Fiscal cliff spending cuts: How Americans could be hit

By Jeanne Sahadi @CNNMoney August 23, 2012: 11:04 AM ET

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Cuts to Head Start could mean 96,000 fewer kids get help from programs that provide early childhood services to low-income families.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Layoffs and furloughs. Less help in school for disadvantaged kids. A reduction in immunizations and fewer meals for seniors in need.

Those are just a few examples of the damaging fallout that could occur if Congress does nothing to ward off the indiscriminate spending cuts scheduled for next year.

That's according to a recent report from Democrats on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services, as well as the Social Security Administration.

The mostly across-the-board funding reductions for hundreds of federal programs is being triggered because Congress has yet to agree on amore thoughtful and gradual debt-reduction plan.

Among the conclusions in the subcommittee report: tens of thousands of workers could lose their jobs or see federal funding for their salaries reduced. Plus, millions of Americans could see various government services or assistance curtailed.

CBO: Fiscal cliff will cause a recession

Details have yet to be finalized on the exact cuts that would occur, but the subcommittee estimates, for instance, that cuts to Head Start - which help organizations provide early childhood services to low-income families -- could result in a loss of more than 20,000 jobs and would serve 96,000 fewer kids.

More than 5 million fewer families could no longer benefit from the federal child care and development block grant, which helps low-income working families pay for child care and helps states improve their child care programs.

Cuts to Title 1, which helps finance schools and education agencies to prepare low-income kids to meet state academic standards -- could result in the loss of more than 15,000 jobs and serve 1.8 million fewer children.

Spending cuts could also result in a six-week furlough for 65,000 employees at the Social Security Administration and 15,000 employees at the State Disability Determination Services. Temporary hires could also be let go and the processing of disability claims could take an additional 70 days or so.

Federally funded HIV prevention could take a hit, with 659,000 fewer people tested for the virus. Nearly 212,000 kids might not get general immunization vaccines. And 17 million fewer meals would be served to seniors in need.

Related: Cutting Washington could hurt Main Street

If cuts are made at the National Institutes of Health, the federal government would need to issue about 700 fewer grants to medical researchers than it awarded this year.

Over 1.2 million job seekers may no longer have access to federal employment assistance, because of cuts to a labor exchange system. That system helps disadvantaged people find jobs, and also serves middle- and high-skill workers who are unemployed for the first time and need assistance in understanding their local job market.

Jobless veterans could also feel the effects. The subcommittee estimates that reduced funding for a program that helps increase veterans' employment opportunities would result in 51,419 fewer vets being helped.

First Published: August 23, 2012: 10:43 AM ET

Teachers union, CPS work to iron out contract details

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Photo: Union Park rally

Chicago Teachers Union members

Mayor's reputation tarnished in union dust-up

• Talks boil down to money, job security, workday

 

  Photos: Chicago teachers strike

By Hal Dardick, Bill Ruthhart and Ryan Haggerty Tribune reporters

3:06 p.m. CDT, September 15, 2012

Lawyers for the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools are back at work today attempting to hammer out the details of an agreement that could get 350,000 Chicago public schools students back into the classroom on Monday.
Lawyers for Chicago Public Schools began drafting a new teachers' contract this morning based on a framework hammered out during five days of negotiations during this week's teachers strike. They started at 9 a.m. this morning and expect to be done with legal language by Sunday afternoon.
"We're hopeful that we can do it, and like I said, the devil's in the details in contracts, and we want it in writing," Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey said going into negotiations now focused on contract language.
"We are still fighting for fair schools," he said, outside the office of union attorney Robert Bloch. "We still want to make sure that communities are defended, and so we are going to go in today and keep working on the details."
He then made reference to the union rally set for noon at Union Park at Ashland Avenue and Lake Street on the Near West Side. Teachers gathered there before marching to Garfield Park about 2:30 p.m. after the rally ended.
"We're going to take a little break for lunch, and we're probably going to go to the rally," he said. "There's going to be a big rally at Union Park. We expect 40 - 50,000 people there, and then we're back at it, and we're going to work as long as it takes today to get something accomplished."
CPS teachers and their supporters -- almost all wearing red T-shirts -- began flooding into Union Park just before noon today, gathering for a rally to show the strength of the teachers union as officials try to finalize details of a new contract to end the teachers' week-long strike. Police estimated the crowd at around 2,500 people about 2 p.m.Barbecue smoke wafted over the park on the Near West Side as crowds gathered around a stage and in the shade under trees. The atmosphere resembled that of a street festival, with families and friends posing for photos and a marching band parading through the park.
Pop music blasted from speakers near the stage. Small groups of police officers wandered through the crowds.
The rally started with Rev. Jesse Jackson saying a prayer for diplomats killed in Libya and children killed in Chicago and cities across the country.
He then led teachers in a series of chants, including "respect the teachers" and "save the children."
"The struggle you have launched in Chicago, this is not just a Chicago struggle," Jackson told a sea of teachers dressed in red. "This is a struggle for working people everywhere ... This is a struggle for justice."
Loretta Johnson, secretary treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, applauded the example Chicago teachers have set for the nation.
"I remember in Baltimore, we had a 95 percent strike, but it didn't look like this," Johnson said pointing toward the massive crowd. "You have proven to the world that you're not going to take it anymore.
"The challenge was to stand up for children, and you have done that. If you don't stand up for children, who will?"
Despite the upbeat feel of the rally, Lisa Roule, an English teacher at Simeon High School, said she and other striking teachers are trying to drive home an important message today.
"It's an opportunity for us to stand up and let our voices be heard," Roule said as drivers passing the park honked their horns in support. "All these decisions about education are being made, and teachers need to be a part of the discussion."
Kevin Lee, a math teacher at Simeon, said he was cautiously optimistic that a deal to get teachers and students back in the classroom could be reached this weekend.
"We're hoping they turn in something we can approve," said Lee, a nine-year veteran of CPS. "If not, we'll ask them to rewrite it and do it again until it's right. That's what we do every day."
Tara Dunne, a science teacher at Steinmetz College Prep on the Northwest Side, said she and other teachers hope the strike ends soon, but only if an acceptable deal can be reached.
Dunne said she is especially concerned about CPS nurses, counselors and social workers whom she said have unmanageable workloads.
"We want to get back," Dunne said. "But we want the right framework in place so the kids get the best education."
Paul Mulchrone, a music teacher at Carter Elementary in the Washington Park neighborhood, sat on a blanket under a tree at the rally with his three children, all younger than age 4.
He said he's been picketing and knocking on doors in the neighborhood near his school this week not just to garner support for a new contract, but also to draw attention to the violence and poverty that affect so many CPS students and their families.
"Turf battles have never been worse" in the neighborhood near his school, Mulchrone said. "It's a very, very dangerous place to live. And our school lacks some of the basic things we need to teach our kids -- computers, books, things like that."
Mulchrone said he hopes the strike succeeds in highlighting the challenges faced by many of the city's public schools and their students.
"We're striking for a fair contract, but we're also using this strike to send a message," he said. "If you want us to improve test scores or however you measure it, then we need the resources and we need (the city) to invest in the schools."
John Coughlin, who is originally from Madison, Wis., and lives in Wicker Park, said missing today's rally was not an option.
The stay-at-home father is not in a union but was motivated to attend half a dozen rallies in Wisconsin over the last year by family members who are teachers and union members.
"That got me to be more political, and the more I looked into it, the more dirt I saw," he said. "I had to be here to support the idea that every child deserves the right to a good public education."
Today's rally has been dubbed a "Wisconsin-style" demonstration by the CTU. Milwaukee Teachers Education Association President Bob Peterson told Associated Press he expects a few hundred Wisconsin teachers to be in Chicago for the noon rally at Union Park.
Asked what constitutes a Wisconsin rally, Coughlin said, "Not just your typical band of college kids and hippies. It's about a cross section of people -- not just union members -- standing up for what's right."
Both sides said after a half-day negotiating session Friday that a "framework" for agreement had been reached, but they also cautioned that more needed to be done.
Officials with the union, the district and the city were saying little about where things stood after Friday's session. But according to an administration source, the elements of the agreement so far include:

