presidential elections in the 20th century, and both elections in the 21st century, I don't believe that Missouri is the harbinger that pundits make it out to be, nor has it been for more than two decades. Having lived in Missouri for the past four years, and for 9 of the past 12 years, this feels like a Republican state that occasionally gives a state-wide victory to a Democrat. Essentially, we are a Republican state that will sometimes casts a protest vote against the Republicans, not necessarily for the Democrats.
The last time Missouri gave 50+% to a Democrat was 1976 when Carter got 51.1% to Ford's 47.5%. Since then the Dem take is 44.4% (1980), 40.0% (1984), 47.9% (1988), 44.1% (1992), 47.5% (1996), 47.1% (2000), 46.1% (2004). Sure, Clinton carried Missouri in 1992 and 1996, but would he have done so without Perot? The numbers from 1988, 2000 and 2004 don't seem to support the notion that Clinton would have won Missouri without Perot. The numbers reveal what I feel in my gut as a resident of this state - that we are a lean Republican state and that the general ceiling for a Democratic Presidential candidate here is about 47%. Lets look at the Dem. take in the elections of 1980 - 2004 for Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana below and see which one looks most like a swing state.
On average Missouri gives 45.3% of its vote to the Dem. candidate with a standard deviation of 2.8% for all seven elections since 1980. If you take away 1992 and 1996 and only count elections when there were two major candidates, Missouri's numbers don't really change, the average is 45.1% and the standard deviation is 3.1%.
Iowa has the highest support for Dem. candidates, but also has by far the most variability in supporting the Dem. candidate. For all seven elections the average is 47.2% and the standard deviation of 5.2%. Taking away 1992 and 1996, the numbers stay about the same - 47.4% average and standard deviation of 5.9%.
Unlike Missouri and Iowa, Arkansas' numbers differ greatly when you exclude the Clinton elections (for obvious reasons). For all seven elections Arkansas' average support for the Dem. candidate is 46.5% and the standard deviation is 5.6%. Take away 1992 and 1996 and the average is 43.7% while the standard deviation of 3.6%.
Louisiana is more like Missouri and Iowa in that their average and standard deviation numbers are not greatly affected by the Clinton elections. For all seven elections Louisiana's average support for the Dem. candidate is 44.7% and the standard deviation is 4.2%. Take away 1992 and 1996 and the average is 43.0% while the standard deviation of 3.0%.
Of these four states, Iowa has voted for the loser twice (1988 and 2000) in the past seven elections. The other three states have all voted for the winner in all seven elections. Only one of these states has given the winner a 50+% majority in all seven election, and it is NOT Missouri, it is Arkansas. While it is easy to dismiss the last point since Arkansas is the only state of the four to give its popular form governor over 50% in 1992 and 1996, it is still worth noting that for the other five elections Arkansas and Louisiana resemble Missouri to about the same extent in average support of Dem. candidates and standard deviation - Arkansas is a little closer in average and Louisiana is a little closer in standard deviation. Excluding 1992 and 1996, Iowa differs from Missouri most in average support of Dem. candidates and standard deviation.
If you insist on looking at all seven elections since 1980 the state that most resembles Missouri is Louisiana in terms of average support of Dem. candidates and standard deviation. The state that least resembles Missouri over the past seven elections in average support of Dem. candidates is Iowa, however in terms of standard deviation it is Arkansas (by a small amount over Iowa) due to the Clinton elections.
So, the way I see it there are two ways to interpret this data: (1) Iowa is not a swing state, since it resembles Missouri the least in terms of supporting Dem. candidates, while Arkansas and Louisiana, which resemble Missouri quite a bit in their support of Dem. candidates and certainly much more so than Iowa, are swing states; (2) Missouri, which closely resembles Arkansas and Louisiana in its support of Dem. candidates, is a relatively reliable red state, while Iowa is a genuine swing state.
