PEOPLE FOR BLOG

As Election Day approaches, voters need to keep in mind one of the most important powers given to a president: the ability to nominate Supreme Court Justices. Judicial nominations take even more precedence in this election due to the fact that four current justices are in their seventies, making it likely that the next president will have the opportunity to nominate at least one or two justices, putting major progressive reforms along with a list of other issues at risk with the possibility of even one additional conservative justice to the Court. The stakes are highest for progressives because Breyer (74) and Ginsburg (79, the most likely to retire) tend to lean liberal in their decisions and a conservative-leaning replacement for either would give disproportional amounts of power to the conservative wing of the Court.

Romney has pledged to nominate individuals that align with extreme right-wing justices like Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts. Under the guise of securing “greater protections for economic liberty and greater scrutiny for regulation” and “judicial modesty,” a more conservative Court would ultimately limit the expansion of gay rights, further extend corporate influence in politics, attack women’s reproductive rights, and threaten the recently upheld healthcare legislation.

To understand the implications of a Supreme Court under Romney, one only needs to look at Romney’s choice of chairman of his Judicial Advisory Committee: Robert Bork, a right-wing extremist and advocator for Constitutional “originalism”, a radically conservative way to interpret the Constitution. Bork opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Roe v. Wade, and in 2007, Romney declared, “I wish he were already on the Supreme Court. He’s the kind of brilliant conservative mind that this court could use.” Clearly, Romney intends to shift the Court’s further to the right with nominations similar to Bork.

President Obama has been quite vocal regarding his opponent’s intentions with vacancies on the Supreme Court. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Obama made it clear that a Romney/Ryan administration would be in a position to overturn Roe v. Wade through the Supreme Court. In a recent appearance on the Tonight Show, President Obama again highlighted the importance of having a diverse Court especially when it came to Roe v. Wade. The President also recently emphasized the importance of the Supreme Court and marriage equality in the coming years during an interview with MTV, expressing opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act and hoping for its eventual overturning.

A more conservative Supreme Court would lead to a radical reinterpretation of the Constitution and a dramatic attack on equal opportunity and rights. If Romney is elected, this sort of Court would almost certainly become a reality.

Click for PFAW’s new report on the Court’s importance.

In the last few weeks and months we’ve already seen the Right employ some outrageous dirty tricks to suppress the vote.

The job of election officials should be to make sure every eligible voter who shows up to cast a ballot can do so and have that vote count. But we’ve seen numerous right-wing secretaries of state and county election supervisors instead take it upon themselves to act as partisan operatives, placing their thumb on the scale to benefit their party’s candidates. And right-wing political operatives and activists have been using various tools to confuse, misinform and intimidate voters.

This is just what we’ve seen so far. Who knows what we’ll see in the final days leading up to Election Day and on Election Day itself!

Here are the Top 11, in no particular order:

1. Voter ID – In the last couple of years, right-wing state legislatures have trumpeted the thoroughly debunked myth of widespread individual voter fraud in order to scare voters about the legitimacy of elections and pave the way for burdensome restrictions on voting, most notably, by requiring photo ID to vote. Many students, elderly, poor and urban voters don’t have drivers licenses or other acceptable forms of ID and can’t easily obtain them for a variety of reasons. Voter ID laws are for the most part a clear attempt to make it harder for traditionally Democratic-voting constituencies harder to vote, and there are have been some legal victories against some of the most recent laws, but studies have estimated that millions of eligible voters nationwide could be prevented from voting due to onerous ID requirements.
   
   In some states, recently passed voter ID laws have been halted due to court challenges, yet the states have continued circulating information referencing the new laws which could be incredibly confusing to voters. In Pennsylvania, a conservative judge who had upheld the state’s voter ID law before a federal court blocked it, ruled that even though voters do not have to show ID to vote, officials can still request it – and the state is using this to justify keeping up billboards that imply voters must have ID to show up.
2. Calls about voting by phone – Reports have come in in Florida, Virginia and elsewhere that primarily elderly voters have received phone calls telling them they could vote over the phone, so did not need to show up at the polls (something that is completely untrue).
3. Calls about poll workers checking car insurance/registration – Similar misleading calls have been reported by African American and Latino voters that “inform” voters that their car insurance and registration status will be checked at the polls as a requirement to cast a vote. This is also a complete lie.
4. Intimidating “voter fraud” billboards – These ominous billboards reminding voters of the legal penalties for voter fraud were put up in minority communities in Milwaukee, WI and in Ohio in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. Clearly intended to make minority voters unnecessarily nervous about showing up to vote, PFAW and our allies like Color of Change brought pressure on the two companies that owned the billboards to remove them -- and they did! It was a good victory, but for the days the billboards were up, there was certainly damage done. Expect signs and flyers with a similar message to pop up in minority communities across the country in the final days of the election, especially in swing states.
5. Tea Party groups challenging the votes of eligible voters – this is exactly what it sounds like and every bit as despicable. All around the country, and especially in hotly contested battleground states like Ohio, so-called “True the Vote” and other Tea Party organizations are exploiting state laws to challenge the votes of minority voters and others who primarily fit into groups that tend to vote Democratic.
6. Romney campaign training poll watchers to mislead voters – In Wisconsin, we have reports that the Romney campaign has been training poll watchers not only to provide incorrect information to voters, but to hide their own affiliation at the polls.
7. Restricting access for election observers – Not only is the Right escalating their voter intimidation efforts, but their also doing their part to make it harder for fair elections groups to observe and counter those efforts.
8. Voter registration fraud (the really dangerous kind) – There’s been at least one arrest, and after the Florida GOP distanced itself from the private voter registration vendor Strategic Allied Consulting for apparent fraud in that state, some members of Congress are calling for a DOJ investigation into more widespread fraud, particularly by that group, which is led by notorious right-wing dirty trickster Nathan Sproul.
   