• Teacher evaluations in which student performance makes up 25 percent of a teacher's performance rating in the system's first year and a higher percentage in future years.
• Annual wage increases that are believed to be close to the district's earlier offer of a 3 percent base salary hike in the first year of the contract and 2 percent raises in subsequent years. In their previous contract, teachers were given 4 percent annual base salary bumps.
• Raises for years taught, known as step pay increases, would be limited to midcareer educators from their fifth through 10th years with the district.

Another source close to negotiations said that a basic agreement has been reached on another major sticking point, a recall policy for laid-off teachers. Under that agreement, highly rated teachers who are laid off because of school closings will have a chance to be rehired at the school receiving the students from the school that was closed, provided there is a vacancy, the source said.
If a deal is completed and delegates vote to end the strike that began at midnight last Sunday, schools could reopen Monday, but the contract would have to be ratified by the union's 26,000 members, a process that likely would take place the next two weeks.
Sharkey said that whether the contract gets approved is not up to him or other union leaders.
"Our members are going to make the decision, frankly, about whether the contract in writing passes or not," he said. "Frankly, the educators of Chicago have their expectations raised and feel like they are fighting for a cause, and I think anyone who thinks this is a foregone conclusion that this thing is over is missing an important part of the story, which is that people are going to have to look for themselves, think about it, talk amongst each other and make a real decision about whether the contract that's on the table when we are done meets the needs of the educators and the schools in the city."
He added: "I'm not willing to say we're out of the woods. We have a contract to get. And I'll say it again. Teachers want to see it in writing."
Friday's agreement ended a week of intense bargaining, raucous picketing in front of dozens of city schools and massive rallies that drew thousands of teachers downtown to voice their opposition to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his agenda for education reform.
The teachers strike, the city's first since 1987, culminated 10 months of often contentious contract negotiations between union leaders and Emanuel's hand-picked school board.
Tribune reporters Noreen A. Ahmed-Ullah, Joel Hood and Kristen Mack contributed.

This Week's Voting Rights Victories: Colorado and Florida Halt Their Voter Purges

Aura Bogado and Voting Rights Watch 2012 on September 14, 2012 - 12:40 PM ET

As we approach Election Day, the push back against voter suppression efforts is paying off. Innovative social media based registration schemes, coupled with legal victories may encourage more voters to participate in November. And while voting rights advocates remain “cautiously optimistic” about Pennsylvania’s voter ID Supreme Court heading, other states already have reason to celebrate legal victories. Here are some of this week’s voting rights updates—including some major triumphs.

New Tool Targets New Mexico’s Latino and Youth Voters
Our community journalist in New Mexico, Goerge Lujan, writes that his organization, the SouthWest Organizing Project, has partnered with other groups to reach out to potential new voters:
Groups in New Mexico are launching Nuestra Elección, a campaign to reach the more than 200,000 eligible, non-registered citizens in the state, to register to vote in the upcoming election. SouthWest Organizing Project, Progress Now New Mexico, New Mexico Vote Matters, and Presente.org are presenting an online registration tool that targets Latinos and youth, two groups that can make a huge difference in our elections when they get involved.

Victory for Former Felons in Virginia
The Advancement Project has been working to restore voting rights to former felons in Virginia who have already served their time. This week, Secretary of Commonwealth Janet Kelly agreed to make sure that all former felon applications received by August 15 will be processed by the voter registration deadline of October 15. This will likely result in the restoration of voting rights for hundreds of people by Election Day.

