Baseball, Early Voting, Mom, and Apple Pie: According to Husted, One of These Does Not Belong

 

As reported by the Toledo Blade, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted described a recent federal court decision by the 6th Circuit to require Ohio to offer early voting to all voters as an “un-American approach to voting.” Not unconstitutional, not unauthorized, not difficult to manage, un-American. What in the world does he mean? 

Obama for America v. Husted, the case he is referring to, is a battle in the larger war that has taken place in the courts this election season over a variety of new voting laws. In this case, President Obama’s campaign, and the Democratic National Committee sued Ohio’s Secretary of State to block enforcement of an Ohio law that allowed military and overseas voters to have more in-person early voting opportunities than ordinary voters. Specifically, only military and overseas voters were allowed to early vote in the three days before the election. Ohio justified this policy by saying military families face unique challenges in voting and that it was too difficult to administer early voting for all voters during this period. The District Court concluded that this law was a violation of the Equal Protection clause and granted an injunction, which has since been upheld by the Sixth Circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court recently denied Ohio’s request for a stay of this injunction. While the case matters for voters in Ohio, it is by-and-large an election administration issue, which shouldn’t ordinarily rise to the level of un-American activities. So, what is Mr. Husted’s problem?

Most likely he means that the court decision intrudes on states’ rights to administer elections without interference. While Mr. Husted may feel this way, there is an extensive history of federal courts imposing their will on states when states are not running elections in a constitutional way. While Mr. Husted’s comments may rest on states’ rights ideology, he described the decision as an “un-American approach to voting” not an un-American approach to election administration or the treatment of states, which indicates that something else is at work in these comments.

Maybe he means that what President Obama’s campaign is asking will result in a denial of easy access to the polls by servicemen and women. It seems some military organizations do believe this, as many expressed support for Husted. However, as is clear from OFA’s brief, that isn’t at all what they want. What the plaintiffs sought in this case was equal access to the polls for military and ordinary voters. The plaintiffs did not want Ohio to end early voting in the 3-day period before the election. Instead, they wanted to ensure that all eligible voters had the opportunity to vote in that period. Though Mr. Husted could have reacted to the decision by eliminating all early voting in the 3-day period, he instead instituted limited hours early voting for all parties. However, the decision was entirely Mr. Husted’s, so he can’t mean that the decision was un-American because it denied early voting access to military families.

The only conclusion left is that Mr. Husted thinks early voting is in some way un-American. While some consider early voting dangerous and many Republicans don’t like it for a variety of reasons, it seems pretty out-there to suggest early voting is un-American. The general consensus is that early voting creates more access to the polls and helps to eliminate burdens for a variety of voters, which ultimately helps in effective election administration. The typical early voter is more likely than an election-day voter to be member of a minority group. In a country with such a terrible history of voter suppression, any policy that improves minority voter access with no impact on election integrity should be implemented immediately. It is simply common-sense.

So why does Mr. Husted so disfavor early voting for non-military voters? While not wanting to impugn the motives of an elected official of the great state of Ohio, it seems that politics may lie closer to the heart Husted’s declaration than he might have Ohio voters believe. Minority voters tend to vote for Democrats. Military voters tend to be Republicans. With other excuses eliminated, it seems only one answer is left.

Improving access to the polls? That has been the direction of American history with Americans from the American Revolution to the Civil Rights Movements fighting and dying for access to the polls.

Opposing easier voter access at all costs because you don’t like who votes? Now that sounds un-American.

The Debate We're Not Having: National Security and Civil Liberties

 

We live in an age where police chiefs are seeking funding to purchase drones for domestic surveillance, where fusion centers indiscriminately collect information about us in mega-databases around the country, and Congress has granted the President the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens – all in the name of national security.

It’s rather remarkable, then, that in Monday’s Obama/Romney foreign policy debate – where we heard how everything from math teacher shortages to Iranian centerfuges impact national security – there was not one word about how civil liberties might affect our national security policy.

