PEOPLE FOR BLOG

UPDATE: Shortly after the election, several voting rights advocacy groups released reports or statements detailing problems voters encountered at the polls. Demos put out a report describing how all the various voter suppression tactics affected the 2012 election. The American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement addressing the problems voters faced and the steps that should be taken to prevent future problems. Project Vote also released a statement praising diligent voters for overcoming adverse voting circumstances.

Despite the concerted efforts by conservative legislators to suppress voters’ rights throughout 2011 and 2012 using a number of tactics in the supposed interest to combat voter fraud, millions of Americans took time last week to cast their vote on Election Day. However, a number of problems for voters still occurred, shedding light on some obvious inadequacies within our voting process.

The foremost issue on Election Day: long lines of epic proportions. In Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia a lack of an appropriate amount of voting machines and too few poll workers led to hours-long waits at multiple voting locations. In Florida, voters were forced to wait until the early hours of the morning before being able to finally cast a vote due to ridiculously long lines, prompting Governor Rick Scott (a known advocate for vote suppressing measures) to call for a review of Florida’s voting process, even though his policies may have contributed to the long lines.

A recent study and a 2008 survey indicate that African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities are disproportionately more likely to be subject to longer poll lines than others and this is largely a result of reductions in early voting. In Ohio, where restrictions on early voting were blocked, early voters showed perseverance over the cold weather as they waited in long lines stretching for blocks to cast their votes. Various Representatives and even President Obama weighed in on the issue, with all agreeing that a lack of voting machines and poll workers contributed to the overwhelming lines and that the issue should be preventable.

Glitches in voting machines also added to the longer-than-usual lines. Electronic voting machines were reportedly malfunctioning, causing vote flipping and ballot presentation errors that resulted in confused voters and the shutting down of faulty machines. These errors, coupled with insufficient available machines to begin with, had voters waiting much longer than expected.

Besides the long lines, other issues arose for voters. Even though Pennsylvania’s ALEC-linked voter ID law was blocked from being enforced on Election Day, poll locations throughout the state had confusing messages about voter ID requirements with many distributing old information that said voters needed a proper ID to vote. Upon being reported, poll workers were instructed to remove the misleading information and not demand ID from voters.

Elsewhere, voters received inaccurate robocalls the night before Election Day. The Arizona Republican Party allegedly called thousands of voters and provided incorrect addresses to polling locations. Information to Spanish speaking voters distributed by an Arizona County Election Department had also listed the wrong date for Election Day… Twice! The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund also brought to light several instances where required language assistance was not readily available to help communities with large non-English speaking Asian American populations and cases where poll workers separated Korean American voters into segregated lines because “there were so many."

Although things were difficult at times, Americans still got out to vote last week, demonstrating determination to overcome broken machines and patience in long lines. Voting rights also had a significant win in Minnesota, where an amendment for voter ID requirements was struck down. However, the battle for ensuring voting rights has only just begun – the Supreme Court has accepted a case arguing that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. Section 5 requires areas with a history of racial discrimination to get federal approval before putting any voting changes into effect, a vital protection that has served as the lynchpin of protecting voting rights for nearly half a century. The Court’s decision will have a profound impact on future elections and the future of guaranteeing the fundamental right to vote for all.

The past two years saw a dramatic rise in states attempting to enact voter suppression, the impact of which was certainly felt on Election Day. Under the guise of combating voter fraud and saving money, we saw strong pushes for ID and early voting and voter registration restrictions.

Florida was among the worst offenders. A recent Palm Beach Post report revealed the party politics behind the story. Jim Greer, former Chairman of the Florida Republican Party, says that GOP strategists and consultants "firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates" and simply used the issue of voter fraud as a "marketing ploy" to advocate for voter restrictions on early voting and registration. Several others stated that the restrictions on early voting and registration groups were explicitly in place to target minority voters and limit their turnout in the election.

