No matter what measures are taken, Americans do not bother to
voteBy Carolyn Bennett
We Americans are a fragmented country, a fragmented people, a
wounded and weakened country – and this trend did not start this year or last
year or even a mere decade ago.
We are driven by greed, not just the greed of the bankers
and mega religionists, the Catholics and Jews and Protestants, the celebrities
or superstars; but the greed of those commonly called “ordinary” people, the “main
streeters,” the 99 percenters, the non- “practicing” people who want what the
rich and leisure class have.
We are a people driven and fragmented by apathy and
indifference and willfulness ignorance, by an anachronistic doctrine of States’
Rights, by corrupt, incompetent and generally very bad elected “leadership,” by
dysfunctional systems including but not only the U.S. elections’ or electoral
and related systems and processes.
We are a lazy, consumerist people who believe we have a
“right” to “get” (The American Dream?) whatever the heck we want whether it is at
home or abroad. And this fraudulent way of living and being, this corrosive culture,
this all-round BREAKDOWN, we justify, excuse or deflect with one after another distraction
or manufactured crisis.
The current babble focuses on voter identification papers,
the latest “marriage-abortion-race-partisan-tribal” wedging exercise. How many
years have we wasted on distraction, looking away while our tribe, “god’s people,” raped and burned and
bombed women and children, the innocent and the defenseless, people who have
done us no harm?
If it were not so, it would funny. And I can't tell you how it breaks my heart to have to say what I'm saying.
Careless cunning
If Americans of any stripe really wanted to vote (and or if
independent factions, organizations, individuals were interested in ensuring
that all people vote), they would make it happen.
Today, it is not hard to vote or rally the vote. It was done at a time when demanding the right and exercising that right cost many Americans their lives, their land, their livelihood.
If people today wanted to vote or get out the vote and identification requirements stood in the way, they would form groups and launch a movement to ensure (it’s a lie that black Americans are by definition poor or poor people are by definition stupid or lacking in resourcefulness) that whoever needed identification papers (with photos) would darn well have them before election day.
Today, it is not hard to vote or rally the vote. It was done at a time when demanding the right and exercising that right cost many Americans their lives, their land, their livelihood.
If people today wanted to vote or get out the vote and identification requirements stood in the way, they would form groups and launch a movement to ensure (it’s a lie that black Americans are by definition poor or poor people are by definition stupid or lacking in resourcefulness) that whoever needed identification papers (with photos) would darn well have them before election day.
The babble did not start this week but here’s some of the
latest as reported online at Real Clear Politics among other sources. One of the nation’s strictest voter
identification laws was upheld this week by Pennsylvania’s state court and the
ruling raised the decibel of attack/counter-attack distraction.
Five states ─ Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Pennsylvania and
Tennessee ─ will use strict voter identification laws in the coming November
election, Real Clear Politics reported. “Two state judges have blocked
Wisconsin’s law. Laws in Texas and South Carolina were denied pre-clearance by
the U.S. Department of Justice under the Voting Rights Act and are awaiting
action by a District of Columbia federal court. A Mississippi law is in the
early stages of pre-clearance.” And rhetoric and pandering are flying on all sides.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder compares strict photo-ID
laws to poll taxes once routinely used by Southern states to suppress the vote
of African-Americans. [Race wedge]
The
poll tax [a uniform amount levied on each individual or ‘head’] extends in
English history to the fourteenth century; its origin in American states and
territories is associated with agrarian unrest of the 1880s and 1890s that
culminated in the rise of the Populist Party in the West and the South.
A
low-income farmers’ party, the Populists, gave the Democratic Party the only
serious competition it had experienced since the end of Reconstruction.
The
intensity of competition led both parties to bring blacks back into politics
and to compete for their vote.
Once
the Populists had been defeated, the Democrats changed state constitutions or
drafted new constitutions to include a variety of disfranchising devices.
When
payment of the poll tax was made a prerequisite to voting, people unable to
afford the tax ─ e.g., impoverished blacks, poor whites ─ were denied voting
rights.
In
twentieth century United States poll taxes of varying stipulations lingered in
the Southern states.
Some
states abolished the tax after World War I; others retained it.
The
Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, effective in 1964, declared
poll taxes unconstitutional in federal elections. In 1966 the U.S. Supreme
Court went beyond the Twenty-fourth Amendment in its ruling that, under the
‘equal protection’ clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, states of the United
States could not levy a poll tax as a prerequisite for voting in state and
local elections. [Britannica]
 |
| Fannie Lou Hamer nearly died campaigning for right to vote |
Amendment XIV
[1868] Section 1--All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of
the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which
shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to any
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Amendment [XIX]
[1920] The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied
or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Amendment [XXIV]
[1964] Section 1--The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any
primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for
President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress,
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by
reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
Amendment [XXVI]
[1971] Section 1--The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen
years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of age.
 |
| Ruleville, Mississippi, birthplace of Voting Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer |
Too poor, too colored, too corrupt (?)
