Felon disenfranchisement briefly landed in the spotlight two years ago when an adviser for President Barack Obama spoke on his behalf after the 2010 State of the Union.
Heather Higgenbottom, then deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council, urged full support of voting rights for former felons and said the president’s position is that when a person completes a sentence, voting rights should be restored.
View the video here, about 16 minutes into the discussion.
By Maryann Batlle, News21
Members of the News21 team are compiling data from the U.S. Census and academic studies to better distinguish voting patterns.
Here is a sneak peek at what they’ve been working on:
• In the 2010 election, the state with the lowest percentage of voting-age registered people was Hawaii, with 48.3 percent. However, Texas was the worst state for registered voter turnout, with 31.4 percent.
• Maine topped all states two years ago and was first in registered voters and turnout in the 2010 election. Nearly three-quarters of those eligible in Maine are registered, and 58 percent voted.
• A 2006 Pew Center survey on who votes highlighted different categories of people likely to register and vote.
1) Conservatives are more likely to be registered and vote regularly, while liberals are less likely to register.
2) Married people vote more frequently than non-married people.
3) Nearly 25 percent of people who moved to a new neighborhood within a year are not registered to vote, and only three percent of them regularly vote.
4) Persons 50 to 64 years old vote most regularly.
By Alia Conley, News21
Hey, happy summer solstice, folks!
Today is a much slower day in voting rights news. As the standoff between the U.S. House Oversight Committee, the Department of Justice and the White House sucks all of the energy out of the traditional digital-political commentary, it seems that all the usual fever surrounding some of our regular search terms has faded.
Even yesterday’s incredibly popular story about the voter registration forms mailed to a dead dog in Virginia has slowed, which probably says just as much about the limited attention span of the 24-news cycle as it does about the story’s merit — or lack thereof.
We’ve still got some good reads for you here, and the surprising return of an April poll about voter ID and disenfranchisement.
What We’ve Been Reading
“Florida Voters Back Voter Purge, Stand Your Ground, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Gov. Scott’s Job Approval Still Very Low,” (Quinnipiac University, 06/20)
“Voter ID groups release first fundraising numbers,” (Catharine Richert, 06/20, MPRNews)
“The Public Eye: Capital-area voter fraud suspects have criminal histories,” Brad Branan, 05/13, Sacramento Bee)
“The Voice of New Rochelle: A League of Their Own,” (Bob Marrone, 06/20, NewRochellePatch)
“Young People, Minorities, Unmarried Women and Dead Dogs,” (Ed Kilgore, 06/19, Washington Monthly)
Twitter Trends
The most curious trend today regarding voting rights and voter ID on social media search engine Topsy.com is the inexplicable tweeting and retweeting of a Rasmussen Report poll from April 2012 that shows 73 percent of likely U.S. voters think that voter ID requirements do not discriminate and that 64 percent think voter fraud is a somewhat serious problem.
An interesting poll, to be sure, but it’s from more than two months ago, and it’s being retweeted by a lot of Spanish-language accounts. We’re not certain where this trend is coming from, but it could have something to do with the announcement Tuesday of a federal voter ID law introduced by Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill.
The “Mitt Romney voting rights” tweet continues to surface here and there, and we’re still waiting on a Twitter response from the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
To see if Romney ever does respond to the demands of the anonymous Twitter hordes — and for the latest in voting rights news — be sure to follow us @WhoCanVote.
A coalition of voting rights groups has sued Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, arguing that state efforts to remove voters from rolls violates the National Voter Registration Act.
The suit — filed June 19 by the Advancement Project, Fair Elections Legal Network, LatinoJustice PRLDEF and Project Vote — is one of several that have emerged since Florida Gov. Rick Scott launched an effort to remove non-citizens from voting rolls earlier this year.
Kathy Culliton-Gonzalez of the Advancement Project traces the voter purge, she said, to the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.
