It’s slightly amusing to look at the gap in news consciousness that a one-day, midweek holiday like July 4 can create.
What does that mean for voting rights? Well, from our perch over the Twittersphere, it seems the already limited attention spans of many users divided over questions of voting rights, voter ID, voter fraud and voter suppression have been reduced even more than usual.
It’s unfortunate, because there were some interesting stories this week — an expansive Mother Jones package on the history of voting rights legislation since the 1990s, a set of data from the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth suggesting that up to 10 percent of registered voters lack the required photo ID and fraud allegations in Mexico.
No one issue rocketed this week, but next week could be another doozy. A hearing examining the constitutionality of the Texas voter ID opens Monday in Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania numbers will probably be passed around and parsed.
We’ll have more on all that next week.
What We’ve Been Reading
“Election integrity,” (Editorial Board, 07/05, Battle Creek Enquirer)
“Pennsylvania Voter ID Law May Bar 9% From Presidential Election,” (Romy Varghese, 07/05, Bloomberg)
“Reps. Moore, Ellison: Voter Suppression Issue is Behind Focus on Eric Holder,” (Khalil Abdullah, 07/04, New American Media)
“Vetoing Voter ID is the (Historically) Republican Thing to Do,” (John Nichols, 07/06, The Nation)
“Stringent voter ID law in Pa. could prevent 750,000 from voting,” (Lucy Madison, 07/05, CBSNews)
Twitter Trends
Maybe it’s just Friday, but we’ve enjoyed seeing the (fictional) President Josiah Bartlet of “West Wing” fame offer his own opinion on the voter ID debate.
One of ‘his’ tweets from this morning already has received 84 retweets as of this post, and users on both sides of the voter ID debate have replied to him asking for clarification or pointing out the fallacy of his tweet.
Remember, Josiah Bartlet is a fictional character, and the Twitter account set up in his name perhaps has little or nothing to do with actual debate, politics or Aaron Sorkin.
But users are engaging him, retweeting and replying and even mocking his views. It’s a great example of how Twitter can be both a useful search tool and also a silly adventure into a blackhole of digital dithering.
Additionally, our routine use of social media search engine Topsy.com shows a dramatic uptick in mentions of #VoterID, which we can assume is directly related to the Pennsylvania voter ID numbers released this week.
We’ll keep tabs on those mentions, which will likely receive a bigger boost from the opening salvo in the Texas court case next week.
Our reporters, @AnneliseRussell and @LindseyRuta, will cover that hearing next week, so be sure to follow them for live updates. And as always, follow us @WhoCanVote for the latest links, tweets and trends from the News21 team.