Indiana

Indiana's Discriminatory Voter ID Law Overturned

Adam Doster — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:35:05 -0700

In a surprise decision yesterday, an Indiana state appellate court overturned a controversial law that requires voters to show photo identification at the polls, claiming it violated the Indiana Constitution. Specifically, the three-judge panel unanimously ruled that by exempting mail-in absentee voters and residents of state-licensed care facilities from the requirement, the law violated the state's equal protection clause because it was not applied in a "uniform and impartial" manner.

Critics like Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels have slammed the decision as politically-motivated and have said they expect the Indiana Supreme Court to reverse it. But what Daniels and supporters of the law seem to ignore, and which the court ostensibly recognizes, is that the law itself is politically-motivated. Voter fraud is not a problem in Indiana, just as it is not a problem anywhere else in the country. After devoting substantial resources to combating this purported scourge, the Justice Department under President Bush failed to turn up any substantive evidence that widespread "fraud" exists. Before the election last year, conservative officials in Indiana -- aided and abetted by a deeply uninformed media -- raised concerns about potential voter fraud. Yet again, no evidence turned up of any coordinated effort to steal the election there. Indeed, Indiana's voter ID law is a solution to a problem that simply doesn't exist. All it does is place an extra burden on certain voters (many of them Democrat-leaning). From the New York Times' article today:

But Daniel P. Tokaji, an associate professor at Moritz College of Law, at Ohio State University, said the Indiana Constitution “does indeed provide broader protection for voting rights” than the federal Constitution. Professor Tokaji suggested that the judges did not believe that the law, adopted by a Republican-controlled legislature, was really intended to reduce voter fraud.

The ruling should also serve as a warning to any Illinois Republicans who, like last year, may be pondering a voter ID law of their own. For starters, it's not likely to pass the Dem-controlled General Assembly. But even if it did squeak through, our state courts could knock it down. “The state courts are much more amenable to these kinds of lawsuits than the federal courts are,” Indiana University Law School Professor Michael Pitts told the Times, “and this is where these battles are going to be played out."

Instead, lawmakers should focus on real flaws in our electoral system. After all, four to five million Americans did not vote in the 2008 presidential election because they encountered registration problems or failed to receive absentee ballots. Unfortunately, when given the opportunity to lower the barriers to civic engagement, the GOP often sits on the sidelines.

Image used under a Creative Commons license by Flickr user Gwen's River City Images.

Indiana GOP Freaks Out Over Gitmo Detainees

Adam Doster — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:26:37 -0800

President Obama’s executive order to shut down the unlawful Guantanamo Bay detention camp within a year has Republicans nationwide asking one question: where are we going to house the detainees? As you can see above, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart offered the appropriate response to GOP hand-wringing over Guantanamo’s shuttering last week. Now, a coterie of Indiana state senators are taking it one step further, authoring a Senate resolutiont that urges Obama not to send any detainees to the federal prison in Terre Haute. From the Indianapolis Star:

“These are extreme Muslim terrorists, ruthless terrorists housed at Guantanamo Bay for a reason,” said state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, R-Howe, who drafted a resolution Tuesday and promptly got a hearing in a Senate committee.

“If they are brought onto our soil ... are they bringing us that much closer to becoming a target?”

It’s worth noting that no legislators from Terre Haute signed on to the resolution. But more generally, Republicans’ outrage is strange. For one, Gitmo was open for eight years without ever experiencing a single terrorist attack. And when has the U.S. ever expressed skepticism about its ability to incarcerate?

Indiana state prisons hold 27,132 inmates. Even more are locked up in jail. And the facility at Terre Haute is particularly strict. Not only does it include a Special Confinement Unit that houses federal inmates on death row (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh stayed there) but the Star notes that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons converted one of the Terre Haute buildings into a special wing designed for up to 90 prisoners whose communications to the outside world have to be closely monitored.

Remember Todd Rokita?

