Essay: Goal is to prevent voting
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- By Paul Rozycki
- Monday, June 25, 2012
- Hits: 490
In politics, like sports, there are two ways to win the game. Either score points or prevent your opponent from scoring points — offense and defense. The rules give both teams a chance to score and defend. The rules give both teams a chance to put their players on the field.
Today, for some in politics, the game is not only to score more points (get more votes) but to prevent your opponent from voting at all. Voter suppression was the topic of a panel discussion led by Rep. Woodrow Stanley at the Flint Public Library June 20.
The history of the expansion of the vote in the U.S. has been a slow and halting process.
In the 1790s, after the Constitution was adopted, only adult, white, men who owned property and belonged to the right religion could vote.
Over the last 200 plus years, the electorate has gradually grown to include those who don't own property (1830s), those of various religious faiths (1830s), African American men (late 1860s, during Reconstruction), women (1920), the restoration of all African American voting rights (1960s) and 18-year-olds (1972). At every stage, the process was opposed by those who felt the new voters would vote against their party or cause.
Today, when nearly every person 18 and older has the right to vote, some are trying to roll back that right.
In the last few years a number of states, including Michigan, have begun requiring photo identification, limiting absentee and early voting and restricting voter registration efforts. On the surface, these might seem fairly reasonable. Don't we need a photo identification to cash a check?
However, nearly all those who would be disenfranchised by these efforts would be Democrats. Nearly all those promoting these limits are Republicans.
The reason given for these new restrictions is to prevent rampant fraud in our election system. That sounds fair and reasonable. No one wants to see elections decided by ballot box stuffing. But closer examination suggests that these are solutions in search of a problem.
Many objective and non-partisan studies show that true voter fraud is extremely rare. One study by the Department of Justice showed that of the 300 million votes cast between 2002 and 2007 there were only 86 real cases of voter fraud. A study in Wisconsin found that of 3 million votes cast in 2004, there were seven fraudulent voters. A similar study in Michigan found only one non-qualified voter.
There is no widespread voter fraud.
More than 30 states have implemented some suppression techniques.
They include voter identification laws, purging voter rolls of those who face foreclosure, citizenship requirements, limiting voting resources in certain areas and blocking ex-felons from voting.
In many of these cases, there can be a legitimate case for the policy, but the difference is in how they are administered. (After all, the literacy tests of the old Jim Crow days sounded reasonable, on the surface, until you looked at how they were applied.)
The real reason, (to go back to the sports analogy) is defense. If you can't score enough points, try to make sure your opponents don't score.
Better yet, make sure your opponents don't get as many players on the field.
Today there are about 21 million Americans who don't have photo identification, 25 percent of African Americans of voting age don't have a government-issued identification and 18 percent of those over 65 don't have a government-issued photo identification.
In 2008, Democrats did well because they turned out in very large numbers. In 2010, Republicans did well because Democrats stayed home in very large numbers.
In Michigan, there is now a package of bills on its way to the governor (particularly SB 751 and SB 754) that would require identification and limit voting in other ways. The League of Women Voters and others on the panel encouraged those concerned to contact the governor's office and urge him to veto these laws that serve little purpose except to limit the electorate.
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Paul Rozycki is a professor of political science at Mott Community College. He has lived in Flint since 1969 and has been involved with and observed Flint politics for many years. He is author of Politics and Government in Michigan (with Jim Hanley) and A Clearer Image: The History of Mott Community College.
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