A notoriously restrictive voter registration law was struck down in Arizona today after the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued its long-awaited decision in Gonzales v. Arizona. And it was worth the wait.
By a 2-1 vote (the majority included retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor), the court struck down Arizona's documentary proof of citizenship requirement for all new voter registrants because it is superseded by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). Project Vote is a plaintiff in this case.
Access to voter registration-the basis of democratic participation-is still limited in the 21st century by overly restrictive, "horse-and-buggy" laws across the country. Despite advances in technology, states struggle with politically charged or neglected election systems when such systems can (and should) simply focus on building a truly representative electorate in modern day America.
A disturbing and growing hysteria over immigration—most evident in Arizona’s horrifyingly oppressive new law—has now spread into election administration legislation in at least one state. On the same day that the Maine Republican Party adopted a blatantly xenophobic Tea Party platform, the Tennessee Senate injected anti-immigrant sentiment into a draconian bill to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
Over the next few decades, the United Sates’ Latino population is estimated to triple, comprising about 29% of US residents. At the same time, voters of Latin descent made up 7.4% of the electorate. In a continuing effort to better understand the attitudes and values of Latinos as expressed in survey studies in the past, we rounded up below findings from recent months.
The Pew Hispanic Center released today a new survey of Latinos focusing especially on young people who are ages 16 to 25. The survey explores the “attitudes, values, social behaviors, family characteristics, economic well-being, educational attainment and labor force outcomes of these young Latinos”. We will look more carefully at this study in one of our upcoming blog postings, but we wanted to bring attention to the racial identification of Latinos in this survey, in case it’s taken out of context in the various coverage of the study. Three out of four Latinos don’t identify themselves as white in the race question (“What race do you consider yourself to be: white, black or African- American, Asian, or some other race?”), or they volunteer that their race is Hispanic or Latino, although based on the U.S. Census these terms are used to describe ethnicity. This finding is consistent with what we see in studies of Latinos every day. The questions usually asked and response choices offered to identify the respondent’s ethnicity and race are not aligned with the way Latinos think about race.
There's cold. There's New Hampshire cold. And then there's New Hampshire cold in January when even for a boy from Boston, it was freezing. I still remember how incredibly bitterly cold it was the Saturday before the primary in 2004 (yes, more than five years later, I still am warming up.) I was there working for the Kerry campaign, and we were doing a series of events to promote John. As I stood listening to his speech I noticed that one of the people who braved the bitter cold to attend the event that morning was a New Hampshire man in his 50's. With him was his 10-year old son. He had a notebook and listened intently to what Senator Kerry had to say. After our event, I spoke with him and learned that father-son team planned to go hear Senator Edwards speak, and then Governor Dean. The father was both making up his mind by listening to each of the candidates' views, and teaching his son a powerful lesson in fulfilling his duties as citizen of the United States of America. For anyone who has asked me since what I think about New Hampshire having the first primary, I always tell this story because, to me, they deserve to have it.
Hampshire is a state that often leads the union, and I have had the pleasure of working with some dedicated Granite Staters on building an online resource worthy of the citizens of New Hampshire like that father I saw back in 2004. Today, the Live Free or Die Alliance launches its new website and with it, a model for online citizen engagement for the rest of the nation to consider. The Virtual Town Hall is built to be a resource for informed discussion and debate of issues facing the Granite State. The Live Free or Die Alliance lays out the facts of an issue that both sides agree to, and then invites citizens to share their thoughts and debate the pros and cons with their neighbors and others from across the state.
Regardless of your political inclination, we all can see that pressing problems are everywhere. Yet the rancor, and partisan spin that dominates the public debate at every level of government keep reasonable and rational, fact-based discussion underground where it exists at all. In that environment, many citizens find little they can contribute to the mutual understanding that can allow compromise to happen and solutions to emerge. Seeing this problem, New Hampshire citizens Paul Montrone, Anna Grace Holloway and others decided to create an interactive, nonpartisan venue to inform New Hampshire citizens and stimulate their interest and engagement in the issues facing their state and their communities.
New Hampshire's politicians have already started to take notice. Governor John Lynch (D) will participate in an online chat in which members of the Live Free or Die Alliance can ask the Governor questions on a range of topics. In keeping with its purpose and to make sure the chat isn't just an opportunity for the Governor to put his spin on the questions, the LFDA has secured as a moderator for the event, none other than former New Hampshire Governor Steve Merrill (R). If you are in New Hampshire, I encourage you to join the Alliance(link), get actively involved in the Online Town Hall(link), and join the current and former governors on December 21st.
Thanks to all who have worked on this project, and to the people of New Hampshire for taking a stand for the duties of citizenship in America.
And thank you to that father and his son back in 2004. I don't know if you voted for my guy that Tuesday but I know you voted and, ultimately, that's what matters the most.
A currently challenged provision of the Voting Rights Act requires several states with a history of discriminatory election practices to seek federal approval before changing election rules. Under this provision, the Department of Justice this week rejected a Georgia voter list maintenance procedure that it deemed both discriminatory and inaccurate, according to the Associated Press.
In 2000, Florida's disastrous effort to purge former felons from voter rolls resulted in the disenfranchisement of hundreds if not thousands of legitimate voters and clearly influenced the outcome of the presidential contest in that state. History may repeat itself this November with states taking potentially reckless and unlawful measures to clean voter rolls before Election Day.
The more one looks, the less it looks like John McCain is eligible to run for President. The problem is simple: although born to two US citizens, McCain was not born in the United States, and thus, he's a naturalized citizen, not a birthright citizen. Plenty of people will say differently, of course. But McCain's always had a hefty chorus of yea-sayers, no matter what line of garbage he's spewing at the moment. And this time out, it appears to be pretty much more of the same.
Not to worry, however. The bottom line of all this brouhaha--carefully kept to the margins, of course--is that McCain's ineligibility to run for President is not the sort of thing that ordinary citizens peons are allowed to challenge. In legal parlance, they (that is, you and me) lack "standing." Which is to say, it won't hurt any of us particularly, so we don't get to sue. Presumably, only someone like Barack Obama would actually have standing to bring suit.
This is yet another example of how a set of laws supposedly applicable to our political ruling class actually has no impact whatsoverer.
What's more, something virtually identical happened back in 2000. In violation of the 12th Amendment, the GOP ran two Texans on its ticket. Cheney claimed to have turned himself back into a Wyomingian just in time to make it all legal, but the legal ruling supporting him (in Jones v. Bush) started out by denying standing to the Texas citizens who sued to challenge the charade.
The message here is simple: go away. There is no law for you. The law belongs to the King. Of course, that's not what standing is supposed to do. But it is how it works in today's increasingly anti-democratic America.
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