Adam Doster — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:38:22 -0800

Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita really wants Hoosiers to believe he cares deeply about the integrity of the voting process. In October, just days before the 2008 election, the Republican sent a letter to federal, state, and local authorities asking for a criminal investigation into over 1,400 suspicious voter registration forms submitted by the group ACORN in Lake County. Despite convincing evidence to the contrary, he claimed (PDF) that ACORN was undertaking a massive voter fraud campaign that would “dilute the voice of honest voters and render an inaccurate tally on Election Day.”

Maybe Rokita should have spent less time demonizing community groups and more time ensuring all Indiana residents have access to the polls. In the run-up to the election, we thoroughly documented how Rokita stood idly by while a legitimate voter suppression battle developed in Lake County. Now the voting rights group Project Vote has accused him of failing to guarantee that Indiana is in compliance with the national Motor Voter law:

Citing clear evidence that hundreds of thousands of low-income Indiana residents have illegally been denied the opportunity to register to vote, today the voting rights groups Project Vote and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) sent a pre-litigation notice letter to Secretary of State Todd Rokita calling on him to bring Indiana into compliance with a federal law, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), that requires public assistance agencies offer voter registration services to their clients. [...]

According to evidence cited in the notice letter, the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) is now almost completely disregarding this law. By 2005-2006, registrations through public assistance agencies in Indiana had fallen more than 90 percent, to a mere 6,000. A November 2008 Project Vote survey of a number of FSSA offices and clients in Marion and Lake counties found that none of the offices were providing voter registration applications to their clients, and nearly all had no voter registration forms on their premises. None of the benefits applications collected during the investigation included the required registration materials, and none of the clients interviewed said they had been offered an opportunity to register to vote.

Project Vote reports that Indiana’s registration rate for low-income voters (just over 50 percent) is the fourth-worst in the nation. If the group’s allegations are accurate, Rokita should take swift action to alleviate the problem. Even if it means more black folks may show up at the polls.

Lake Co. Early Voting Lifts Obama In Indiana

Josh Kalven — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:35:46 -0800

Of all the surprises to emerge from the 2008 electoral map, Barack Obama's victory in Indiana has to be the sweetest. And most impressive. Every single county in the state shifted towards the Democratic candidate on Tuesday (compared to 2004), leading him to a 26,000-vote margin of victory.

Of all the red states won back by the Democrats on Tuesday, Indiana represented the steepest climb. In 2004, George W. Bush had won the Hoosier State by over 510,000 votes -- a greater margin than in any of the other states turned blue by Obama this week:

So how did the Democrats knock off the Hoosier State?

Marion County, home to Indianapolis, played a big role. While John Kerry won the county by 6,000 votes in 2004, Obama ultimately achieved a 105,000-vote margin there. That took a sizeable chunk out of the Republican advantage in the state.

The rest of the counties did their part as well, each giving more of their vote to the Democrat, as compared to in 2004. The map below, courtesy of the New York Times, shows those shifts, with the darkest blue areas representing at least a 15-point move to the left:

As you can see on the national version of this map, no state swung more heavily towards the Democrat than Indiana:

In terms popular vote, the county with the second-highest swing towards the Democratic candidate was Lake County. And a glance at the figures released by the county clerk suggests that early voters were the reason.

In 2004, 12,683 Lake Co. voters took advantage of early voting. That number doubled to 24,378 this year, thanks in large part to the addition of early voting sites in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago, all three of them highly populated and reliably Democratic. As we reported last month, local GOP officials fought tooth-and-nail to keep this from happening. Citing technicalities regarding the board of elections' approval of the extra early voting sites, the Republicans filed legal challenges to keep them from opening. The sites did eventually open and a superior court judge threw out the GOP lawsuits, but not until six days of early voting in these areas had been lost.

Looking at the election results in the county, it's not difficult to see why the GOP was so scared of expanding access. Of the 24,378 early voters, 20,757 cast their ballot for the Democratic candidate, while only 2,778 favored John McCain.