Judicial Watch and True the Vote, which trains volunteers to watch polls, sued Indiana elections officials June 11, alleging that the state is not maintaining accurate voter rolls. Judicial Watch maintains a list of up to a dozen states, including Florida, that the organization plans to sue for the same reasons, president Tom Fitton said.
Florida is taking “reasonable steps” to do things right, Fitton said, and emphasized that any eligible voter who gets accidentally removed can vote provisionally. Any suggestion that Judicial Watch or True the Vote is participating in a nationwide effort to suppress minority or Democratic votes is ridiculous, Fitton said.
By AJ Vicens, News21
Grace Brown was a member of Rhode Island's movement to restore voting rights to parolees and probationers. Photo by Maryann Batlle/News21
Grace Brown, a lifetime Rhode Island resident, got involved in the state’s successful grassroots movement to restore voting rights to parolees and probationers, she said, because of her youngest son.
“My son had been in and out of jail, and I was angry as heck with him,” Brown said. “But I had no idea what he in his spirit was going through.”
Rhode Island voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2006 that gave Brown’s son and others like him the right to vote. Now, just residents who are incarcerated are disenfranchised.
“You have to be in charge of your own future. And the more you leave in somebody else’s hands the more you cannot feel responsible, the more you cannot feel proud of the movements, of the decisions that you’ve made,” Brown said.
Brown attended an informational seminar that she said showed her how other felons – men and women – from minority communities were affected by losing their voting rights.
Brown and a friend, whose son also was behind bars, felt after the seminar that they “had to do something because the playing field was definitely not even, and we wanted to do something to kind of knock some of those hills down,” she said.
By Maryann Batlle, News21
We’ve noticed in the News21 newsroom how certain stories in our search fields stay hot. Part of this is probably the naturally viral nature of Internet news, but we’ve enjoyed seeing which stories pop up and keep buzzing.
Today, that story is a minor item from the Roanoke, Va., NBC affilate, WSLS. It’s a story about voter registration and dead dogs. Or, more specifically, one particular dead dog whose owner received forms inviting the pet to register to vote.
The story went viral for a variety of reasons, and it was picked up by such diverse sources as conservative blog RedAlert Politics and political news site, Politico. It also is a story about supposed voter fraud — even though this actually is an example of registration fraud, and not voter fraud — which gets a wide segment of the conservative Twittersphere riled.
It is also a story about a cute dog with a cute name, and nothing goes viral like stories about small animals, especially when those animals are given anthropomorphic qualities and get all mixed up in human activities like voting.
A coalition of civil rights organizations also filed a lawsuit against Florida this afternoon, alleging that the state’s removing voters from rolls violates section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but wouldn’t you rather read about the cute dog who would have been eligible to vote in Virginia if he was a human and hadn’t died two years ago?
What We’ve Been Reading
“Citizenship mandate challenged,” (Lyle Denniston, 06/19, SCOTUSBlog)
“Voter Purges,” (Myrna Pérez, 09/30/08, Brennan Center for Justice)
“Civil Rights Groups Sue Florida Over Voter Purging Lists,” (Brentin Mock, 06/19, The Nation / Colorlines)
“E-Voting: Trust but Verify,” (Steve Schneider and Alan Woodward, 06/19, Scientific American)
“St. Paul jumps in to VoterID fray,” (Patrick Thornton, 06/19, MinnLawyerBlog)
“JW Sues Obama Justice Department for Records Regarding South Carolina’s Voter ID Law,” (Tom Fitton, 06/19, Breitbart.com / BigGovernment)
“Punch-Card Voting in Idaho,” (Pew Center on the States, 06/19)
“Joe Walsh, GOP Congressman, Introduces New Federal Voter ID Bill,” (Nick Wing, 06/19, The Huffington Post)
Twitter Trends
As mentioned above, that story about the voting-age eligible dog in Virginia bounced around Twitter this morning, particularly after Politico picked it up. At that point, several journalists released a collective Twitter yell complaining about the item’s lack of news value.