The third party candidate debate – hosted by Larry King the night after the last Obama/Romney debate  –  had a much different tone, and included serious discussion about PATRIOT Act repeal, cessation of drone strikes, and the status of civil liberties under the NDAA. Remarkably – as The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf lauds – these candidates, “so ideologically diverse” agreed that “civil liberties are being trampled on by Democrats and Republicans.”

Given the robust discussion of the relationship between national security and civil liberties at the third party candidate debate, the silence in the Obama/Romney debate is even more striking.

Perhaps, the silence is an extension of David Sirota's analysis of DNC Chairwoman's Wasserman Schultz’s profession last week that she had never heard of Obama's widely reported "kill lists" (which were in the mainstream media as recently as this week) –

the predictable result of a political duopoly that so fundamentally agrees on extra-constitutional national security and civil liberties policies, that those policies are no longer permitted to be part of any “serious” national political discussion.

Do we live in an age where the major political parties consider civil liberties and national security inappropriate for serious discussion? I certainly hope not.

We, the people, must stand together and demand some serious discussion on these issues, or pretty soon, the Department of Homeland Security will roll out its new technology to scan our bodies with a molecular scanner from 164 feet away – and we won’t have even made mention of our concern.

By Kali Cohn

The Future of Assault Weapons

 

During Tuesday’s Presidential Debate at Hofstra University, a member of the audience asked what the candidates planned to do to “limit the availability of assault weapons.”

The question most likely referred to the shooting this summer in Aurora, Colorado, where James Holmes used a Smith & Wesson M&P15 semi-automatic rifle, along with a pistol, shotgun, and other weapons, to attack people at a Dark Knight Rises movie screening. 58 people were injured and 12 were killed, including 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan.

Holmes purchased all of his guns legally at Colorado sporting goods stores. While assault weapons like the one Holmes bought had been outlawed in 1994, the assault weapons ban expired in 2004, and Congress declined to renew it. Holmes’ legally-purchased assault rifle was capable of firing 100 consecutive shots; a deadly weapon designed for war combat with power far beyond any conceivable non-military needs.

Governor Romney reaffirmed his alignment with conservative gun rights positions, and redirected the topic to automatic weapons, instead of assault weapons: “I'm not in favor of new pieces of legislation on guns and taking guns away or making certain guns illegal. We of course don't want to have automatic weapons, and that's already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons.”

Fully automatic weapons are legal to own in the United States, but are very tightly regulated by The National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the 1986 Hughes Amendment. Under these regulations, only automatic weapons manufactured and registered with the federal government before 1986 can be bought, owned and sold, and purchasing one requires an FBI background check.

However, Romney had very little to say about assault weapons, the original question topic. Instead, he mainly focused on the idea that changes in culture are needed to reduce gun violence. He mentioned, in particular, education and family structure. “We need moms and dads helping raise kids wherever possible,” he said, and added that before having children, people “ought to think about getting married to someone.” This was likely a message to more conservative voters who believe that changing values about sex and marriage, including tolerance for homosexuality, are the true causes to larger problems in society, including violence. This point also helps resolve a potentially serious issue for those that argue for more gun rights, by reconciling support for more gun accessibility with an opposition to violence. However, the evidence has not shown a connection between single-parent families and gun violence. See Murnan, J., Dake, J. A. and Price, J. H. (2004), Association of Selected Risk Factors with Variation in Child and Adolescent Firearm Mortality by State. Journal of School Health, 74: 335–340.

President Obama, on the other hand, did not take a particularly strong position for more gun control. “We're a nation that believes in the Second Amendment,” he said. And though he did mention the Aurora shooting and supported getting “an assault weapons ban reintroduced,” Obama also seemed more interested in non-regulatory approaches to reducing gun violence such as education and “making sure we catch violent impulses before they occur.”

So returning to the original question on whether much is being planned to reduce availability of assault weapons, the real answer seems to be “very little, if anything,” under either candidate.

