Did Voting Restrictions Determine the Outcomes of Key Midterm Races?

[marions ghost]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/188697/how-new-voting-restrictions-impacted-2014-election

Ari Berman on November 6, 2014

Bryan McGowan spent twenty-two years in the US Marine Corps, including four tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. When he was stationed at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina from 2005 until 2010, McGowan used same-day registration to register and vote during the early voting period in the state.

He relocated to Georgia in 2010 because of his military service and returned to North Carolina in 2014. On the first day of early voting this year, McGowan arrived at his new polling place in western North Carolina to update his registration and vote, like he had done in the 2008 presidential election, but this time he was turned away. North Carolina eliminated same-day registration as part of the sweeping voting restrictions enacted by the Republican legislature in the summer of 2013. The registration deadline had passed, and McGowan was unable to update his registration and vote. “All I want to do is cast my vote,” the disabled veteran said. After fighting for his country abroad, McGowan felt betrayed by not being able to vote when he returned home.

Sadly, McGowan’s story was not atypical this election year. Voters in fourteen states faced new voting restrictions at the polls for first time in 2014—in the first election in nearly fifty years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. The number of voters impacted by the new restrictions exceeded the margin of victory in close races for senate and governor in North Carolina, Kansas, Virginia and Florida, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

In the North Carolina senate race, Republican Thom Tillis, who as speaker of the North Carolina General Assembly oversaw the state’s new voting law, defeated Democrat Kay Hagan by 50,000 votes. Nearly five times as many voters in 2010 used the voting reforms eliminated by the North Carolina GOP—200,000 voted during the now-eliminated first week of early voting, 20,000 used same-day registration and 7,000 cast out-of-precinct ballots.

Lawyer Allison Riggs of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham flagged dozens of stories of disenfranchised voters and election problems in North Carolina. Voters were not able to register during the early voting period. There were longer lines during early voting because the state cut early voting by a week. And there were longer lines on election day because of the shorter early voting period, particularly in heavily Democratic urban areas like Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte and Greensboro, where wait times stretched to over two hours at some polling places.

This was the line at the Southern High School precinct in Durham County:



Texas: Six hundred thousand registered voters don’t have the required voter ID in Texas but the state issued only 407 new voter IDs as of Election Day. “There are more licensed auctioneers (2,454) in Texas than there are people with election identification certificates,” reported the Texas Observer.

It was a grim election for voting rights. Many of the Republican politicians who led the effort to make it harder to vote were re-elected or elected on Tuesday, such as Tillis in North Carolina, Greg Abbott in Texas, Rick Scott in Florida, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Kris Kobach in Kansas, Jon Husted in Ohio.

(more at) http://www.thenation.com/blog/188697/how-new-voting-restrictions-impacted-2014-election

[blm]

1. I worked early voting, and many young people who had recently moved

to Charlotte were coming in to register and vote. They assumed they still had that right.

[marions ghost]

4. Confusion = Suppression

Nearly five times as many voters in 2010 used the voting reforms eliminated by the North Carolina GOP—200,000 voted during the now-eliminated first week of early voting, 20,000 used same-day registration and 7,000 cast out-of-precinct ballots.

And Tillis won by 50,000 votes.

Suppression worked for these thieves.

[BlueCaliDem]

2. The oligarchs and the GOP win again!

Aren't we a proud democratic republic nation?

[marions ghost]

9. They cheat to win

How do we deal with it? They take full advantage of the fact that Dems are not likely to engage in voter suppression. What a disadvantage.

[BlueCaliDem]

14. Yes. But the frustrating thing is? They WIN. It's infuriating how they get away with

unAmerican crap like that, but they're never held to account for their lies, cheating, voter-suppression, and distortions by the media that have no problem doing it to Democrats, so that's why they'll continue to lie, cheat, disenfranchise people, and distort facts until they become outright lies until this country becomes the dictatorship Libertarians and Republicans are having wet-dreams over.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

3. Lack of same day registration would have had the greatest impact, IMO

In the North Carolina senate race, Republican Thom Tillis, who as speaker of the North Carolina General Assembly oversaw the state’s new voting law, defeated Democrat Kay Hagan by 50,000 votes. Nearly five times as many voters in 2010 used the voting reforms eliminated by the North Carolina GOP—200,000 voted during the now-eliminated first week of early voting, 20,000 used same-day registration and 7,000 cast out-of-precinct ballots.

And yet, there were still more early voters in NC than in 2010, and more Democrats to boot.

While there is no doubt that loss of same-day registration affected voters, and probably a large number of voters, I'd be surprised if it would have made up the margin of victory.

[marions ghost]

6. OK well

it's reasonable to think that cutting out a whole week of early voting--including a weekend--had a serious effect on turnout. Just because you have more Dem early votes this time doesn't indicate anything definitive--this could just reflect the incredible GOTV effort and the efforts of the populace to try to vote. There could still be untold thousands who never got there for one reason or another.

One suppression tactic that should have some numbers to compare with previous turnout is the removal of voting sites from the state's universities. This had a big impact on the youth vote, typically Dem in large numbers. And then there was confusion over changes in precincts as well.

There will be better analyses than this. But I think it's fair to say the Repugs are toasting the success of their recently instituted disenfranchisement strategies in NC, FL, TX, VA and KS especially.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

7. The numbers are what they are

More people voted in NC in this election than ever before in a mid-term election, so I'm not really buying that there was massive suppression there.

