A Four Alarm Fire

If there is one aspect of government that conservatives love to hate, it’s regulations. The current inhabitant of the White House campaigned loudly on rolling back federal regulations, and in fact by his 100th day in office rescinded more regulations (using the Congressional Review Act) than any other president.  A January article in The Atlantic by Peter M. Shane, The Quiet GOP Campaign Against Government Regulation, details how the GOP is “quietly” shutting down the process in which regulations are put in place to protect the public. Shane points out:

“The achievements of the modern regulatory state in advancing human welfare are profound. Thanks to administrative regulation, Americans breathe cleaner air, drink cleaner water, eat healthier food, drive safer cars, work in safer environments, and have fairer and more secure access to education, housing, employment, telecommunications, and the ballot box. Regulations help protect consumers and investors from fraudulent and unfair practices in trade and finance.”

Yet, Republicans in Congress are hell-bent on pushing forward an agenda that would deny Americans the basic protections enumerated above.

So given their history, why are Republicans seeking to overregulate the voting process? The answer is simple – it works! Meaning- it works if your goal is to deny people from exercising their constitutional rights. (In the same way that overregulating clinics at the state level has been successful in attacking women’s right to choose.)

Enter the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, established by executive order on May 11th.  Its stated mission is to”study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections”. (By the way, a report from the 2014 bipartisan commission established by President Obama to look at ways to modernize the registration process and to improve access to the polls has been removed from its government website host by the current administration.)

The lofty title of this newborn commission in itself should trigger alarm bells, but last week four things happened that The Nation’s Ari Berman describes as “the beginning of a nation-wide voter suppression campaign, led by the White House and enabled by Congress and the Department of Justice”.

1. The House Appropriations Committee voted to defund the Election Assistance Commission, the only federal agency that helps states secure their voting machines from hacking. (The only Berks congressman on Appropriations is Charlie Dent. At this writing the status of Dent’s vote was not able to be determined.)
2. The Department of Justice informed all 50 states that it is reviewing voter registration list maintenance procedures and wants to know how each state plans to remove individuals from its voter rolls. 
3. Kris Kobach, vice chair of the president’s election commission, asked all 50 states to provide voter data to include: full name of registrant, address, date of birth, political party, last four digits of SS#, voter history from 2006 onward, active/inactive status, cancelled status, information regarding any felony convictions, information regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and overseas citizen information. 
4. The administration named Hans von Spakovsky as a member of the commission.

 
Hearing the sirens? If not, you will after we take a closer look at this list.

1. The first item is fairly self-evident. After the debacle of the 2016 election, an election in which our intelligence agencies and members of the legislative branch from both sides of the aisle have unequivocally stated that the Russians interfered in our electoral process, wouldn’t we want to protect one of the most sacred spaces of a democracy, the voting box?
2. With demographic trends not moving in their favor, Republican efforts to suppress votes is one of the best ways for them to maintain control of Congress. What better way to do this than to cut voter rolls, which is precisely what DOJ is asking states to do. 
3. Numerous studies have shown that almost no one in the U.S. commits voter fraud. To try to cheat at the ballot box is actually quite illogical. The risk is hardly worth the reward, particularly in the case of undocumented individuals. However, the president continues to allege that millions voted illegally in 2016. Keeping his outlandish accusations in mind, the appointment of Kansas’ Secretary of State Kris Kobach is logical. This is a person the ACLU has called “the king of voter suppression”. Kobach (also known as a dedicated birther) was recently fined in federal court for making “patently misleading representations” in a case challenging Kansas’ voter restrictions. Like the DOJ, Kobach also sent a letter to all 50 states asking for similar intrusive voter information. But there are legal problems inherent in Kobach’s request. Some say it violates the Privacy Act and probably the Paperwork Reduction Act. Kobach was also a proponent of the Crosscheck program, which compares voter rolls between states looking for duplicate registrants. But the program produced many “false positives” leading to eligible voters being removed. 
4. Hans von Spakovsky has as spotty a reputation as Kobach. In an era when voter participation is at an all time low, von Spakovsky is a known proponent of toughening voting regulations and advocating for voter ID laws, all in the guise of a desire to avert the mass voter fraud he sees as a potential, despite evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, when he was nominated to the FEC in 2006 amid Democratic protests, several lawyers referred to von Spakovsky as “the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights”. (He later withdrew from nomination.)

 
With a history of racial discrimination in voting laws, the weakening of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the facts of the popular vote results of the 2016 presidential election being disputed on an almost daily basis, and a Republican controlled Congress that would rather suppress votes at home than focus on holding Russia accountable, the addition of the Commission on Election Integrity tells us one thing- This house is on fire!

Read Ari Berman's article here:  ​The Trump Administration Is Planning an Unprecedented Attack on Voting Rights

posted by Amy Levengood