Those 20,757 voters represent 80 percent of Obama's margin of victory in the state.

Assuming that many of them wouldn't have been able to make it to the polls on Election Day -- due to work schedules, etc. -- it's plain to see why the fight to expand early voting was so crucial. Credit goes to all those who waged it, particularly SEIU Illinois (which sponsors this site). Several weeks ago, we chronicled their impressive work on the ground in Northwest Indiana. It's clear that it paid off.

Notes From Northwest Indiana

Adam Doster — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:53:25 -0800

- All day long, volunteers flooded into the Obama headquarters in Gary, coming from Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. By the time I arrived there in the late afternoon, staff were redirecting people to Portage County.

- The walls of the Gary headquarters were littered with precinct maps. The office itself was jammed with about two dozen people, all of them hitting the phones.

- Polling places in the city weren't at all crowded, but residents expected lines to form as the 6 pm closing time approached.

- During the 5 o'clock hour, I visited two quiet polling places in Hammond and another in Munster. All said they'd seen record turnout over the course of the day, the bulk of it in the morning.

- I asked one tired looking Obama volunteer, "Are you running on steam at this point?" Her response, "No, hope!"

Obama Gets Last Word In Indiana

Josh Kalven — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:53:35 -0800

Yesterday, John McCain made a brief pitstop in Indianapolis. But today, after voting this morning in Chicago, Barack Obama headed across the border for one last appearance, his 49th stop in the Hoosier State since the campaign began:

"I think we can win Indiana, otherwise I wouldn't be in Indiana," Obama told a reporter at an Indianapolis union hall this morning. Indianapolis was his only campaign stop outside of Illinois today.

Obama visited the United Auto Workers Local 550, 2344 S. Tibbs Ave., where a get-out-the-vote effort was under way. About 20 people worked telephones trying to convince voters to get to the polls.

The first-term Illinois senator helped out on 13 calls.

While talking to one voter, Obama said, " Well, I'll tell you I think we have a great chance in Indiana."

McCain To Make Indiana Stop Tomorrow

Josh Kalven — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 08:20:08 -0800

In a last-minute attempt to shore up support in the Hoosier State, John McCain is going to make a pit-stop at the Indianapolis airport tomorrow:

Republican Sen. John McCain will make his first Indiana campaign stop in more than four months -- a rally at the Indianapolis airport Monday afternoon, the day before voters choose the nation's next president. [...]

Despite the unusual closeness of the race, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told reporters in a conference call Friday morning that "we love the results of the campaign we have going on there."

He cited a poll by Rasmussen, released this week, that showed McCain with a 3 percentage-point lead, a statistical dead heat given the poll's margin of error.

With each of these developments, I can't resist re-posting this quote about Indiana from mid-September:

Indiana Republicans proudly say they don't need to pay for advertising because the Democrats are merely playing catch up. "We want [the GOP] to put resources in the true battleground states," says Kevin Ober, the Indiana Republican Party's executive director, adding: "The polls are already showing us ahead."

Here's Pollster.com's polling average in the state since the above comment was made:

(H/T Blue Indiana)

Appeals Court Upholds Ruling On Early Voting In NW Indiana

Josh Kalven — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:52:39 -0700

Today, the Indiana Court of Appeals put the final nail in the coffin of the Republican efforts to obstruct early voting access in the Democratic-leaning cities of Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago. The court upheld Superior Court Judge Diane Kavadias-Schneider's ruling that the opening of the early voting centers in these three areas violated state law. From the Indianapolis Star:

The court in an unanimous decision upheld a special judge's ruling last week that the satellite in-person absentee voting centers should remain open. The Democrat-controlled Lake County election board had authorized the centers, but Republicans protested.

The Court of Appeals rejected Republican arguments that state law required an unanimous decision by the election board to open the satellite centers.

So that's that. Now, what's going on in Marion County?