(While we wrote this post, North Carolina’s conservative Civitas Institute wrote a blog post warning about the dangers of pet voting. The story has legs, apparently.)
There are still some latecomers to the Mitt Romney/#VotingRights party, as users continue to ask the GOP presidential candidate what he thinks about the Florida voter roll removal.
The #voterID hashtag also has spiked on social media search engine Topsy.com, as users mention a recently introduced federal voter ID bill by U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., and the aforementioned voting-eligble dog.
We’ll be sure to tell you if Mitt Romney replies to all these tweets, and if the dog is ever enfranchised. Follow us at @WhoCanVote.
The most notable change in voting rights trends after this weekend is perhaps the very term itself. Friday saw the complete dominance of the term #VotingRights by progressive Twitter users asking where Gov. Mitt Romney stood on Florida’s controversial voter purge, but the hashtag mostly has been passed on to other stories.
But that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been looking for new stories. Happy Monday reading.
What We’ve Been Reading
“Voter Suppression Returns,” (Alexander Keyssar, Harvard Magazine July/August)
“Lawsuit planned over Pennsylvania’s voter ID law,” (Len Barcousky, 06/16, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
“Voter ID bill resisted by town, city clerks,” (Kevin Landrigan, 06/17, Nashua Telegraph)
“Allen West to feds: Let states purge voters,” (MJ Lee, 06/18, Politico)
“Ensuring access to the ballot for American Indians and Alaska Natives,” (Tova Andrea Wang, 06/18, Demos)
Twitter Trends
Besides the aforementioned shift in the #VotingRights hashtag, the most notable trend in our top four Topsy.com search terms (#VoterID, #VoterSuppression, #VoterFraud and #VotingRights) is the back and forth between conservative allegations of fraud and progressive allegations of suppression.
We’ll keep tabs to see whether #VotingRights ever rests at “normal” in the Twittersphere, but for more of the latest trends, be sure to follow us @WhoCanVote.
Secretrary of State Sam Reed's responsibilities include overseeing elections is Washington state. Photo provided.
A part of Sam Reed’s job as Washington’s secretary of state, is chief election official.
Reed, who is retiring this year, might best be
remembered for overseeing the state’s 2004
gubernatorial election – the closest in U.S. history
– and the recount that
followed.
“We made sure that everything we did was in public
view,” he said. “If
there were mistakes I was the first one to announce
them and here is
what we are going to do about them.”
That chapter in Washington election history
exposed weak points in the state’s
voting system. Reed spent the last eight years
attempting to
strengthen it, including introducing a
vote-by-mail system last year.
By Joe Henke, News21
The News21 newsroom is a space for constant collaboration and teams of reporters have been meeting and trading ideas about how to best share our investigations of voting rights and voting in the United States.
Here’s a look at what the News21 team has been up to:
News21 fellows Andrea Rumbaugh, left, Maryann Batlle and Carl Straumsheim collaborate in the Chyron Media Center at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Photo by Michael Ciaglo/News21.
News21 fellows Jack Fitzpatrick and Ethan Magoc look over documents in the Chyron Media Center in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State Univerity. Photo by Michael Ciaglo/News21
Rosey Ruiz of Houston, Texas, is the founder of a nonprofit organization that helps men who have been in prison. Photo by Lizzie Chen/News21
Rosey Ruiz of Houston, Texas, is the founder of Aspire to Win, a nonprofit that helps men who have been in prison for 10 years or more.
Ruiz draws from her own experience; she was sent to prison on felony convictions in 1985 and released in 1994. Ruiz said she is fortunate to live in a state where voting rights are restored to those who complete parole.
“Voting is very, very important, of course you lose your right to vote once you get a felony, but our right to vote is so important,” Ruiz said. “As soon as I got off paper, immediately, on the first day, I went down and registered to vote so that my voice can be heard. I feel like I have a choice today and that means a lot to me, and I have a say so on who can be put in office.”
By Lizzie Chen, News21