   You no doubt have heard about the right-wing uproar over fake voter registrations submitted by ACORN in years past – in that case, the registration fraud consisted of paid canvassers submitting phony registrations under names such as “Mickey Mouse.” No voter fraud was committed. ACORN turned in all the registrations they collected (even the obviously flawed ones) as they were required to, but if any fraudulent registration forms did result in actual registrations, the fake voters (who probably also had fake addresses) never received registration cards – and Mickey Mouse certainly didn’t show up to vote.
   
   What right-wing operatives are doing here is much more deliberate and actually causes serious harm. In addition to dumping Democratic registrations, it appears fraudulent changes to existing registrations were made, which means when real (presumably Democratic) voters show up to the polls, their registration will have been changed unbeknownst to them and they will be ineligible to cast a ballot.
9. Businesses threatening their employees – One of the most insidious forms of voter intimidation we’ve seen this cycle has to do with right-wing corporate CEOs threatening their employees’ livelihoods to pressure them to vote Republican. Mitt Romney has even gotten in on the action by encouraging business executives to do this.
10. Restricting early and absentee voting and limiting access to provisional ballots – It’s like three dirty tricks in one!
11. Throwing out absentee ballots based on signatures “not matching” – Does your signature look exactly the same now as it did when you first registered to vote? In Florida, canvassing boards are simply throwing out some absentee ballots they feel have signatures that don’t match the ones on file for voters. In these cases, the voters are not even being informed that their vote has been challenged or will not be counted.

In addition to the voter suppression tactics on this list, instances keep popping up of voters receiving confusing or incorrect voting information from state voting authorities. We’re not listing it as a dirty trick because there’s no evidence of intent to disenfranchise, the states simply claim incompetence, and these are primarily the same states – run by Republicans – that have just had major changes to voting requirements. But the result for voters is the same, and we’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

And finally, we urge the Department of Justice to keep a close eye on this election, both to prevent voter suppression and to make sure votes are counted properly. There have been widespread problems with certain types of electronic voting machines and vote counting machines reported over several election cycles. In this election, there’s an appearance of severe impropriety in that many voting machines, including many used in the all-important swing state of Ohio, have been provided by a company that is essentially part owned by Tagg Romney as well as some of the largest donors to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

Democracy should be free of the suspicion created by the corporate entanglements of the business interests of candidates, their families or their closest supporters.

Read more about the Right’s campaign to keep millions of Americans from the ballot box here.

And help PFAW overcome the Right’s dirty tricks to STOP Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and extremist Tea Party candidates at every level with a donation today.

Legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky writes in the LA Times that the Supreme Court is a critical issue in the presidential campaign, although candidates don't always talk as prominently about it as they do other subjects. But if you care about any number of issues, you should care about the Supreme Court. He writes:

So why are the candidates ignoring this issue? Their advisors probably have told them that voters don't care, or at least that it is unlikely to matter to the crucial undecided voters. But this may well be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy because voters won't care unless the candidates choose to make the composition of the courts an important election issue.

But I have seen that audiences do care greatly about the future of abortion rights, the corrosive effects of money in politics, the rights of gays and lesbians to marriage equality and so many other issues that are decided by the courts. All this and so much more will turn on who picks the next Supreme Court justices.

Indeed, a recent survey and two focus groups conducted by Hart Research Associates for People For the American Way, the Alliance For Justice Action Campaign, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights demonstrate that the Supreme Court is an important issue for voters, one that significantly favors President Obama over Mitt Romney.

The survey results show that a majority of independent voters and presidential swing voters say the issue of who will serve on the Supreme Court is an important consideration in their vote this year. According to the survey, what most concerns voters - a full 54 percent  - is their worry that Romney will nominate justices who will consistently favor corporations over ordinary Americans.