After Delaying Early Voting, Indiana Republicans Oppose Extension

Adam Doster — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:50:33 -0700

As is the case nationwide, early voting has proven quite popular in Lake County, Indiana. Chicago Public Radio points out that lines at all four of the county's voting sites have lasted up to four hours. To compensate, the county election board has approved a plan to extend the early voting period an extra three days -- through his weekend until noon on Monday. A no-brainer, right? Not for the board's two sitting Republicans, both of whom voted against the extension, proving yet again that the Lake County GOP is primarily concerned about obstructing ballot access in the Democratic-leaning region of the county.

If you'll remember, it was these two Republicans who opposed extending early voting beyond the clerk's office in Crown Point to three additional sites in highly-populated, Democratic-leaning cities on the northern edge of the county. Their intransigence prompted a drawn-out legal fight that pinballed between five different courts. Thankfully, Superior Court Judge Diane Kavadias-Schneider decided that the "technicalities" cited by the GOP -- specifically, the lack of a unanimous vote by the board -- were not valid reasons to block voting access.

Early voting ultimately opened in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago on October 14 -- ten days after it began in Crown Point. One has to assume that the demand on these voting centers in the past two weeks would have been considerably lessened had the Republicans agreeed to open up the sites from the beginning.

The GOP's behavior throughout this process has been blatantly partisan, so it's not too surprising they would try to knock down an extension. But it's nonetheless disconcerting to see election board officials who apparently have no interest in ensuring that all the residents of their county can vote with convenience.

Indiana Secretary Of State: Who's The Master?

Adam Doster — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:59:32 -0700

Meet Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita. By now, you might know him as the Republican official who stood idly by while a legitimate voter suppression battle developed in Lake County. He then promised to conduct a criminal investigation into the suspicious voter registration forms submitted by ACORN in the same county, despite no evidence suggesting the organization itself purposefully committed fraud. While his election-season behavior is frustrating, it shouldn't be shocking.

As Talking Points Memo noted, in a 2002 South Bend Tribune article pulled from Nexus, Rokita spoke fondly of his experience preventing a recount in Florida during the 2000 election:

Working on his own time, [Rokita] also assisted George W. Bush's campaign during the infamous Florida election recount in 2000. Rokita is proud of that, especially because the U.S. Supreme Court cited Indiana election law when it decided the election in Bush's favor.

But here's the real doozy. Last year, the AP caught him offering this dubious analysis of African-American voting patterns:

During a speech Thursday at a Republican event, Todd Rokita said 90 percent of blacks vote for Democrats.

"How can that be?" Rokita said. "Ninety to ten. Who's the master and who's the slave in that relationship? How can that be healthy?"

As Adam Serwer writes, "Rokita seems to have answered his own question: black people don't vote Republican because Republicans are given to reductive and dehumanizing racial commentary about black folks."

Meanwhile, in his request for an investigation of ACORN, Rokita dismisses the fact that the organization was required by law to submit all the registrations it received from its canvassers and that they notified election officials of the problematic forms:

Acorn officials contend they are required by law to submit all applications it collects, and a spokesman said they made efforts to call attention to applications that appeared to be problematic. The official said Acorn was the victim of unscrupulous employees and the organization fired at least five of those involved with the Lake County drive.

Rokita’s letter, however, states that “complying with the law to submit legitimate applications does not allow Acorn officials to evade the law against knowingly submitting fraudulent applications.”

Thomas from Blue Indiana sums up the problems with Rokita's statement:

It seems to me that ACORN had some bad employees who committed some highly unethical acts. If ACORN is telling the truth about flagging these applications -- and there hasn't been any substantial evidence to the contrary -- then they are being accused of a crime for following the law.

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Unless, of course, this is nothing more than a political ploy to stoke the deep-seeded fear of Lake County and renew the fundamentally false connection between the Democratic ticket and a troubled community organizing organization. But Todd Rokita wouldn't do that, would he?