772 search results for ""voter fraud""

Voter ID and GOP women: acceptable losses
by Tom Sullivan

GOP-sponsored voting restrictions passed across the country in recent years will come into full force as the primaries roll on. Laws such as North Carolina’s massive 2013 election law, for example, ostensibly passed to combat all-but-nonexistent voter fraud. The Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA) is awaiting the judgment of a federal court, much like the federal court that last Friday overturned the GOP’s congressional redistricting in the state. Republicans weakened some of VIVA’s provisions just days in advance of going to court. Why? Because they knew.

We will begin to see soon who the casualties are. Some of the effects were felt this month by Reba Bowser, 86, of Asheville, North Carolina. A staunch Republican, Bowser attempted to comply with the new voter identification requirements put in place by her party’s state leadership. She went with her son, Ed, to obtain a photo ID at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Peter Onge of the Charlotte Observer takes up the tale:

On Monday, they went to the Department of Motor Vehicles in west Asheville. There, they laid out all of Reba’s paperwork for a DMV official – her birth records from Pennsylvania, her Social Security card, the N.H. driver’s license she let expire because she no longer wanted to drive.

But there was a problem. When Reba got married in 1950, she had her name legally changed. Like millions upon millions of women, she swapped out her middle name for her maiden name.

Reba Miller Bowser, the married name she’d used for decades, had never been an issue before, not in applying for driver’s licenses in other states or for flying to foreign countries. Until now. The computer kicked out a discrepancy and the DMV denied her application.

The DMV failed to mention a provision in the new law that would allow Reba to sign a name-change affidavit. Bowser’s daughter-in-laws was none too pleased. Her son got the point:

It’s an issue that the Bowsers haven’t followed much, at least until it snagged Reba. But now, Ed says: “I’m thinking how this affected an 86-year-old woman with limited transportation and resources. You think about extending that to poor communities and minority communities.”

That’s what Republicans were thinking, too, when they crafted the voter ID law. They knew the hassle they created would mostly affect the people who vote for their opponents.

But that is where most of these tales of woe and intrigue stop. Dahliah Lithwick speculated in 2013 that these laws designed to suppress the votes of Democrats might also disproportionately suppress the votes of Republican women. With the focus on how voter ID laws affect Democrat-leaning groups, this is an effect the press and studies routinely miss. It speaks volumes about the Machiavellian nature of the GOP’s vote suppression effort. I wrote about it in regard to North Carolina’s voter ID law for Crooks and Liars three years ago:

Democratic voters are the GOP’s primary but not its only targets. VIVA is a weapon of mass disruption that will harm Republicans as well.

In a report issued in April, the NC State Board of Elections estimated that 176,091 registered Democrats are without the state-issued photo identity card most will have to pay $20-$32 for before they can vote under VIVA. Plus 73,787 unaffiliated and 1,126 Libertarian voters. Among registered Republican voters, 67,639 have no photo identity cards. Over 2/3 are women.

See, GOP leaders are playing the percentages. They figure that VIVA’s voting restrictions will hurt more Democrats than Republicans — and they will hurt Republicans. Still, Republican leaders calculate that, in the end, the net result will help them hold onto power. Indefinitely.

But the real story North Carolina and the rest of the country misses is that Republican leaders consider any of their own voters hurt by these vote suppression measures collateral damage. Acceptable casualties. Expendables.

And two-thirds of them women. Meet Reba Bowser.

“You see? I kill my own men.” – supervillain Cassanova Frankenstein, Mystery Men (1999).

They’ll stop at nothing

by digby

It’s not enough that you have be prepared to take the LSATs in order to cast your vote these days. Now they’re making sure that nobody can help people register either:

Republican lawmakers approved a measure Thursday that would make felons out of people who return the early ballots of others to the polls.

The 34-23 House vote, with every Democrat present opposed, was propelled by arguments that the current system is ripe for fraud. Rep. Heather Carter, R-Cave Creek, also sided with foes

Rep. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, cited testimony from Maricopa County Elections Director Karen Osborne who spoke during a prior attempt to enact this provision. She told lawmakers there have been situations where individuals claiming to be county election workers have gone door-to-door trying to pick up ballots.

“This is a problem,” he said.

Rep. Bob Thorpe, R-Flagstaff, said allowing strangers to take someone’s ballot would allow them to decide which ones to keep and which ones to throw away. In fact, he said someone might decide to throw away the ballots of all women.