Florida members of the African American Ministers Leadership Council said they were "appalled but not surprised" by the report and the claims that the restrictions exclusively targeted minority voters. Elder Lee Harris, Pastor of Mt. Olive Primitive Baptist Church in Jacksonville, stated:

There’s a reason African Americans stood in line for hours on Nov. 6. We knew that these early voting and voter registration restrictions were meant to keep us away from the polls. But we’ve come too far and fought too hard to let anybody take away our vote again… Even while cloaked in the dubious language of ‘voter fraud,’ the real reason for these measures was always clear. African Americans in Florida knew that, and we fought back – by voting.

It has been hard to keep up with all of the historic wins for marriage equality in the past few months. Three states passed ballot measures in support of marriage equality, and one rejected a state constitutional amendment banning it. A new CBS News Poll found – consistent with other recent national polls – that a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court could announce any day whether it will hear cases related to the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8. It is not hard to see that the tide is turning in our country.

But some people, it seems, are still not getting the memo.

Case in point: Mission America leader Linda Harvey. PFAW’s Right Wing Watch tuned in to Harvey’s daily radio show today and reported on her tired – but disturbing – opinions about what she views as “unnatural” behavior. “Homosexual marriage is wrong because two men together or two women is intrinsically disordered,” Harvey said. “The behavior is unnatural.”

Not to be outdone, televangelist Pat Robertson also shared some homophobic remarks today as he weighed in on the news that two women were married in West Point’s Cadet Chapel. After proclaiming that General Douglas MacArthur, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee must each be “rolling over in his grave,” he asked: “What have they done to our cherished institution?”

But I have a different question. With the country seeing progress for LGBT communities in cities and states across the country, and with more and more Americans supporting marriage equality, the real question is when these far-right leaders are going to realize that they are on the very wrong side of a losing battle.

President Barack Obama posed an important question to families across the country yesterday: what does $2,000 mean to you?

In a speech on extending tax cuts for the middle class as the fiscal deadlines approach, President Obama emphasized the importance of this tax measure for everyday Americans:

“If Congress does nothing, every family in America will see their taxes automatically go up at the beginning of next year…A typical middle class family of four would see its income taxes go up by $2,200. $2,200 out of people’s pockets. That means less money for buying groceries, less money for filling prescriptions, less money for buying diapers. It means a tougher choice between paying the rent and paying tuition. And middle class families just can’t afford that right now.”

He made the case that extending tax cuts for the middle class would give families peace of mind and give those in Washington more time to work out a comprehensive fiscal plan “in a balanced way – including asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more so we can still invest in things like education and training in science and research.”

Earlier this month, People For the American Way – as well as PFAW’s African American Ministers in Action and People for the American Way Foundation’s Young Elected Officials and Young People For programs – joined more than 100 other organizations in calling for a budget agreement that prioritizes job creation, saving the safety net, stopping sequestration, and adding new revenue from corporations and the wealthiest earners.

Americans agree with this approach. A Washington Post-ABC poll released yesterday found that the majority (60%) of Americans support increasing taxes on the wealthy and that 67% oppose raising the age for Medicare coverage. As families across the country know, the solution to our fiscal problems cannot come from putting efficient systems like Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block so that we can extend tax breaks for the richest Americans.

Beyond being bad for families, it’s bad for our national economy. As the Congressional Research Service found this fall, lower tax rates for the wealthy do not spur economic growth. Instead, as President Obama said today, “let’s approach this problem with the middle class in mind” – and make sure Congress isn’t taking money out of our national investments in health and education to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

Sen. Chuck Grassley has provided a weak and misleading response to a letter sent yesterday by 16 Iowa and national organizations (including People For the American Way) holding him accountable for a type of obstruction of judicial nominees that he has perpetrated as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. All but five of President Obama's nominees who have had a committee vote scheduled have had to endure a delay at the insistence of committee Republicans. That's 97% of those nominees. This abuse of the minority's right to request a delay is unprecedented. These delays have run one, three, even six weeks, before the nominees are approved by the committee with overwhelming bipartisan support. This is part of a larger pattern of obstructing qualified nominees in every way possible, simply because they were nominated by a Democratic president.

Yesterday, as reported in The Daily Nonpareil, Grassley issued a misleading response. He changed the subject to how many nominees have been confirmed, throwing out misleading and irrelevant statistics:

First of all, for the four years of this administration, we approved 160 nominations, and during the same period of time in the last Bush administration, there were 120 nominations; so don't let anybody tell you we're not moving nominees.