Colorado Quits its Dubious Voter Purge
Colorado’s Secretary of State Scott Gessler has turned back on his plan to purge voters, just weeks before Election Day. The Department of Homeland security maintains what’s called the SAVE database, used to identify non-citizens’ eligibility for public assistance. As we reported in July, the department agreed to allow Florida and several other states access to the database to potentially purge voter rolls. Gessler, who previously issued 4,000 letters challenging voters’ citizenship, says that his office is running out of time, and will allow county clerks to challenge voters’ eligibility instead.

Florida Halts its Voter Purge, Too
The Advancement Project is also celebrating another victory in Florida this week. In exchange for plaintiffs dropping their discrimination claim in Arcia v. Detzner, Florida will restore its voter list to include anyone whom the Supervisor of Election cannon confirm as non-citizens. Florida Secretary of State Kent Detzner had sent letters in April, erroneously informing voters they were not eligible—Florida has now agreed to send letters confirming these voters’ right to cast a ballot. It appears that Florida’s voter purge saga may finally be coming to an end, and thousands of eligible voters will be able to participate in November.

New Video Aims to Mobilize Rural Native Youth to Register to Vote

Voting Rights Watch 2012 and Voting Rights Watch 2012 on September 11, 2012 - 3:16 PM ET

Sixty-six percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives who were eligible to register to vote in 2008 did so. The other 34 percent—more than 1 million people—did not. There’s a concerted effort to register Native voters in 2012, and make an big impact on Election Day.
Meet Voting Rights Watch’s newest community journalist, Hillary Abe. He works for College Horizons, a national nonprofit focused on facilitating the higher education of Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian youth. Hillary is also an accomplished videographer and aspiring filmmaker. He recently shot and directed a short video in Northern Arizona geared towards mobilizing rural Native youth to vote. Check out and share his video, and expect to see more from him about the Native vote this election season.
—Aura Bogado

Why You Should Be Very Afraid of This Year’s Ballot Bullies

Voting Rights Watch 2012 on September 10, 2012 - 3:26 PM ET

The scrutinization of True the Vote, and their voter-stalking Tea Party co-signers across the nation, is growing. Today, Common Cause and Demos released a report called “Bullies at the Ballot Box” that raises awareness about groups determined to challenge voters at the polls, even at risk of intimidating voters. Says the report:

As we approach the 2012 elections, every indication is that we will see an unprecedented use of voter challenges. Organizers of True the Vote claim their goal is to train one million poll watchers to challenge and confront other Americans as they go to the polls in November. They say they want to make the experience of voting “like driving and seeing the police following you.” There is a real danger that voters will face overzealous volunteers who take the law into their own hands to target voters they deem suspect. But there is no place for bullies at the ballot box.

The Nation’s readers may recognize that “police following you” line from our Voting Rights Watch 2012 reporting on the group True the Vote, which you can read about here.
The “Ballot Bullies” report examines laws around challenging voters in ten states, looking at how well or bad voters are protected from pre–Election Day voter registration challenges that can lead to reckless purging, voter caging, voters’ being challenged at the polls on Election Day and obnoxious behavior by poll watchers. According to the report, Florida and Pennsylvania have some of the worst voter protection laws, yet these are pivotal states that hold tremendous sway in the upcoming presidential elections. True the Vote has a substantial presence in Florida and has pressed hard for Governor Rick Scott’s reckless purging program there.
People of color in particular should be most wary of these groups:

With comments about the “illegal alien vote” and “the food stamp army,” King Street Patriots and their allies have created a climate of fear that voter fraud is rampant in minority precincts and used that fear to justify their discriminatory targeting of poll-watching efforts—again, without evidence to support the targeting.

The King Street Patriots is the Houston-based Tea Party group that gave birth to True the Vote and its spawn of poll harassers around the United States.
This report follows another released by the Brennan Center for Justice last week, “Voter Challengers,” which delves deep into the racial history and politics behind poll watching in America.
—Brentin Mock

Voting while black - the GOP's last stand at voter suppression

Chicago : IL : USA | Sep 15, 2012 at 8:34 AM PDT

By Herbert Dyer, Jr.

Voting is a right not a privilege.  (Photo:  Flip Schulte CORBIS)     

“Bullies at the Ballot Box” is the title of a new report by Demos and Common Cause which traces the rise of a new right-wing, so-called “conservative” group bound and determined to keep as many Democrats from the polls as humanly possible this November. According to the report, “True the Vote,” based in Texas, has already trained and is prepared to deploy more than a million like-minded, fellow traveling “conservatives” to challenge, confront and/or intimidate “suspect” would-be voters as they approach the polls.
This group, True The Vote, is courageously serving as the Republicans’ last line of “defense,” the final bulwark, against supposed Democratic Party’s obvious intention to steal this election.
Demos, out of New York City, and Common Cause, based in Washington, D.C., are public interest groups which are generally trying to counter right-wing voter suppression laws and restriction of early voting days and hours.

VOTER FRAUD IN 2012? 

From: roberthuffstutter 

“As we approach the 2012 elections, every indication is that we will see an unprecedented use of voter challenges,” the report stated. There is “a real danger that voters will face overzealous volunteers who take the law into their own hands to target voters they deem suspect. But there is no place for bullies at the ballot box.” Keep in mind that True The Vote has no "official" or legal standing as an agent of any state, county or city. These are just a group of "concerned citizens" who've taken it upon themselves to insure that their guys win this election -- by any means necessary. How do you spell "vigilante"? It's V-I-G-I-L-A-N-T-E.

The report quoted Bill Ouren, True The Vote’s national elections coordinator, as saying that they (his volunteers) should make certain voters feel “like driving and seeing the police following you.” The group has a traceable record of harassing and intimidating voters, most recently in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial recall election.  