YMMV.

[marions ghost]

8. There has always been major voter suppression in NC

...this is an even harsher, nastier manifestation of it than ever before.

There was a big GOTV effort in NC this year. I think this accounted for the increase you are talking about. But it says nothing about the potential numbers lost through suppression.

You may be sure there was massive suppression in NC. Maybe a better analysis of it will come out.

[marions ghost]

5. Another change in the NC law

eliminated straight-party voting.

This made the voting process take much longer for everybody.

[pstokely]

10. In some close races, but more low Dem voter turnout

nt

[marions ghost]

11. Sure but

does that make this OK? Do we not care about voters being disenfranchised and having it affect some races? The Republican turnout wasn't that big as well. The margins can easily depend on the amount of suppression.

And our side does NOT suppress voting.

That is the point I am trying to make.

[marions ghost]

12. The Brennan Center for Justice:

The Brennan Center will continue to monitor voting developments as data rolls in over the next several weeks.

-------------------

http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/media-wrap-how-voters-fared-new-restrictions

"Here’s a rundown of key media stories showing voters struggling with new restrictions:

As expected, Texas’s strict new photo ID requirement caused several problems on Election Day. MSNBC profiled 16 voters who struggled with the new law: “Lindsay Gonzales, 36, has an out-of-state driver’s license, which isn’t accepted under the ID law. Despite trying for months, she has been unable to navigate an astonishing bureaucratic thicket in time to get a Texas license she can use to vote. ‘I’m still a little bit in shock,’ said Gonzales, who is white, well-educated, and politically engaged. ‘Because of all those barriers, the side effect is that I don’t get to participate in the democratic process. That’s something I care deeply about and I’m not going to be able to do it.’

The Huffington Post also talked to Texas voters: “Christina Sanders, state director at the Texas League of Young Voters Education Fund, told HuffPost that her group saw a ‘concerning’ number of students at Prairie View A&M University, a historically black college in Prairie View, Texas, turned away because the only identification they had were student IDs or out-of-state driver’s licenses, both of which are not accepted under Texas’s new law.” Read more from ThinkProgress.

In North Carolina, there were problems with a new out-of-precinct voting ban. ThinkProgress spoke to Warren Coleman when he tried to vote during a break from work. “But his usual polling place, a neighborhood library, wasn’t open. Coleman was one of dozens of confused voters who showed up at Beatties Ford Road Regional Library. The library was a popular site for early voting site last week, but the state board of elections decided to shut it down for Tuesday. Several elderly and disabled voters had shown up there, only to be told that it was not a polling place. Coleman then tried a nearby elementary school, only to be told that he still wasn’t at the right place.”

Another ThinkProgress report from North Carolina: “At two polling places south of the city center, voters are turning up in steady numbers throughout the morning. But many of them aren’t casting ballots: they are being turned away because they aren’t at their correct precinct. Rhonda Little, who has been outside Fuller GT Elementary School all morning, said one woman she spoke with had visited eight different polling places before finally ending up at the correct one.” Art Lieberman, a voter protection volunteer, guessed that 8 out of 10 voters were at the wrong precinct. “For early voting, people could vote anywhere,” Lieberman said. “People would come here for early voting two years ago, and so this year people come here on the day and they think they’re allowed to vote here.

http://thinkprogress.org/lbupdate/3588608/voters-in-north-carolina-show-up-to-find-their-polling-place-is-closed/#lbu-1415120004

[marions ghost]

13. The New Republic article:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120132/midterm-voter-suppression-election-protection-hotline-swamped

"Texas, Georgia, and Florida seemed to be experiencing a particularly problematic Election Day. The hotline took roughly 2,000 calls from each of those states. Chris Melody Fields, the manager for legal mobilization and strategic campaigns at Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that the call center received hundreds of calls from Georgia yesterday morning alone—so many, in fact, that calls had to be rerouted to call stations for other states. The problem in the Peach State: On top of the 40,000 voters waiting to see if they are actually missing from the system or were processed in time for Election Day, the website of the Georgia Secretary of State, where voters can check their registration status and look up their assigned polling center, was down for hours." (more at link)

[Laelth]

15. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[marions ghost]

16. Thanks

yeah it is depressing. Even lib/progressives don't want to hear anything about it. You just get the same old argument --"we just need more numbers to counteract the cheating."

No, we need less cheating. Because no matter what you do with GOTV, elections are being stolen with suppression and voter discouragement every single election day, at levels that easily impact the margin of victory. After what we have seen since 2000, it's amazing that so many will not face the problem.

The fact that we don't have reliable elections undermines the whole system no matter where you live.

I would like to see a national election system that has no room for this kind of manipulation. The reason it's not done is because manipulation IS a regular part of our elections.

Why do we put up with this? Denying it helps nothing. The demand for change has to come from the people.

[Laelth]

17. My pleasure. Bonus kick. n/t

-Laelth

[Lee-Lee]

18. The only one in NC that I think really had an effect was same day registration

While the number of days changed, they actually stayed open the same number of hours so for the days early voting was happening the polling places were open longer.

2 elections in a row they had better turnout under that system. It is hard to argue fewer days with longer hours for the same actual amount of time open suppresses votes when it's had increased turnout.

Wrong percicnt voters were told the right one to go to instead of being allowed to cast a provisional ballot. I can't imaine that most didn't go vote in the right place once told where to go.

But same day registration definitely had an effect.