That is true if "same period of time" means "different period of time." But in fact, Grassley is referring to Bush's second term, not his first term. Comparing the real "same periods of time" reveals that Bush had more than 200 nominees confirmed during his first term, many more than Obama's 160.

Bush was bound to have far fewer confirmations in his second term, since the Senate did not obstruct his consensus nominations. His confirmed nominees waited on average only 1/3 as long after committee approval for a floor vote than has been the case for Obama's nominees. That shaved months off their wait time and allowed vacancies to be filled efficiently.

Secondly, we had two Supreme Court nominees [during Obama's first term] and they take time.

What does this have to do with the issue raised in the letter? Are we to believe that during 2011 and 2012, Grassley and his Republican colleagues did not have enough time to look over nominees' records because they had been so busy with the Sotomayor and Kagan nominations back in 2009 and 2010?

Grassley has argued before that Obama's first-term confirmation numbers should be compared to Bush's second term numbers, because both had two time-consuming Supreme Court nominations. But what he fails to tell people is that even then, Bush's judicial nominees were processed far more swiftly than Obama's have been. The disparity in waiting time on the Senate floor is particular egregious with district courts, which at one time were generally immune from partisan gamesmanship: 33 days for Bush's second-term nominees vs. 97 days for Obama's first-term nominees (so far).

Grassley also claimed that Obama's nominees "have been slow in responding to committee questions." When Grassley has delayed votes on all but five nominees, that explanation strains credulity and shows disrespect to the men and women who have come before the committee. Last year, he even demanded a two-week delay for a nominee who had already been approved without opposition several months earlier, in a previous Congress, but who had not gotten a vote on the Senate floor in time for the end of the year. When Sue Myerscough was renominated, she was again deemed well qualified by a unanimous ABA panel (its highest rating), and she was so familiar to the Judiciary Committee that she was not asked to testify again or to respond to individual members' written questions. Yet even her committee vote was delayed by two weeks upon Grassley's demand.

Grassley's "explanations" fall short.

Based on his response, it was no surprise this morning when Grassley blocked a scheduled committee vote on five nominees who had their hearings back in mid-September.

It is the same old story of damaging and unprincipled obstruction by Senate Republicans that we have seen since Obama won his first election. This particular tactic is a part of a larger mechanism of obstruction, one that delays nominees without reason at all stages of the process, from nomination to final confirmation vote. As ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Grassley is doing what he can to contribute to that mechanism of obstruction.

Unfortunately, the ones who pay the highest price are the American people and businesses who lose their day in court because of the historic vacancy crisis that Grassley and his colleagues are intentionally prolonging.

Super PACs and corporate lobbyists, beware.

Earlier this month, organizations from around the country working to fight back against the influence of big money on our democracy gathered to share ideas and make plans for action. The conference, associated with the Money Out/Voters In Coalition – of which People For the American Way is a leading member – provided a forum to discuss Constitutional and legislative solutions to the growing problem of corporate influence in politics. As AlterNet’s Steven Rosenfeld described it:

“Last Saturday in Los Angeles saw the most detailed, ambitious and encouraging discussion of exactly how to approach campaign finance and lobbying reform that I’ve seen in two decades of reporting on the decline of American democracy.”

Conference-goers grounded their discussions in the notion that corporations should not have the same constitutional rights as people to spend money to influence elections. They noted that constitutional and other remedies are needed to prevent powerful and wealthy special interests from undermining our democracy.

And national polls have consistently found that Americans want solutions. Earlier this year, the Brennan Center for Justice found that three in four Americans “believe limiting how much corporations, unions, and individuals can donate to Super PACs would curb corruption.” Another recent poll found that nine Americans out of ten agree that there is too much corporate money in politics.

As People For the American Way’s Marge Baker put it:

“This is happening because the people want it to happen.”

It is clear that Americans realize we have a problem on our hands. And as movement leaders come together, float plans, and debate proposals, it is also clear that those who care about repairing our democracy will continue to fight back against corporate influence in politics until we as a country have enacted viable solutions.