No matter who you are, it is still ONE VOTE per person. 

From: roberthuffstutter  

In its defense, however, True The Vote relies on the same old bromides that “voter fraud” advocates have used consistently since the state of Indiana (sadly, my home state) enacted the country’s first voter suppression law in 2005. True The Vote’s intentions are as pure as the driven snow:

“Unfortunately, Americans have lost faith in the integrity of our nation's election results and fraud and law-breaking has become all too common in our electoral system,” says the group’s mission statement. “We are helping stop corruption where it can start -- at the polls.”

The Demos/Common Cause report, however, counters that, “We’re concerned about this well-organized, well-funded effort to suppress the vote by challenging voters in the run-up to the elections and on Election Day, and fostering a climate of intimidation,” said Stephen Spaulding, a co-author of the study.

One of the techniques used to deny a voter, according to Spaulding, who is also counsel for Common Cause, is comparing voter data to information found on Facebook. If your Facebook entries do not match exactly what is on your voter's registration card or the state's records, well....sorry, you lose.

IS VOTER FRAUD AN ISSUE TO PONDER FOR 2012? 

From: roberthuffstutter 

   

“We’re concerned that these techniques are being targeted at voters of color, students and the poor specifically,” he said. Those voters, of course, are more likely than not, Democratic Party voters.

Tanya Clay House is the public policy director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "This is definitely continuing the narrative of suppressing the vote,” she says. And she also directly addressed the claims of conservatives and Republicans that voter fraud is rampant and must be stamped out:
“The claim that they’re trying to protect against voter fraud has been proven false,” she said. “These efforts are not going to protect the ballot…. They’re going to protect a particular candidate’s ability to stay (or be placed) in office.”
As the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is now set to hear (and settle) a voter ID case for that state, it’s clear that this issue will not be settled until after the election itself. That court, by the way, is evenly divided between three Republicans and three Democrats. Should they split evenly, the Pennsylvania law will be in effect on election day, keeping as many as 1 million people from voting.
My guess is that no matter who wins the presidency on Nov. 6, we will never again hear of True The Vote or even a peep out of so-called “conservatives” about “voter fraud.” A Romney-Ryan win will satisfy them, and allow them to get down to their real agenda of dismantling and destroying America’s social safety net, ending abortion, relegating women back into the kitchen and bedroom, ending gay rights, shoveling more and more money into the coffers of the already super-wealthy, attacking Iran, Syria or both, etc.
An Obama win will finally shut them up -- and down -- once and for all.

Voter Suppression: Brought To You By Conservative Billionaire Oil Heir

 By Josh Israel on Sep 12, 2012 at 12:20 pm

Since launching its 2012 Election Integrity Project in February, the right-wing Judicial Watch has been a leading player in the push for more voting restrictions. The group — best known for its Clinton-era lawsuits — has demanded more voting roll purges like Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) failed efforts in Florida. But a ThinkProgress examination of tax filings reveals that the group has received millions of dollars from foundations tied to conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife since the start of 2001.
Though other rich right-wing funders like Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess have gotten more attention in this campaign, Scaife has bankrolled the conservative movement for decades. A 1998 Washington Post story dubbed him the “funding father of the right.” Since the 1960s, the Pittsburgh media baron and heir to the Mellon banking and oil fortune has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative causes including the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, and the Hoover Institution. He controls the Scaife Foundations — a group of conservative and philanthropic tax-exempt organizations. Between 2001 and 2010, the Allegheny Foundation, Carthage Foundation, and Sarah Scaife Foundation — all part of the Sciafe empire — gave at least $5.8 million to Judicial Watch.
The Carthage and Sarah Scaife Foundations focus on “public policy programs that address major domestic and international issues.” Each has given millions to Judicial Watch. The Allegheny Foundation claims it “concentrates its giving in the Western Pennsylvania area and confines most of its grant awards to programs for historic preservation, civic development and education,” yet it too gave $67,000 annually to Judicial Watch in 2009 and 2010.
Judicial Watch’s Election Integrity Project has pushed states to purge what it believes to be ineligible voters from the voter rolls, criticized voter registration efforts, and fought for voter ID laws. While the group claims “election fraud was a significant concern during the 2008 and 2010 election season,” studies show that you a more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud. And while these tactics to combat the alleged problem are likely to suppress voter turnout and registration, especially among minority groups, they would do little to stop actual voter fraud even if someone did want to commit it

   

Election observers True the Vote accused of intimidating minority voters

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Aug

2012

8:02am, EDT

From a continuing  series of articles, Who Can Vote? , a News21 investigation of voting rights in America. The series began with the article, New database of voter fraud finds no evidence that photo ID laws are needed.

By AJ Vicens and Natasha Khan

As Jamila Gatlin waited in line at a northside Milwaukee elementary school gym to cast her ballot June 5 in the proposed recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, she noticed three people in the back of the room. They were watching, taking notes.
Officially called “election observers,” they were white. Gatlin, and almost everyone in line, was black.
“That’s pretty harassing right there, if you ask me,” Gatlin said in the hall outside the gym. “Why do we have to be watched while we vote?”
Two of the observers were from a group based more than 1,000 miles away, in Houston, Texas, called True the Vote, an initiative that grew out of the Houston branch of the Tea Party known as the King Street Patriots. The stated goal of True the Vote is to prevent voter fraud, which the group and founder Catherine Engelbrecht claim is preventing “free and fair” elections.
Back in April, at True the Vote’s second national summit in Houston, more than 300 people from 32 states were transfixed by Engelbrecht and an array of conservative speakers.
“You have all been chosen because you are all warriors,” the 42-year-old mother of two said to cheers at the Sheraton Houston Brookhollow Hotel.