By contrast, Rep. Debbie McCune Davis said the state should not be erecting barriers to voting.

HB 2023 makes it a Class 6 felony to handle anyone else’s voted or unvoted ballot. There are exceptions for family members, those in the same household and professional caregivers.

“This bill criminalizes the act of assisting a person in casting a ballot unless they fit into a designated category,” she said. “The practical impact of this legislation may be to suppress voting and should be examined.”

Rep. Lisa Otondo, D-Yuma, said it’s not always easy for people to get their ballots back in the mail on time. She said there are many areas of the state where people have to go to the post office to get their mail.

And Rep. Charlene Fernandez, D-Yuma, put a number on that, saying it would affect at least 10,000 people in her district, largely in the San Luis area.

But Rep. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City, had no sympathy.

He noted the issue involves early ballots which voters specifically request be delivered to their homes as an alternative to going to the polls. Borrelli said there is plenty of time for people to review the ballots, fill them out and get them back in the mail.

And he rejected the contention that it’s too difficult to mail it back. He said these same people have to find ways to get other things to the post office.

“I don’t understand how you pay your bills out there,” Borrelli said.

The measure now goes to the Senate.

Make it as cumbersome as possible to vote. That’s the American way.

And keep in mind, that this all to prevent systemic voter fraud which is non-existent.

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Yes, they are suppressing the vote

by digby

No surprise to people with common sense but it’s nice to have the data:

For years, researchers warned that laws requiring voters to show certain forms of photo identification at the poll would discriminate against racial minorities and other groups. Now, the first study has been released showing that the proliferation of voter ID laws in recent years has indeed driven down minority voter turnout, and by a significant amount.

In a new paper entitled “Voter Identification Laws and the Suppression of Minority Votes”, researchers at the University of California, San Diego — Zoltan Hajnal, Nazita Lajevardi — and Bucknell University — Lindsay Nielson — used data from the annual Cooperative Congressional Election Study to compare states with strict voter ID laws to those that allow voters without photo ID to cast a ballot. They found a clear and significant dampening effect on minority turnout in strict voter ID states.

“Democratic turnout drops by an estimated 8.8 percentage points in general elections when strict photo identification laws are in place,” compared to just 3.6 percentage points for Republicans.
(Note: ThinkProgress was provided an updated version of the paper [not currently available on the web] that includes data from the 2014 elections. The numbers in this article reflect the updated paper, not the web version linked above.)

For example, the researchers found that in primary elections, “a strict ID law could be expected to depress Latino turnout by 9.3 points, Black turnout by 8.6 points, and Asian American turnout by 12.5 points.”

The impact of strict voter ID was also evident in general elections, where minority turnout plummeted in relation to the white vote. “For Latinos in the general election, the predicted gap more than doubles from 4.9 points in states without strict ID laws to 13.5 points in states with strict photo ID laws,” the study found. That gap increased by 2.2 points for African Americans and by 5 points for Asian Americans. The effect was even more pronounced in primary elections.
The study found that strict voter ID laws had little impact on younger voters as a whole, while there were “small indications” that poorer Americans were adversely impacted, though likely not to the same degree racial minorities were.

Given that minorities tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, researchers were left with little doubt that strict voter ID laws were hurting Democratic candidates.

And what makes this especially sweet is the fact that there is no evidence of the voter fraud these people got a bunch of conservative judges to pretend existed so as to keep the Democratic Party coalition from winning elections. It is one of the most cynical strategies ever undertaken, with the full cooperation of conservative state legislatures, and the state and federal courts.

Bravo conservatives. You’ve done yourself proud.

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So many states, so many votes to suppress
by Tom Sullivan

The Iowa caucuses are over. The pollsters are licking their wounds. Donald Trump met his Waterloo, writes Joan Walsh, bested by Ted Cruz. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are in a tie so close that several precincts resorted to a coin toss, “one of many oddities of the Iowa caucuses.”

What that means is upcoming primaries and the even general election could feel the impact of new voter ID laws in place for their first presidential election. A recent study begins to support that despite assurances to the contrary that they do indeed have a discriminatory effect. More on that in a minute.

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio thinks voter purges, long lines at the polls, and voter ID laws are no big deal. Ari Berman writes that the GOP is now the party of Ted Cruz, who championed Texas’ strict voter ID law and, as Texas’ solicitor general, filed a brief in support of Indiana’s ID law that argued “there is no right to be free from any inconvenience or burden in voting.” The GOP has erected hurdles to voting in state after state as though democracy is a track and field event.