It is obvious that I prefer interpretation (2). While there is no disputing the fact that Missouri has voted for the winner in the past 7 Presidential elections (and 25 of the last 27), I think it is overly simplistic to say my home state is a swing state, let alone a "classic swing state" as Rasmussen puts it. The fact is that over the past seven elections the nation has elected a Republican 5 times and, as a Republican state, we too voted for the Republican. When the right split its vote in 1992 and 1996 with the candidacy of Perot, like many other Republican states we gave our EVs to the Dem. candidate via a plurality victory, not a majority victory. As far as states that voted Republican in 2004 that I think are more likely to go Democratic this year than Missouri, I think the list is quite long: New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, Indiana, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska and North Carolina for sure. I think all eleven of these states will give a higher percentage of their vote to Obama than will Missouri. In fact, even though the current polling says otherwise, I think Mississippi and Georgia have a better chance of being in the Obama column than Missouri. At least they have large black populations that could come out in droves and put Obama over the top should the white voters remain under enthused by McCain. Missouri lacks this Obama constituency. We are basically a southern state without a large black population. This last point is too often missed by mainstream pundits: we are NOT a traditional Midwestern swing state like Iowa or Wisconsin or Ohio - we are a relatively reliable southern Republican state like Arkansas when it comes to Presidential elections. Sure, like Arkansas we will send moderate/conservative Dems. to Washington as Representatives and Senators (Skelton, McCaskill), we will even put a Dem. in the Governor's mansion, but we won't give our EVs to the Dems. in Presidential elections. So the next time you see a pundit or pollster claim Missouri is a swing state, just ignore it. The next few decades are going to see numerous Democratic administrations, and I am certain that in more cases than not these Democratic administrations will have won without the support of the Show-Me state.
In the 1800s immigrants from Germany and other mid-European countries flocked to cities like Cincinnatti, Detroit, Milwaukee and St. Louis. They built many things including great breweries, like Strohs, Blatz, Miller, Schlitz, Pabst, Falstaff and a thousand lesser ones. The greatest brewery of them all was Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis. I went to high school just 10 blocks from the 100 square block Busch brewery complex in St. Louis. If the breeze was just right, the smell of hops would blow in and engulf our classroom. It was a reassuring smell. It meant union jobs at solid middle class wages with great benefits that had been won thanks to strong unions and a paternalistic management. Anheuser-Busch, then & now, was the cornerstone of St. Louis.
As Michael alluded to on Friday, Show Me Progress was rejected (twice) in our bid for credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention. The credential for Missouri's slot in the state blog pool went to Fired Up Missouri, and no other Missouri-based blog was credentialed in the general blog pool. You can read up on some of the controversy elsewhere; Matt Stoller, Kos and Pam Spaulding have some good roundups of different angles of controversy in the selection process. But I want to talk specifically about our own disappointment with the results.
Partisan efforts to keep up to 300,000 eligible Missouri citizens, mostly progressive-leaning voters from elderly and low-income demographics but also including such large blocks as married women, permanently off the voting rolls are coming to a head in the Missouri Senate today as the Legislature prepares to adjourn. Measures not passed by that time will die, pending the Governor calling a special session.
Voting rights and progressive activists, led by Missourians for Fair Elections are fighting back and report an extremely tough but increasingly winnable fight against what the Kansas City Star is calling a "real deception...being perpetrated by legislators, whose claims of fraud are driving what appears to be a political agenda".
Robin Carnahan, Missouri's Secretary of State, and an opponent of the measure, HJR 48 - which would amend Missouri's constitution to require proof of citizenship to register and vote, will be holding a press conference today in Kansas City to point out the partisan agenda behind this measure.
(I've written about the need to unstack the deck, but don't forget that Republicans are working even harder to stack it even further. See the list below of vote suppression legislation - every single bill sponsored by a Republican. - promoted by Daniel De Groot)
Requiring proof-of-citizenship in order to register to vote is the latest addition to voter suppression arsenal. Spurred by Arizona's 2004 implementation of proof of citizenship requirements and the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold Indiana's strict voter ID law, proof of citizenship bills - often coupled with voter ID - are gaining traction across the country. With more than 13 million Americans lacking ready access to citizenship documentation and scant evidence of voter registration fraud by non-citizens (or any voter for that matter) leading to illegal votes, proof of citizenship requirements could have a significant impact on the electorate. Wasting no time after the high court's decision, the neighboring states of Kansas and Missouri have swiftly moved forward with efforts to pass such legislation that could take effect in the November election.