New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, Real Clear
Politics reports (Democracy Now also had
a woman of color BCJ staffer on today), weighs in with the insight that “11
percent of voting-age citizens” living in U.S. states with photo-ID laws just
cannot produce or acquire identification documents. [This is simply untrue]
Defenders of strict voter-ID laws argue that, even when
no fraud exists, identification documents are needed to
prevent fraud. [The real fraud, the deep corruption
is in the campaign and election systems, in the moneyed agents that buy and
sell policy and political influence, and mass media that support these agents
and system and deny alternative voices.]
Pennsylvania officials had acknowledged, Real Clear Politics
continued, that “they knew of no instance of voter impersonation.” An
off-the-record “expert” reportedly admitted that both sides of the issue (an issue or nonissue that avoids and
distracts from real issues) are making meritless “‘demagogic’ arguments …” with
a single purpose: to “rally their political bases.”
 |
| Fannie Lou Hamer |
Americans do not vote.
For more than fifty years, eligible U.S. voters only three times have voted in percentages exceeding 60 percentage points: 60.8 percent in 1968; 61.9 percent in 1964; 63.1 percent in 1960. In the 52-year period (25 elections reported in Infoplease data), 1960-2010, eligible U.S. voters have voted in percentages well under 50 percent: usually in the 30s (ten times); three times in the 40s percentage points; and nine times in the low and mid-50s percentage points.
For more than fifty years, eligible U.S. voters only three times have voted in percentages exceeding 60 percentage points: 60.8 percent in 1968; 61.9 percent in 1964; 63.1 percent in 1960. In the 52-year period (25 elections reported in Infoplease data), 1960-2010, eligible U.S. voters have voted in percentages well under 50 percent: usually in the 30s (ten times); three times in the 40s percentage points; and nine times in the low and mid-50s percentage points.
Early this year a Government Accountability Office (GAO)
finding said─
Many
U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in federal elections do not do so.
“In the 2008 general election,” GAO said, “about 62 percent
of eligible citizens voted.
Though federal law since 1845 has required federal elections
to be held on Tuesday, some states have tried “to increase voter turnout by
enhancing convenience, …implementing alternative voting methods such as
in-person early voting (casting a ballot in person prior to Election Day
without providing a reason) and no-excuse absentee voting (casting an absentee
ballot, usually by mail, without providing a reason).”
Thirty-five (35) U.S. states and
the District of Columbia, for the 2010 general election, provided voters at
least one alternative to casting their ballot on Election Day through in-person
early voting, no-excuse absentee voting, or voting by mail.
Thirty-three (33) states and the
District of Columbia provided in-person early voting, 29 states and the District
provided no-excuse absentee voting, and 2 states provided voting by mail to all
or most voters.
Of the 9 states and the District
where GAO conducted interviews, all but 2 states provided voters the option of
in-person early voting in the 2010 general election, and 5 states and the
District offered both early voting and no-excuse absentee voting.
Implementation and characteristics
of in-person early voting varied among the 7 states and, in some cases, among
the jurisdictions within a state. For example, 5 states and the District
required local jurisdictions to include at least one Saturday, and 2 states
allowed for some jurisdiction discretion to include weekend days.
I used to think weekend voting was a part of the answer to
lax voter turnout. GAO found this not to be true. Though weekend
elections in the United States have not been studied, GAO found that voter
turnout is not strongly affected by alternative voting methods. Its “review of
24 studies found that, with the exception of vote by mail, each of the
alternative voting methods was estimated to change turnout by no more than 4
percentage points.”