Who can vote? A national News21 investigation of voting rights in America.Is voting fraud a serious problem in American elections? Will new identification requirements at the polls disenfranchise prospective voters among minorities, college students or the elderly? Should ex-felons who've served their sentences be allowed to vote? Are voting machines reliable?
To report this series of articles, two dozen top student journalists from 11 universities are investigating the impact on American voters of recent changes in election laws and voting procedures in many of the 50 states.
The series is published by NBCNews.com.

A few people wore $20 True the Vote T-shirts showing Martin Luther King Jr.'s image over the quote, "Peace if possible, truth at all costs." The quotation is widely credited online to 16th century theologian Martin Luther, not the civil rights icon. However, Mark Edwards, senior adviser to the dean of the Harvard Divinity School, told News21 he could not be sure the quote was Martin Luther's. Few minorities heard Engelbrecht say “the time has come for a national call for election integrity,” but about 100 minority protesters were outside, protesting True the Vote and a national trend of tougher voting regulations.
The protesters, mainly blacks and Hispanics from a coalition of Texas minority rights groups, came to the Not In My Houston protest with their mouths covered in bright blue tape and holding signs that read, “We will not be silenced" and "Stop voter suppression!"

Natasha Khan/News21

A protester from the "Not in My Houston" campaign, a coalition of civil rights groups, stands outside the Sheraton Brookhollow Hotel in Houston where True the Vote held its second national summit in April. The groups accused True the Vote of trying to silence minority voters by sending observers across the nation to minority polling places.

In just three years, True the Vote has moved beyond Texas and established itself as one of the political right's fastest growing and most controversial groups.

With its model of poll-watcher training and voter-roll analysis used in at least 20 states, True the Vote is part of a national movement to tighten regulations on early voting and voter registration and to require that voters show ID at the polls in the name of fighting voter fraud.

Since 2010, 37 state legislatures have passed or considered such laws, championed by conservative activists, including True the Vote. Critics claim these new restrictions could suppress the votes of millions of people, especially minorities, across the country.

Engelbrecht testified in favor of the photo ID law in the Texas Legislature in 2011. The U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division blocked the measure in March, claiming it could disproportionately suppress Hispanic votes. A three-judge district court panel in Washington heard arguments in the Texas case in July.

“For every fraudulent vote that is cast, a valid vote is disenfranchised,” Engelbrecht told News21, saying that the only way to trust elections is to make sure “only legitimate votes are counted to begin with.”

While Engelbrecht says her group is about fighting election fraud, Democrats and civil rights activists say True the Vote and related organizations target black and Hispanic polling places to hold down minority votes.

“You don’t have to beat up people up or chain them to keep them from voting,” said Terry O’Rourke, an attorney in the Harris County, Texas, Attorney’s Office in response to the King Street Patriots and True the Vote’s 2010 activities.

Engelbrecht and her supporters can point to little evidence of voter fraud prosecutions, relying on anecdotes and news reports alleging fraud.

Still, she says True the Vote will train 1 million poll watchers nationwide, leaving “no polling place unmanned” to stand guard against election fraud in November.

Labor, civil rights and voting rights groups, including the AFL-CIO, NAACP, National Council of La Raza, also are coordinating poll watchers.

Others, including Demos and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, plan to educate election officials on what poll watchers can do.

With President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and civil rights groups expected to mobilize their own armies of lawyers and poll watchers, and True the Vote’s efforts, thousands of poll watchers could face off in November.

“We are concerned about groups that exaggerate claims of voter impersonation in order to organize efforts that can lead to intimidation of eligible voters,” said Eddie Hailes, managing director at the Advancement Project, a Washington D.C., civil rights group.

True the Vote was active in Wisconsin for weeks before Walker and five Republican officials faced a labor-backed recall after the state limited the collective bargaining rights of public employees. True the Vote trained about 500 poll watchers, mainly through Web sessions, and recruited volunteers from across the country.

A week after Walker beat back a labor challenge to keep his office — which True the Vote called “a victory” — the group joined with conservative government watchdog Judicial Watch to sue Indiana elections officials over the state’s alleged failure to maintain accurate voter rolls according to federal law.

Through multiple email blasts, True the Vote urged support for Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s effort to remove thousands of suspected non-citizens from the state’s voter rolls. What has become known as the “purge” faced several lawsuits that claimed Florida tried to strip eligible voters, predominantly minorities, of the right to vote. The group also joined Judicial Watch in a federal suit backing Florida against the federal government.

The activities of the King Street Patriots and True the Vote have attracted two lawsuits and a state ethics complaint in Texas since 2009. In a lawsuit brought by the Texas Democratic Party, a judge ruled in March that True the Vote was acting as a political action committee, violating state campaign finance law by providing illegal contributions to the Republican Party in the form of trained poll watchers and Republican-only candidate forums.

Texas Democratic Party general counsel Chad Dunn said he doesn’t buy the group’s grassroots image.

“Nobody gets to know what they are doing. They are the one and only political operation in Texas that isn't disclosing its donors,” he told News21.

Engelbrecht said her groups raise most of their money by passing around an old felt cowboy hat at weekly meetings at King Street’s headquarters.

The group raised $64,687 in 2010, according to federal tax documents, reporting it all as gifts, contributions and grants. After initially offering to provide its 2011 tax records to News21, Engelbrecht later declined.

Engelbrecht ran a small oil-field services company with her husband Brian, out of public view, until 2009, when she got into politics after hearing CNBC personality Rick Santelli’s call for a Chicago tea party.

Wanting to do more direct action than other Houston-area tea party groups, Engelbrecht formed King Street Patriots in 2009, naming it for the Boston site of a bloody confrontation between British troops and American colonists in 1770. True the Vote, formed next, is the poll-watcher training and voter-roll purging effort.

Engelbrecht, who has called poll watchers the “eyes and ears of the republic” who “preserve a free and fair process,” has been working hard: True the Vote already has hosted two national summits and drawn thousands into its work.

