by Jeremy Leaming
Last fall Risa L. Goluboff and Dahlia Lithwick nailed the slew of new onerous voter ID laws in a piece for Slate detailing the “ugly parallels between Jim Crow and modern vote-suppression laws.”
The two noted that a few other commentators had also noticed the parallels between these new laws and ugly era of Jim Crow. The majority of the voter ID laws make it much mor
e difficult to vote, and many have been enacted by Republican-controlled legislatures.
As this blog has noted time and again, the proponents of these laws claim the country’s elections are ridden with voter fraud and that the laws are only about protecting the integrity of the democratic process. But this blog has also pointed out the wobbly evidence of voter fraud. And in their piece for Slate, Goluboff and Lithwick say that voter fraud is a “problem that is statistically rarer than heavy-metal bands with exploding drummers.”
Loyola Law School Professor Justin Levitt in a recent ACS Issue Brief also took on the claim that these new voter suppression laws were justified by rampant fraud, saying there are more reports yearly of UFOs.
The Huffington Post’s Dan Froomkin wonders why many journalists feel compelled to trumpet or give credence to proponents’ claims of voter fraud. “Voter fraud simply isn’t a problem in this country,” he writes. “Studies have definitively debunked the voter fraud myth time and again."
What do exist, Froomkin notes, are the blatant efforts to use photo ID laws to depress voter turnout, mainly among communities of color, low-income people, students and the elderly. These laws make it extremely difficult to obtain the proper form of ID. A report by The Brennan Center for Justice shows just how costly it is for people in a slew of states to attain the proper ID.
Attorney General Eric Holder likened some of the new voter ID laws to the poll tax of the Jim Crow area. It caused howls of indignation among rightwing pundits. But the Brennan Center’s report bolsters Holder’s assessment. These new laws are onerous, and will if allowed to stay in place act as a poll tax.
Many reporters, however, can’t bring themselves to report what’s really going on. Not only do they often tout claims of voter fraud, they repeat other pro-voter ID laws’ talking points, such as the oft-repeated claim that we live in a society where picture IDs are required for lots of actions, so what’s the big deal.
For instance, photo IDs are likely required for boarding an airplane or, as Levitt wrote, buying Sudafed. Levitt, however, continued that those actions are not constitutionally protected. Indeed as many others realize, voting is rather integral to democracy. It’s either daft or lazy to equate voting with purchasing a decongestant or an airplane ticket.
The nation’s superrich loves the status quo – a government that can only pass legislation that bolster its interests. So rightwing lawmakers nationwide are taking action to help ensure policymakers in Washington remain beholden to their interests. One tool to do so is the rigid voter ID law.
Froomkin blasts those reporters for being cowed, for not calling these voter ID laws what they are – efforts to suppress the vote. He says:
Modern American journalists strive for impartiality, but there is a limit. Mainstream journalists shouldn’t be afraid of being accused of taking sides when what they’re doing is standing up for basic constitutional rights. Indeed, the greater danger is that readers condemn them – or even worse, stop paying attention to them – for having no conviction at all, and no moral compass.
[image via KClvey]
I have been seeking
I have been seeking information on this topic for the past few hours and found your post to be well written and has solid information.
http://in360vr.com/
Press and Voter ID fraud.
I lived through the Water Gate Investigation by the Washington Post. The investigation was relentless but very accurate and eventually brought down a corrupt and power hungry President.
What I have seen in this time of instant media coverage (without a news cycle) is a complete lack of investigative journalism. There are exceptions to the rule, but these exceptions are under reported or ignored completely by the likes of Fox News if it does not fit there particular political agenda.
I live in South Carolina, and our newspaper "The State" (http://www.thestate.com/) has done a good job in reporting on the way the Voter ID laws will impact, in a very negative way, black voters, the elderly and those who can not actually prove who they are.
The excuse the tea bagging governor uses for this very restrictive law is "voter Fraud", but an investigation by an independent agency over 870 disputed names found that ONLY two were actually questionable, and of those two, both were basically technique errors by the poll workers checking in the voter (a misplaced letter and a different spelling of a first name)!
Where was the investigation by our national media over our rush to war with Iraq?? Where was our investigation and outrage by our mainstream media and print media on the baseless attacks on our Presidents Birth Certificate?? I could go on, but the point is that any journalist standards that existed in the early 70's have been replaced by standards that cater to the profit of a corporation and how much the newscast can generate in revenues instead of investigating the facts of a story.
For me to get an "accurate" picture about a "news story" I have to read several newspapers stories (NY Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Daily News, Huffington Post, Politico, and for grins and giggles the Daily Caller, Washington Times... for total lies I read World Net Daily...what a rag).
My question is this: What happens to those people that don't have access to the internet and rely on the print and video media to get their news??
Freedom of the press and speech should have no limits (there are several legal exceptions to this rule: yelling fire in a crowded theater comes to mind) but that freedom has a two edged sword to it. There are those news organizations and news corporations that have a specific ideological perspective that is constantly presented, and this unfiltered political agenda presented as factual reporting can cause the public to tune out with the result that voter fraud laws can be passed with impunity with the specific purpose of disenfranchising the poor and elderly in order to continue a power grab of our democracy...and the paid for press will support this lie as "news".
I am, as of today, at a total loss as to the solution to these conservative corporations slanting the news to their specific political view point, How do we educate the general population when a media outlet selectively edits video of the President? Where can the general public have access to the full speech instead of the edited speech?
Any suggestions???
The View from Nowhere
I think this gets to the fundamental problem with the modern news media that Jay Rosen identifies as "The View from Nowhere." We have a news media that simply prefers its own notion of objectivity to any sense of reporting the "truth." There is no one truth anymore. Instead, there is the Republican truth and the Democratic truth, and the press feels duty bound to report on both in the name of objectivity, even if one is truth is actually based in reality and the other based in delusion.
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