(NEW YORK) MintPress — While the heated debate over contraception has dominated headlines in recent weeks, pitting Democrats against Republicans in a shouting match about women’s rights, it may not be the most starkly partisan issue on the national agenda.
The two parties are increasingly at war over voting rights as well, with Republicans generally supporting tougher voter ID requirements, including government-issued photo identification or documentation, and Democrats opposing them, saying they represent a throwback to segregationist times.
Indeed, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) maintains that the voting rights of blacks and other minority groups are under more threat than at any time since the days of the Jim Crow laws.
Texas the newest battleground
In the latest move, the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday objected to a new law for voters in Texas that would require every state citizen to present photo identification as a condition for voting in primary and general elections, saying the state has failed to prove that the law isn’t intentionally discriminatory against Hispanics.
The head of the department’s civil rights division, Tom Perez, wrote a a six-page letter to Texas’ director of elections saying that Texas has not “sustained its burden” under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to show that the new law will not have a discriminatory effect on minority voters.
“According to the state’s own data, a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack this identification,” he said.
Growing nationwide controversy
It’s not the first time the Justice Department has taken this step. In December, it rejected South Carolina’s voter ID law on grounds that it makes it harder for minorities to cast ballots. It was the first voter ID law to be rejected by the department in nearly 20 years.
The issue started gaining steam after the 2000 presidential election controversy, when concerns about the vote count in Florida led to the federal Help America Vote Act, which required people voting for the first time in a given precinct to show ID.
The trend has dramatically accelerated in the last two years: Eight states passed new or toughened existing voter ID legislation in 2011, and more than 30 are discussing their laws this year. On Monday, Pennsylvania’s Senate passed strict photo ID legislation, which now moves to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Governor Tom Corbett says he supports the law.
Ulterior motives
Proponents of stricter legislation say it is needed to combat voter fraud. But there’s no solid evidence of large scale voter fraud in states that enacted no voter ID laws. In 2007, a report by the staff of the federal Election Assistance Commission, based on research conducted by a Republican and a Democrat, found that, among experts, “there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud.”
But the final version released to the public stated that there was “a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud.” Democrats charged that the commission, which had a Republican majority, had altered the conclusion for political reasons, which the commission denied.[
Critics of stringent ID laws maintain that they are enforced by Republican-controlled state governments and are aimed at disenfranchising people who tend to vote Democratic, especially African-Americans, Hispanics, low-income groups and college students.
According to another report commissioned by the Election Assistance Commission, one clear effect of voter identification laws is lower turnout, especially among minorities.
Minority activists fights back
In addition to the NAACP, several civil liberties advocates and labor unions have become increasingly vocal about the new laws. Especially in light of a recent study by the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice estimating that the legislation could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in November’s presidential election.
The leaders of the NAACP have decided to take matters into their own hands and are going to Geneva next week to call on the UN human rights council to launch a formal investigation into the spread of the voter ID laws, particularly in the South. The delegation, headed by NAACP president Benjamin Jealous, will invite a UN team to travel around the country to witness their impact.
Although the UN doesn’t have the power to intervene in the affairs of individual American states, Jealous contends that shame alone will be effective. “The US, and individual states within the US that have introduced these laws, have a vested interest in maintaining the opinion that we are the world’s leading democracy,” he said.