Natasha Khan/News21

True the Vote grew out of the Houston Tea Party, also known as the King Street Patriots. The organization sold $20 T-shirts with images of Elvis Presley, Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King Jr., promoting the group's mission of "free and fair" elections during a national summit in Houston in April.

She has surrounded herself with influential conservative advisers including former Justice Department lawyer J. Christian Adams, who accused his agency of bias against whites for failing to pursue voter intimidation criminal charges against the New Black Panthers in 2008. Another adviser is the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, one of the right’s leading voter ID advocates.

Lawyer James Bopp -- who successfully argued the Citizens United case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court allowed unlimited spending on campaigns by corporations — is one of the attorneys representing the King Street Patriots and True the Vote in the Texas Democratic Party lawsuit.

Engelbrecht and True the Vote volunteers, in interviews at the group’s summit in April 2012 in Houston and in Wisconsin, describe themselves as the front line in a war against voter fraud.
Engelbrecht’s poll watchers claimed to witness election workers telling voters how to vote in Houston in 2010, and submitted 800 reports of irregularities to the Harris County Clerk’s office in Houston. Nothing came of the complaints.

“Just being in the poll and having a presence in the polling place is a deterrent,” said Cathy Kelleher, a Maryland real estate agent who started poll watching and voter-roll inspection efforts after getting involved with True the Vote in 2011. “We’re there so people don’t try to do anything fishy.”

Kelleher also takes part in True the Vote’s other initiative, which allows volunteers to scour voter registration records for irregularities. True the Vote provides volunteers with a database to compare voter rolls with other public records, and any potential problems are forwarded to local election officials for investigation.

True the Vote won’t discuss the quality of its database, and volunteers have to sign a confidentiality agreement.

Kelleher said she’s used the database extensively in Maryland with her group, Election Integrity Maryland. In a little more than a year, she claims to have found thousands of cases of people who’ve left the state but still are on voter rolls, and dead people listed as active voters.
“We’ve made no assertions thus far that voter fraud has been committed,” Kelleher told News21. “All we’re saying is that there has been nothing done to prevent it.”

Alisha Alexander, the elections director in Prince George’s County, Maryland, said Kelleher could be helpful if she understood legal requirements for removing people from voter rolls.
“I’m not sure that this group does understand the state law,” Alexander said. “Because a group comes out and says these individuals (should be off the rolls) based on research from Facebook and LinkedIn, that’s just not an acceptable source.”

Kelleher said some of her volunteers have used social media, but only after using other public records and websites such as whitepages.com, veromi.net and peoplefinders.com.
“Certainly, based on (Facebook and LinkedIn), we don’t expect someone to be taken off the voter rolls,” Kelleher said. “But we do expect the Board of Elections to do more than they’re doing now.”

Texas Democrats accused Engelbrecht’s poll watchers of intimidating minority voters during the 2010 election in Harris County. The county attorney's office and the U.S. Department of Justice looked into the allegations,but no charges were brought, according to O'Rourke and Douglas Ray, another attorney in the office.

The U.S. Department of Justice won’t discuss specifics but a department official told News21 that federal monitors were present during the 2010 election and the May 2012 Texas presidential primary.

Engelbrecht, who said True the Vote has not harassed or intimidated anyone, insists it is nonpartisan and does not target minority voting areas.

“When you look at where there is need for people to go and work at the polls,” she told News21 in a phone interview, “the fact of the matter is, there are fewer volunteers working in minority locations.”

True the Vote claims its volunteers are diverse. However Engelbrecht denied News21 requests for a demographic breakdown of her volunteers.

Voting rights groups say white poll watchers in minority areas can have a disenfranchising impact even if there’s no direct interaction.

“In a community where voter participation is not very high and where folks are not as politically active, any barrier that prevents you from getting to the polls or that discourages you from getting to the polls is potentially a problem,” said Nic Riley of NYU's Brennan Center.

Chandler Davidson, a professor for nearly 40 years at Houston’s Rice University and an expert on minority voting rights in Texas, sees the King Street Patriots and True the Vote’s activities in a historical context.

“We have a long and sad history of efforts by the white majority in the state of Texas to prevent or cut down on the ability of minorities to vote and to elect candidates of their choice,” Davidson told News21.
If it isn’t racism, Davidson said, the goal is to suppress Democratic votes.

Ray, of the Harris County Attorney’s Office, has talked with the King Street Patriots about rules governing poll watchers, and has heard complaints about them from the community. He said there’s no problem if Engelbrecht and her groups follow the law and respect people’s right to vote.

But, Ray said, the way True the Vote goes about its mission creates tension.

“The problem is not the actual act, but what the act is representing,” Ray said, citing that the group’s advisers, speakers at its summits and language on its website.

“If you listen to all their rhetoric, it's clear what their intent is,” Ray said. “Their intent is to try to act out on this belief ... they have that the only reason Barack Obama got elected is because a bunch of ‘those’ people cheated on their ballot.”

Echoing the reaction to True the Vote at the northside Milwaukee polling place and the Houston protest, Ray said, “If you have people standing around and falsely accusing you of doing things that are innocent, then you quickly come to the conclusion that there’s one reason that they’re doing that.

"I mean why aren’t they going to" a white part of town "and doing the same thing over there?”
AJ Vicens and Tasha Khan were Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellows this summer at News21.

