Foul! The Miami Herald biffs on voter disenfranchisement, again ... by gimleteye

In the reporting of the "voter ID" controversy ("Law puts thousands of Florida voter IDs in question"), the Miami Herald focuses on the claim by the State of Florida that it wants to eliminate voter fraud such as that described as "joke names".

(To sign the Progress Florida petition to Governor Charlie Crist and Secretary of State Kurt Browning, asking them to "protect our vote", click here.)

The Herald omits the key point: that when documentation is applied to voting, the groups who disproportionately suffer are the poor, disabled, elderly and minorities who are denied their right to participate in the political process. Most of these voters will be voting Democrat and that is the reason so much pressure is being applied by red states to the surge in new voter registrations.

Whether or not the Herald agrees with this assessment, no story about voter ID should omit reference to the underlying controversy. Credit the Orlando Sentinel with an editorial that gets to the heart of the problem:

Here's the bottom line, that the Republican apparatchniks know perfectly well: "Before the presidential primary, 16,000 citizens were blocked from the voter rolls by the law. It disproportionately impacts voters of color who have nontraditional names, including Latino voters who use two surnames, thus increasing the likelihood of clerical errors. In 2006 and 2007, 65 percent of the unmatched applicants were either Latino or African American. Latinos comprised only 15 percent of the applicant pool, but a whopping 39 percent of them were prevented from registering. African Americans comprised only 13 percent of the applicant pool, yet 26 percent of them were kept from the rolls."

In "Remove the Voting Barrier (Sept 26, 2008), Alvaro F. Fernandez, regional director of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the voter verification law, wrote of Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning, "Browning says this law is necessary to prevent fraudulent voters from registering -- despite scant evidence of voter-registration fraud in Florida. And while election officials must verify voters' identities -- that is, make sure voters are who they say they are -- this law does not accomplish that purpose. Indeed, voters who verify their identities by showing poll workers their drivers licenses, U.S. passports or military identifications will have their votes go uncounted if they do not give election officials an extra copy of an ID card in the two days after the election."

Of course there is scant evidence: what there is, is a concerted effort to skew the presidential election results to the Republican candidate for president, John McCain.

As Jim Defede noted on CBS 4 the other night, "This year's presidential election is generating intense interest and nowhere is that being felt more than in the number of people registering to vote for the first time. In Miami-Dade County, 116,495 new voters have been registered since the beginning of the year. In Broward County, 64,168 new voters have been added to the election rolls."

Why won't the mainstream media clearly articulate what this issue is about: grass roots organizations rushing to enfranchise citizens, who are mobilized by the worst economy in decades and eight years of the Bush wrecking crew, and embattled apparachniks of the Republican party who will do and say anything to win the November elections, including active efforts to disenfranchise citizens. At the very least, the Herald should note the controversy.


Law puts thousands of Florida voter IDs in question
Florida's controversial 'no-match' law has already called into question thousands of new voter registrations.

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Naked Politics blog goes behind-the-scenes
BY MARC CAPUTO
MCAPUTO@MIAMIHERALD.COM
TALLAHASSEE -- About 3,200 new voters are in the cross-hairs of Florida's new and controversial ''no-match'' law, which could force them to cast provisional ballots on Election Day if officials can't confirm their identities.

The law, designed to prevent potential election fraud and remove joke names from voter rolls -- ''Ricco Suave'' and ''Joe Blow'' among them -- requires local elections officials to mail letters to anyone whose registration information doesn't match the state's driver's license or Social Security databases.

Only those who registered after Sept. 8 are affected. Since then, 71,000 new Florida voters have registered through Monday, according to Florida's elections division.

Miami-Dade County has now issued about 1,200 no-match letters, Election Supervisor Lester Sola said. Broward County sent out about 84 as of last week, said the election office's public services director, Mary Cooney.

The numbers are changing as new voters are added to the voter rolls through the Oct. 6 registration deadline.

Those who are flagged as a no-match, must provide either a driver's license or Social Security card to their county elections office at least 24 hours before Election Day. Otherwise, they'll have to cast a provisional ballot and bring their documentation to the elections office within two days to make their vote count.

Opponents worry that the law poses needless challenges to voters. The databases that elections officials use can have typographical errors that could call someone's registration into question, and the no-match notice could get lost in the mail, said Mary G. Wilson, national president for the League of Women voters.

''You know what happens: You're out of town, or you get busy and you put your mail aside and don't open it right away. So you may have no idea that there wasn't a match,'' she said.

Wilson said voting this year will be hard enough because turnout is expected to be at 85 percent. She said big counties such as Miami-Dade, which has added more than 100,000 new voters since January, could see long lines. She urged people to consider voting by absentee or early ballot.

The NAACP and the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice had unsuccessfully tried to stop the no-match law, predicting that it could ``disenfranchise tens of thousands.''

As of Monday, the date for which the most-recent data were available, almost 9 percent of new registrations didn't match the state's during a computer check of the state's voter rolls. But state elections and county officials manually checked the registrants' information and added about half of them to the active voter rolls.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning defended the no-match law as a necessity, noting joke and pet names have crept onto the rolls.

''Let's register your cat, a dog, your goldfish,'' Browning said. ``If we don't have the ability to check your goldfish's driver's license, he could vote.''