Independent voters have greater confidence in President Obama than they do in Mitt Romney with respect to Supreme Court nominations. The president has an 18-point advantage among swing voters. Independent women prefer Obama over Romney on this score by 19 points. Among women swing voters, that advantage grows to 26 points. The survey analysis explains:

The president's advantage over Romney rests on two main elements. First, voters believe Obama (61%) is much more likely than Romney (39%) to appoint justices who "would uphold the progress we have made on civil rights and women's rights." Second, most voters trust Obama (59%) rather than Romney (41%) to choose justices who "will protect the rights of average people, not just the wealthy and powerful." Among swing voters, Obama enjoys commanding advantages of 55 points and 49 points, respectively, on these two dimensions.

That is why Vice President Biden brings up the Supreme Court in venues ranging from the vice presidential debate in Kentucky to campaign rallies in Iowa. That is why President Obama talked about the Court in a recent Rolling Stone interview published last week.

That is also why Romney and his campaign are bending over backwards to pretend his Supreme Court Justices won't do exactly what he's promised the far right they will do.

Romney knows that the Supreme Court is a winning issue for President Obama.

Forget ghosts and goblins. Here at People For, our biggest Halloween fear is a Supreme Court chosen by Mitt Romney. Take a look at our new video:

In the Huffington Post today, PFAW Senior Fellow Jamie Raskin lays out the damage that a Romney Court could do – from rolling back reproductive rights to eliminating protections for working people. Read it here.

Mitt Romney is justly under fire for his comments – recently highlighted by the Huffington Post's Ryan Grim – during the Republican primaries urging that federal authority for disaster relief be handed over to the states or, "even better," to private businesses.

Here is what he told a Republican audience during a primary debate in June 2011 when asked by CNN's John King if federal authority for disaster relief should be handled by the states:

King: ... I was just in Joplin, Missouri. I've been in Mississippi and Louisiana and Tennessee and other communities dealing with whether it's the tornadoes, the flooding, and worse. FEMA is about to run out of money, and there are some people who say do it on a case-by-case basis and some people who say, you know, maybe we're learning a lesson here that the states should take on more of this role. How do you deal with something like that?

Romney: Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. (emphasis added)

Romney went so far as to call federal spending on disaster relief "immoral" because it adds to the national debt.

Immoral? Really?

Personally, I'm glad that when Americans facing natural disasters are in need of massive amounts of assistance, we can muster our collective power through government to provide that relief.

And I'm glad that relief is being provided by an entity whose bottom line isn't the bottom line, but the public welfare. For-profit companies exist to make money, not to promote the general welfare. If their profit-making behavior happens to benefit the public, that's gravy. But we see every day that corporations put their interests ahead of ours whenever they can. That's what they do.

For more about the efforts of the corporate right to surrender the public good to the private benefit of the 1%, see People For the American Way's recently issued report on Predatory Privatization.

As Mitt Romney's statement about FEMA shows, he is not one to allow the public welfare to get in the way of corporate profits.

What do you do to win over abortion rights supporters if you've spent your whole presidential campaign telling right-wing activists you're anti-choice? For Mitt Romney, the answer is simple: lie!

First there was the TV ad assuring women that under a Romney administration, they would have nothing to worry about. Then Romney told the Des Moines Register that no anti-choice legislation "would become part of my agenda." Then the right-wing Concerned Women for America -- one of the staunchest opponents of abortion rights out there -- backed him up with an ad saying that Romney could do nothing to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The main problem being, of course, that Romney's official position, which is on his website and which he has stated on video, is that he intends to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade, in effect criminalizing abortion in as much as half the country. The next president will likely get the opportunity to nominate at least one Supreme Court justice. If that president is Romney, the movement to overturn Roe will likely gain a majority on the Court.

But apparently the Romney camp thinks that just lying about Roe v. Wade is still the right way to go. Former Sen. Norm Coleman, who is campaigning for Romney in Ohio, told a group of voters yesterday that Romney would have no power to eliminate abortion rights through the Supreme Court:

“President Bush was president eight years, Roe v. Wade wasn’t reversed. He had two Supreme Court picks, Roe v. Wade wasn’t reversed,” former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) told a Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Beechwood, Ohio. “It’s not going to be reversed.”

If Coleman were to do some simple counting, he would realize that Bush did not have the opportunity to put an anti-Roe majority on the Court. His appointments of Samuel Alito and John Roberts only got the Right very, very close to that long-held goal. Mitt Romney would unquestionably and deliberately put them over the edge.

But of course, Coleman knows that. And so does Romney. They're just hoping that they can tell anti-choice activists one thing and abortion rights supporters another, and somehow get away with it.