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The Racial Burdens Obscured by Voter ID Laws

Brentin Mock and Voting Rights Watch 2012 on September 14, 2012 - 10:25 AM ET

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court hearing on Applewhite v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, over the state’s voter ID law, was serious enough that it drew the presence of Ben Jealous, the president of the national NAACP. After ninety minutes of arguing about the fundamental right to vote before the state’s six supreme court justices, Jealous said he was “cautiously optimistic” that civil rights groups might prevail in the case.
Perhaps cautiously pessimistic, I couldn’t help but think, But what if they don’t? When I asked Jealous this, he said:
“We will have volunteers throughout the state demanding that everyone who is eligible to vote and who has a right to vote will be able to vote. And then we will make sure every provisional ballot is counted and make sure the polls stay open and we will fight to make sure the polls stay open as long as necessary.”
In other words, the NAACP, and a lot of civil rights and liberties organizations like them, would be absorbing the burden imposed by the Pennsylvania law, which mandates specific forms of photo ID in order to vote.
A lot was covered in that ninety-minute hearing, and I strongly recommend that you read Ari Berman and Philadelphia City Paper’s Daniel Denvir for the minutiae of what transpired in the court session.
There was a lot of argument about what constituted “the fundamental right to vote” as guaranteed by Pennsylvania’s constitution, and also how many people would be disenfranchised by the law. But at root, this hearing was about burdens, and as Gang Starr once asked, who was gonna take the weight? There were many questions about which Pennsylvanians would have to carry the extraneous burdens of this law in order to vote, and who would not. There was also debate about whether the burden was on the state or on voters to prove that those extraneous burdens even existed. When supreme court justices asked why they should overturn the lower court ruling—a huge ask—the plaintiff’s lawyer David Gersch said that “the fact people are burdened by this law triggers” their intervention.
And yet while the photo voter ID law was created on the premise that it would protect against voter fraud or unearth it, the state legislators never had the burden of having to prove that fraud actually exists—evidence of it was never entered in the court record. Governor Corbett’s lawyer Alfred Putnam Jr. said yesterday that the Commonwealth didn’t need to prove it (Also read great analysis by Pittsburgh City Paper’s Chris Potter). Yet voters now have the burden—voters of color disproportionately—of complying with the law. It’s as if voters are guilty of the potential of fraud until proven innocent by an ID card.
Jealous, who enlisted the NAACP in a rally held outside the courtroom, was asked by reporters who would be hurt by the law. He said, “We fight everyday to motivate people who until the day before may not have been thinking about voting. Well this puts an entire bureaucracy between them and their vote. So now they may not be able [to vote] if they wake up that morning and decide to vote for the first time. this hurts people of color, it disproportionately hurts poor people, and it hurts working people of all colors.”
The silver lining was that some of the judges, the two liberal ones and Chief Justice Ronald Castille, asked with some frequency what would be wrong with giving a couple of years before implementing the law instead of rushing it. At one point, chief deputy attorney general for the state John Knorr conceded that the law “could be made better” if activated later rather than for this election.
But all that really did was confirm that passing the law was simply inevitable. Gersch consistently agreed with judges that while the law is terrible for 2012, that it’s at least reasonable for 2014, if not good for 2016. Election law professor Rick Hasen told Reuters “If you write a play you wouldn’t premier it on Broadway. If you implement a brand new law in time for the presidential election, it could just be bad.” But the state wasn’t fearful of that.
Sitting next to me was Olivia Thorne, president of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. We got into a discussion of the early women’s suffrage and abolitionist movements. This is a thorny history, she acknowledged. Many white women at that time were fully down for the abolitionist cause in the beginning, with the understanding that they’d help African-Americans get the right to vote, and in turn everyone would push for women’s voting rights. It didn’t quite work out. Sexism among both the allies and the enemies of women suffragists drove women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton out of the abolitionist movement, and toward an unseemly racist turn. Read more about this in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Great Schism.”
But now the LWV, inheritors of the women’s suffrage movement, are going hard in the paint for voting rights in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Florida, Wisconsin and many other states—and down to the mat, when many organizations threw in the towel or decided to play the sidelines.
Thorne was in Harrisburg for the voter ID hearing, and left “disappointed” by that decision, but showed right back up for yesterday’s hearing. She spoke with me about the unique challenges faced by women and the elderly under this voter ID law, but she seemed to understand the other forces of race and class that draw additional burdens. She noted the long lines people will have to stand in on Election Day, “three to five hours in Philadelphia, but one to two hours in the suburbs,” where she said her organization works most often.
The idea of shared but unequal burdens was lost upon Pennsylvania’s lawyers and Justice Michael Eakin, one of the conservative justices. “There will never be a point where everybody can get something the legislature requires,” said Eakin. “There will always be someone left burdened” by legislation.
That may be so, but the Voting Rights Act expressly protects people of color from having to incur burdens that white Americans vote freely without. And yet now organizations like NAACP, whose members fought and died for that law, have acquired the new burden of spending time, money, shoe leather, gas and other resources to align people with the new voting rules. Our community journalist James Ceronsky spent time with NAACP civic engagement director John Jordan earlier this week, who told him:

“Four years ago we were paying canvassers to do voter registration work,” he says. Now, tasked with informing voters about ID requirements in addition registering them, his organization is “pleading and begging” for volunteers in the effort to get IDs in the hands of voters.

The state’s attorney Knorr was oblivious to this. “The burden is quite minimal,” he told the judges.
“It’s minimal if you already have ID,” Judge Debra Todd snapped back.
I caught Knorr in the court hallway afterward and asked him: What if you’re wrong? What if thousands are burdened to the point of disenfranchisement on Election Day? “I can’t answer that,” he responded.
I asked Jealous the same, but he was more blunt: “If the Pennsylvania Republican leadership succeeds in stealing this election by denying people the right to vote there will be hell to pay.”
—Brentin Mock

 

We Are All Legal: 2012's Voter Suppression Carries On

Mar

6

By Charles P. Pierce

at 4:18PM

The guy on the ground there? He's a congressman today. Just sayin'.

