[Vision2020] After A Surge in Registration, A Surge in Suppression

[Chasuk]

http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/archives/surge_in_supression/

By Adam Skaggs – 10/07/08
The voter registration deadlines of most states have either just
passed or will come in the next two weeks, and there has been an
unprecedented surge in registrations across the country. For most
observers, this is evidence of a renewed public interest in
participating in our democracy. Others, unfortunately, see the
prospect of higher voter turnout as a threat—and are working to keep
voters from registering and voting.

The efforts to suppress voting range from challenging the eligibility
of voters whose homes have been foreclosed to scaring college students
out of registering where they go to school. And, as we've written
previously, efforts are under way in a number of states to use trivial
imperfections in paperwork to keep voters off the registration rolls
or kick them off when they are successfully registered. One way
citizens are blocked from casting ballots that count is through
so-called "no match, no vote" policies.

The details of different states' no match, no vote rules vary around
the margins, but they all involve attempts to match voters'
registration data with records in other government
databases—generally, the motor vehicle and the Social Security
databases. Under no match, no vote, if a voter's data isn't matched,
the voter is deemed ineligible—even though matches fail all the time
for reasons that have nothing to do with voters' qualifications (like
typos, data entry errors, and mis-placed hypens). At the moment,
officials are using no match, no vote (or trying to use it) in a
number of different states:

In Wisconsin, after the elections agency wisely refused to implement a
strict matching rule this summer, the Attorney General sued the
elections agency to implement no match, no vote. Together with a
coalition of other voting rights advocates, the Brennan Center filed
an amicus brief explaining that, not only does federal law not compel
no match, no vote, but federal and state law actually prohibit
removing voters from the rolls because of failed computer matches.

The Republican Party of Ohio sued the Secretary of State, seeking an
order that would require Ohio to conduct retroactive matching on
voters who registered as early as January 1, 2008. The stated intent
is to prevent voter fraud, presumably by challenging voters whose data
wasn't successfully matched, but as Secretary of State Jennifer
Brunner observed, it looks like the real motivation is to intimidate
voters into staying home from the polls.

In Florida, where litigation continues over the state's matching law,
Secretary of State Kurt Browning made the decision to re-implement no
match, no vote on September 8, 2008—less than a month before the voter
registration deadline. After just a few weeks, nearly 230,000 new
registrations had been submitted, about 14% of which were flagged as
mis-matches. Officials subsequently resolved about two-thirds of the
mis-matches after catching obvious typos, but thus far, 7,489 voters
remain blocked from the rolls because they haven't been matched. That
number will grow in the coming days as the state and counties continue
to process registrations submitted in the final days of the
registration period.

Five members of Florida's Congressional delegation have urged Governor
Charlie Crist to suspend enforcement of the law. And county officials
are fighting an unnecessary—and profoundly unwise—part of the matching
law which prohibits voters from presenting evidence at the polls to
help resolve mis-matches. The Pinellas County supervisor of elections,
for example, wants to count the votes of un-matched voters if they
show their driver's license at the polling place. But the Secretary of
State insists that such votes must be thrown out unless the voters
submit the same driver's license to county election officials a second
time within 48 hours of the election. He is threatening to sue
Pinellas County if they continue trying to make voting convenient by
insisting on counting the votes of citizens who have verified their
identities at the polls.

Suing county election officials who are trying to count every vote
cast by eligible citizens—citizens who have confirmed their identity
by showing photo ID at the polls—doesn't sound like what a state's
chief election officer should be doing.

It makes no sense at all—unless you're trying to suppress voter turnout.