But what has gone mostly ignored in this discussion is that availability of weapons may become a moot issue by the end of the decade, as the internet and new technology increase access to deadly weapons beyond what any regulatory approach may be able to keep up with. In August, an engineer claimed to have printed a working gun using a personal 3D printer. And a UT Austin Law student has been seeking funding for a crowdsourcing project to make 3D gun printing easily accessible to anyone via the internet. As 3D printers become inevitably cheaper and more sophisticated, and eventually able to print metal objects affordably, even strict gun regulations may become completely ineffective. It is worth exploring, then, whether there may be any other effective approaches to reducing violence and deaths from increasingly powerful, and available, weapons.

By Leonora Camner

The Eyes of Texas Cannot be Blind to Race

            At The University of Texas we are reminded that we’re Texas — what starts here changes the world.  Currently, our school is making a Texas sized impact on affirmative action admissions policies.  In oral arguments before the Supreme Court this week, UT’s policy to consider race as a factor among those students who were not automatically admitted under the Top Ten Percent Plan is being contested by Abigale Fischer, the petitioner alleging that the policy is unconstitutional and violates the Court’s 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger.

 

            Engaging in this constitutional debate requires the assumption that a rule forbidding all consideration of race can even be enforced.  If Grutter is overturned, will schools be forced to engage in race-blind admissions?  As a practical matter, this would require negating all cues of racial identity to prevent admissions officers from being influenced by race.  At a minimum, applications could not have identifying information such as the student’s name, their hometown, or their high school.  Involvement in extra curricular activities may even divulge racial identity if the student was involved in a minority association, or community service that might suggest an interest in helping one particular minority group.  Redacting this identifying information runs the risk of going further than making your admissions race-blind because admissions officers will now also be blinded to extra curricular efforts and holistic considerations or a student’s interests.

            Furthermore, admissions essays and personal statements would have to be eliminated entirely.  Universities ask students to write essays describing someone who has made an impact on their life, or discussing an issue of importance to the student.  These essays are designed to get to know the applicant and understand their background, life experience and perspective.  It is not surprising that most students chose to write about their cultural upbringing because these are the experiences that help forge a human being.  While race may not play a role in some people’s lives, for others race is a particularly pivotal.  Race cannot be the only factor considered in admission, but race-blind admissions would be completely impractical in today’s diverse society.

            The Deans of Harvard and Yale Law School recently joined in authoring an op-ed piece in the Washington Post where they agreed “that it is inconsistent with the dignity of persons to consider only race, we firmly believe that it is equally inconsistent with their dignity to refuse to hear what applicants have to tell us about the role that race has played in their lives.”  Higher education produces many of society’s future leaders and role models.  It is essential that these leaders learn in an intellectually diverse environment ripe with debate and multifaceted experiences.  Requiring law schools to turn a blind eye to race would not only be impractical, but it would stifle free intellectual discussion among students with varying cultures and experiences therefore doing a disservice to our universities as well as out society.

           

Obama Winning Latinos in Spite of Poor Immigration Record

NPR recently reported that the Romney campaign has spent $11 million on ads targeting Hispanic voters—nearly 8 times the amount spent in the last election on the same demographic. Why the new efforts to lure the Latino vote? It’s a matter of margins really.

According to most polls, Mitt Romney only trails Obama by an average of 3 percent in the crucial swing states of Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina. Though the overall election forecasts anticipate a close race, unless something drastically changes in upcoming weeks there will be nothing close at all when it come to the candidates’ share of Latino voters.

The Los Angeles Times found that more than 70% of Hispanics plan to vote for Barack Obama this November compared with 20% who favor Romney. There are now 11 million registered Hispanic voters nationwide, and in a neck-in-neck presidential race their votes may very well decide who sits in the Oval Office next year.

The fact that Latino voters prefer Democrats isn’t exactly breaking news. No one was surprised by the “Latino’s for Obama” hats that speckled the audience of the Democratic National Convention. What is surprising is the Obama administration’s policy towards illegal immigrants—a key issue for many Latino voters—seems to defy the kind of support Latino voters give the President.