The latest thing that happened was that a judge in Wisconsin on Super Tuesday issued a temporary injunction against that state's new voter-ID law that will keep the law from being used in Wisconsin's presidential primary election on April 3. However, the ongoing campaign of voter suppression around the country continues apace. It's important always to remember that none of this is happening by accident, that the fault in the system these laws are alleged to address does not really exist, and that this is actually a legacy of looking-forward-not-back. These various laws are a direct result of the U. S. Attorneys scandal during the administration of C-Plus Augustus. Local conservative pols in New Mexico, for example, wanted U.S. Attorney David Iglesias canned because he wouldn't pursue spurious voter-fraud claims with sufficient political enthusiasm. It was for this precise purpose that Karl Rove and the rest of the White House political team at the time sought to turn the Department Of Justice into a second-rate political chop-shop staffed by ambitious hacks and/or the product of Christianist diploma mills. Remember Monica Goodling? She was a prize. Because these people were allowed to skate without substantial penalties, the virus they loosed into the American political system was allowed to run wild in the states. There was no national consensus developed around the notion that voter-suppression is not a legitimate function of the government, not even when you try to gussy it up as some sort of consumer protection racket.
Nevertheless, it's clear that the fall elections will take place within two radically new contexts. One is the money context created by the Citizens United decision. The other, closer to the ground, is the context of the voter-suppression laws — and that's what they are, and suppressing votes is what they were meant to do — in the several states. This, I would almost guarantee, is going to set off ugly scenes at polling places around the country, as well as further disillusioning the very voters who lack any other avenue to exercise what little political power they have, which is also the point of these laws.
The Reverend Al Sharpton and Congressman John Lewis are currently in the middle of a re-enactment of the famous 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting-rights march on which Lewis was nearly beaten to death by the forces of Alabama law. You may have missed this because the coverage of it has been, well, sparse. But listening to the reaction by the other side, you find yourself in a genuine timewarp:
"I understand that most of these leaders are out-of-state agitators and they're here because the law is working," said Alabama Federation of Republican Women president Elois Zeanah.
Out-of-state agitators?
You know who else was an out-of-state agitator? Viola Liuzzo. Rev. James Reeb. Three kids in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Old dog, Elois Zeanah. Still hunts, though.
In 1965, John Lewis was not really an out-of-state agitator. He was born in Troy and went to school in Brundage. But he went to college at Fisk in Nashville so, when the Alabama state troopers broke his head for him because he was trying to register to vote, I guess he was sort of an out-of-state agitator. And now, since he's a congressman from Georgia, he's one again. This is how John Lewis agitates:

"But in many parts of America today people are passing voter ID laws, making it difficult for many people to participate in a democratic process. The Brennan Center based in New York has reported that maybe more than 5 million people would be denied the right to participate in a democratic process. Because of these voter IDs, early voting, making it hard and difficult for young people, minority, seniors and others to vote on Election Day...

I feel like we're still marching and it's necessary to march again. It is not right. It's not fair. It's unjust to treat the Latino population or any population the way people are being treated. In the state of Alabama and in so many other states in America, Hispanics, Latinos live in constant fear. These laws are bad. They are bad for our fellow human beings. I don't think there's any such thing as an illegal human being. We all are legal. People must be treated with a sense of dignity. We must respect the dignity and the worth of every human being."

I'm certainly agitated. How about you?
Over the last couple of weeks, as the presidential debate turned laughably into an argument about contraception, I have heard a lot of people complain that this issue "was settled back in the 1950's/1960's." This is a complaint I never have heard from any veteran of the civil rights movement, and they've seen the achievements that many of them bled and died for rolled back in one way or another ever since St. Reagan kicked off his triumphant 1980 campaign talking about States Rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, not all that far from where they'd once dug Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney out of an earthen dam. They all know how fragile were the victories they'd won. They accepted that as the ongoing part of the struggle that continues today. John Lewis is marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge again this week. People should be listening to him. Nobody, god willing, will try to kill him this time. They're satisfied merely with killing his legacy, one state at a time. The worst crimes against democracy are always the ones committed under the law.

Bullies At The Ballot Box: Protecting The Freedom To Vote Against Wrongful Challenges And Intimidation

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September 10, 2012

Protecting the freedom to vote for all eligible Americans is of fundamental importance in a democracy founded upon the consent of the governed. One of the most serious threats to the protection of that essential right is the increase in organized efforts, led by groups such as the Tea Party affiliated True the Vote and others, to challenge voters’ eligibility at the polls and through pre-election challenges. Eligible Americans have a civic duty to vote, and government at the federal, state, and local level has a responsibility to protect voters from illegal interference and intimidation. 
As we approach the 2012 elections, every indication is that we will see an unprecedented use of voter challenges. Organizers of True the Vote claim their goal is to train one million poll watchers to challenge and confront other Americans as they go to the polls in November. They say they want to make the experience of voting “like driving and seeing the police following you.”¹ There is a real danger that voters will face overzealous volunteers who take the law into their own hands to target voters they deem suspect. But there is no place for bullies at the ballot box. 
Even in states with clear legal boundaries for challengers and poll watchers, too often these boundaries are crossed. Laws intended to ensure voting integrity are instead used to make it harder for eligible citizens to vote – particularly those in communities of color. Moreover, the laws of many states states fall short when it comes to preventing improper voter caging and challenges. This should concern anyone who wants a fair election with a legitimate result that reflects the choices of all eligible Americans.
Clear rules that protect voters from improper removal from the rolls by voter caging and challenging, as well as from intimidating behavior at the polls, can help prevent interference with voter rights. This report describes the threat posed by potential voter challenges in the 2012 elections, and assesses the extent to which ten key states — Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia — are prepared to protect the rights of eligible voters to cast a ballot in the face of such challenges. The ten states examined here include states where races are expected to be competitive, which makes voters in those states particularly vulnerable to challenges. We also survey states where a history of aggressive voter challenge programs in recent elections threatened to intimidate voters or interfere with their access to the ballot.


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