National Voter Turnout
in Federal Elections:
1960–2010
Infoplease data
Year
|
Voting-age
population |
Voter
registration |
Voter turnout
|
Turnout of voting-age
population (percent) |
2010**
|
235,809,266
|
NA
|
90,682,968
|
37.8%
|
2008*
|
231,229,580
|
NA
|
132,618,580*
|
56.8
|
2006
|
220,600,000
|
135,889,600
|
80,588,000
|
37.1
|
2004
|
221,256,931
|
174,800,000
|
122,294,978
|
55.3
|
2002
|
215,473,000
|
150,990,598
|
79,830,119
|
37.0
|
2000
|
205,815,000
|
156,421,311
|
105,586,274
|
51.3
|
1998
|
200,929,000
|
141,850,558
|
73,117,022
|
36.4
|
1996
|
196,511,000
|
146,211,960
|
96,456,345
|
49.1
|
1994
|
193,650,000
|
130,292,822
|
75,105,860
|
38.8
|
1992
|
189,529,000
|
133,821,178
|
104,405,155
|
55.1
|
1990
|
185,812,000
|
121,105,630
|
67,859,189
|
36.5
|
1988
|
182,778,000
|
126,379,628
|
91,594,693
|
50.1
|
1986
|
178,566,000
|
118,399,984
|
64,991,128
|
36.4
|
1984
|
174,466,000
|
124,150,614
|
92,652,680
|
53.1
|
1982
|
169,938,000
|
110,671,225
|
67,615,576
|
39.8
|
1980
|
164,597,000
|
113,043,734
|
86,515,221
|
52.6
|
1978
|
158,373,000
|
103,291,265
|
58,917,938
|
37.2
|
1976
|
152,309,190
|
105,037,986
|
81,555,789
|
53.6
|
1974
|
146,336,000
|
96,199,0201
|
55,943,834
|
38.2
|
1972
|
140,776,000
|
97,328,541
|
77,718,554
|
55.2
|
1970
|
124,498,000
|
82,496,7472
|
58,014,338
|
46.6
|
1968
|
120,328,186
|
81,658,180
|
73,211,875
|
60.8
|
1966
|
116,132,000
|
76,288,2833
|
56,188,046
|
48.4
|
1964
|
114,090,000
|
73,715,818
|
70,644,592
|
61.9
|
1962
|
112,423,000
|
65,393,7514
|
53,141,227
|
47.3
|
1960
|
109,159,000
|
64,833,0965
|
68,838,204
|
63.1
|
*Source 2008 election results:
http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2008G.html.
**Source 2010 election results: http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2010G.html
n.a. = not available. NOTE:
Presidential election years are in boldface.**Source 2010 election results: http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2010G.html
1. Registrations from Iowa not included.
2. Registrations from Iowa and Missouri not included.
3. Registrations from Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri., Nebraska, and Wyoming not included. District of Columbia did not have independent status.
4. Registrations from Alabama, Alaska, D.C., Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky., Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming not included.
5. Registrations from Ala., Alaska, D.C., Iowa, Kans., Ky., Miss., Mo., Nebr., New Mexico, N.C., N.D., Okla., S.D., Wis., and Wyo. not included.
Source: Federal Election
Commission. Data drawn from Congressional Research Service reports, Election
Data Services Inc., and State Election Offices
Information Please® Database,
© 2011 Pearson Education, Inc All rights reservedRead more: National Voter Turnout in Federal Elections: 1960–2010 — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html#ixzz23p3mJOjQ
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html
Sources and notes
“Voter ID: Less Than Meets the Eye” (Lou Cannon), August 17,
2012,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/08/17/voter_id_less_than_meets_the_eye_115132.htmlReal Clear Politics article cont’:
Republican call for strict photo-ID
laws to prevent fraud is a solution to a non-existent problem.
Carnegie-Knight investigative
reporting project News21 analyzed 2,068 alleged fraud cases in all 50 U.S.
states since 2000 and found 10 cases of voter impersonation (about one for
every 15 million prospective voters).
The analysis found 491 cases of
alleged absentee ballot fraud and 400 cases of alleged registration fraud.
Existing voter-ID laws would affect none of these.
So while states are preventing fraud
that doesn’t exist, they may be ignoring the fraud that’s actually occurring.
About Real Clear Politics
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/media_kit/our_audience/
GAO
Elections: Views on Implementing Federal Elections on a
Weekend, GAO-12-69, January 12, 2012, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-69
GAO’s analysis of early voter turnout data in
the U.S. state of Maryland found that 1.5 percent of voters analyzed cast
ballots on the weekend during the 2010 general election.
Constitution of the United States [excerpt]
Amendment XIV
[1868] Section 1--All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of
the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which
shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2--Representatives shall be apportioned among the
several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number
of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to
vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice
President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and
Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is
denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of
age,{14} and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for
participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein
shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall
bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such
State.
Section 3--No person shall be a Senator or Representative in
Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil
or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having
previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the
United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or
judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United
States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or
given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of
two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4--The validity of the public debt of the United
States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and
bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be
questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any
debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the
United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all
such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5--The Congress shall have power to enforce, by
appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977): champion of voting rights, field
secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, outspoken advocate
for civil rights in the United States
____________________________
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