Over the last 4 years the Obama administration has deported roughly 1.4 million illegal immigrants, a pace which, if sustained, will put him on track to nearly double President Bush’s deportation number of  2 million in 8 years. The most recent Democratic president, Bill Clinton, deported only 869,676 in 8 years. Barring some change in the administration’s policy towards illegal immigrants, if Obama is reelected, his presidency will deport more illegal immigrants than any administration in U.S. history.

Obama’s deportation statistics raise some interesting questions about the Latino vote and about demographic voting trends in general. With an administration that is more hostile than ever to illegal immigrants—allegedly a key issue for Latino voters—why does Latino support for the Democratic Party seem to be as fervent as ever? Are Latino voters simply unaware of these statistics or are there other issues that supersede immigration concerns?

Part of the problem might by the fact that Mitt Romney’s has no clear policy on immigration, making it impossible to compare his and President’s plans side by side. For now it is sufficient to say that despite Obama’s schedule to surpass the deportation numbers of any President in history, Latino Americans appear ready to give him their vote, and theirs is the vote that looks like it will determine the presidency.  

Shark Attacks and Voter Fraud

Have you heard the one about voter fraud in Florida? This past March, the executive director of the ACLU of Florida claimed that although the state needed to pass its voter id law to prevent voter fraud, there were “probably a larger number of shark attacks in Florida than there are cases of voter fraud.” PolitiFact (our fav!) compiled a chart using data from the Florida Department of State, which monitors elections, and the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, which monitors shark attacks.

Over the last four years, there have been 49 instances of voter fraud and 72 instances of shark attack (specifically, shark-on-human violence). Note: voter fraud here includes cases “deemed legally sufficient for an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement,” but none of them is presupposed proven; also, some "cases" may represent multiple counts of voter fraud, and the number of cases does not include cases investigated by local supervisors and state attorneys.

So, in short, we can’t draw a clear conclusion from these numbers. But wait a minute—this is ludicrous, isn’t it? I mean, who even cares about the shark attack analogy (apologies to those attacked)? Look again at that number of instances of voter fraud in Florida over the past 4 years. 49? In 2010, there were nearly 8 million voting-age, registered voters in Florida and 5.5 of them voted in the 2010 election. In that same year, there were 10 instances of voter fraud “deemed legally sufficient for an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.”

But let’s not pick on Florida. Other states are passing voter id laws, which supporters claim are necessary to thwart voter fraud. PolitiFact has another great article on a News21 “analysis of 2,068 cases alleging election fraud.”

News21’s nationwide investigation took 7 months and the results were released this August. The investigators “sent records requests to elections officers in all 50 states seeking every case of fraudulent elections activity, including registration fraud, absentee ballot fraud, voter impersonation fraud and casting an ineligible vote” for the past 12 years.

It’s important to note here that the investigators asked for and received information about several types of fraudulent activities but then narrowed their focus to the fraud “that voter ID laws are intended to prevent. The News21 team defined that type of fraud as that involving individuals who vote in person on Election Day by impersonating another registered voter.” They then went on to compare that particular type of fraud to the remaining types. “After compiling all the information into an election fraud database, News21 found that 207 cases of other types of election fraud existed for every case of voter impersonation.” Wait…what?

Of course, the News21 analysis has been challenged: “by stating that voter impersonation is the only type of election fraud that voter ID laws could prevent, the News21 report was result-driven, attempting to prove that voter ID is not necessary.” Perhaps that’s true to some extent, but “News21 defends its work as ‘substantially complete’ as the largest collection of election fraud cases gathered by anyone in the country.” News21 analysis itself

In any case, it does bring up a great point about fraudulent activity regarding elections. If we’re so concerned with it, shouldn’t we be targeting those instances of fraud that are, in fact, so much easier to accomplish?