2008 Election Could See Unprecedented Attempts to Bar African American Voters

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Andrew Hacker, Professor of Political Science at Queens College in New York City. He is author of the bestselling book on race, Two Nations : Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, where he has been writing since 1965. His latest article is “Obama: The Price of Being Black.”

AMY GOODMAN:
Welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about the voting obstacles. Start to go through the list.


ANDREW HACKER: Alright, let’s take the first. The state of Indiana, several years ago, decided, you know, there’s such a thing as voter fraud—remember Tammany Hall, so—or people voting five different times, that kind of thing. So, therefore, what they said was, we need voter ID. And they decided everybody who came to vote had to show their driver’s license with their photo on it, you know, like at the airport. Well, sounds OK, until you discover that not everybody is a driver.


Well, going to the state of Indiana, which enacted this, I actually went. Believe it or not, here’s your tax dollars at work. The Federal Highway Administration keeps a record of how many adult residents of every state has a driver’s license. And, by the way, the court didn’t even look at this. And I discovered that in Indiana, 14 percent of adult residents do not have driver’s license. That’s one-in-seven. Now, this means they can’t vote, unless you go to a Bureau of Motor Vehicles office, which in Indiana could be miles away, and fill out a long form to get a non-driver’s license. Well, not many people are going to do that, and in particular, not that many black voters are. Many of them are older; they’re poorer.


And, in effect, what—not “in effect,” really, what this Indiana law has is what we call disparate impact. It means it doesn’t say this is to keep blacks from voting, but it has the greater impact on black voters. The case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and by a vote of six-to-three the Indiana law was allowed to stay in place.


AMY GOODMAN: You raise an interesting point in the article. You say that the lawyer who argued before the Supreme Court, when asked about the numbers of people who don’t have driver’s license, kept saying this word 43,000, inexplicably. When you looked at it, you said 673,926 adult residents of Indiana have no license.


ANDREW HACKER: Yes, this really astounded me. You’d think that a lawyer for—you know, on a Supreme Court case would do some research on this. But what troubled me was two justices—Stevens, whom we know, and Kennedy—actually voted to sustain Indiana. I think if this 600,000 figure had been used, they might have thought twice about this.

Historic 2008 Election Could See Unprecedented Attempts to Bar African American Voters


Take a look listen or read on how different ways ALL voters can be barred from voting however disportionately more Blacks appear to be affected.

This goes back to Southern states adopted felon laws the period after Reconstruction trying to bring back the Jim Crow system. These states then brought in a poll tax which today is similar to having to get a drivers license in order to vote. This means taking time and money to get a drivers license which is just like a poll tax all over again.

Is this a way of keeping blacks from the polls who maybe voting primarily the Democratic Party?

Peace

cubbieblue82

My uncle actually did this in Ohio during the 2004 election.

Truly a disgusting and un-American practice! :mad:

CitizenRick

cubbieblue82 wrote:

My uncle actually did this in Ohio during the 2004 election.

Truly a disgusting and un-American practice! :mad:

This whole thing is fucking disgusting! First fear mongering...then just plain cheating!

Fucking G.O.P.!

P.S. Don't forget the Florida fiasco in 2000!

JaneNY

For the people who need to go and fill out a long form to get their ID, I bet they must produce a birth certificate, and many people probably don't have this either, necessitating obtaining the birth certificate first, which takes time, and then getting the ID which takes time. Those are some real obstacles when time is running out. I wonder is there any way to help people get this all done? Like print the forms in newspapers, have them at supermarkets....

yoke

So I want to play devils advocate here..

What should be done to stop voter fraud? How should we approach this? I am not saying just in Indiana but everywhere. Should we support the Real ID? Should people of voting age(and who are legal to vote) that do not drive get some sort of an State or County ID card with a Photo on it?



I have a county and a DL for ID purposes myself just so there is no confusion.

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yoke wrote:

So I want to play devils advocate here..

What should be done to stop voter fraud? How should we approach this? I am not saying just in Indiana but everywhere. Should we support the Real ID? Should people of voting age(and who are legal to vote) that do not drive get some sort of an State or County ID card with a Photo on it?



I have a county and a DL for ID purposes myself just so there is no confusion.

From what i know some of this problems stems from states wanting to use only drivers license or birth certificates. Then the process to obtain becomes extensive and many voters who use buses or other mean of transportation happen to effect Blacks just give up on voting.

My best suggestion is to find out in your state what is needed in order to vote and what is your voting status atleast 2 weeks before the election.

The worst thing to do is wait until the day of the election and take off that day from work it could be a long waiting period especially in the poorer neighborhoods.

Peace