Berman observes,

It was only a decade ago that George W. Bush signed a 25-year reauthorization of the VRA—which had been approved 390–33 in the House and 98–0 in the Senate—but it feels like a century has passed. Today, critics of the VRA, who used to be a minority in the GOP, are now the vocal majority.

Former RNC chair Michael Steele called it “a slap in the face of those Republicans who fought for the law and those Republicans who fought for civil rights since Reconstruction.”

Throughout the expansion in these laws, proponents look into cameras and tell the public they are about “election integrity” or “ballot security.” Or about restoring confidence in an election system they have spent years systematically undermining, crying voter fraud to build public support for new voting restrictions. And it’s no, nay, never, are these new “common sense” rules meant to discriminate against American citizens who tend to vote for Democrats.

North Carolina’s voter ID law is still in the courts, but will be in force for the March 15 primary. Writing in the Raleigh news and Observer on Sunday, Ned Barnett argued:

Republican legislators say they passed the photo ID requirement to prevent people from representing themselves as someone else at the polls. They’ve shown no evidence that this is a problem, but they love the ease of defending their solution – it’s common sense. Cue the checks, planes and medications.

Behind that seemingly harmless rationale is a subtle and unspoken Republican motive: A surprisingly high number of people don’t have a driver’s license or an acceptable alternative photo ID. And many of them are low-income and minority voters who tend to vote Democratic.

Barnett suggests it is because North Carolina Republican leaders are really afraid of American voters. “How do we know? It’s common sense.”

A study from the University of California, San Diego offers support for Barnett’s common sense. Using a 50,000 person validated vote in the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies, the authors eliminate the skew from self-reporting of voting. “Self-reported turnout averages about 25 percent higher than actual turnout,” they write. They looked for differential effects of ID laws on voting among different groups, beyond simple aggregate numbers of votes. The authors find that “strict voter identification laws do, in fact, substantially alter the makeup of who votes and ultimately do skew democracy in favor of whites and those on the political right.”

All of this has major political consequences. As Figure 2 illustrates the rate at which Republicans and conservatives outvote Democrats and liberals is much higher when strict photo laws are in place. All else equal, Republicans and conservatives tend to vote at slightly higherrates than Democrats and liberals but that gaps grows considerably in strict photo ID states. In particular, in general elections, the model predicts that the turnout gap between Republicans and Democrats doubles from 2.3 points to 5.6 points when strict photo ID laws are instituted. Likewise the predicted gap between conservatives and liberals more than doubles from 4.7 to12.6 points. In primaries, the gains associated with stricter voter ID laws are even moredramatic. The turnout advantage of those on the right is three to five times larger in strict photo identification states, all else equal. These results suggest that by instituting strict photo ID laws, states could minimize the influence of voters on the left and could dramatically alter the political leaning of the electorate

Furthermore,

The analysis suggests that strict ID laws of any sort do impact the racial balance of the electorate. Working through the effects of the significant interactions, we find that the gap in turnout between Latinos and whites is estimated to grow by 13.3 points in strict non-photo ID states. Likewise the gap between Blacks and whites is 7.4 points higher in strict non-photo ID states all else equal. The pattern of estimated effects for primary elections is nearly identical. Inprimaries with strict non-photo laws, Latinos fall a further 14.2 points behind whites and Blacksend up 11.4 points further behind whites, according to the model. Requiring identification of anysort appears to have a real effect on who votes and who does not. These laws hurt the minority community and help to give whites an outsized voice in American democracy.

New study finds that voter ID laws increase turnout gaps between Republicans and Democrats. https://t.co/00WbeCXKny pic.twitter.com/ISjjMLK359— sean (@SeanMcElwee) January 30, 2016

The effects of voter ID laws are concerning in isolation. But they are perhaps even more alarming when viewed across the longer arc of American history. The effects of voter ID lawsthat we see here are eerily similar to the impact of measures like poll taxes, literacy tests,residency requirements, and at-large elections which were used by the white majority decadesand centuries ago to help deny blacks many basic rights (Keyssar 2009, Kousser 1999, Parker1990, Filer, Kenny and Morton 1991). The measures of old and current voter ID laws todayremain eerily similar: they were both instituted by advocates who claimed they would help toensure the integrity and legitimacy of democracy. Both sets of measures – new and old – alsoserve to distort democracy and reduce the influence of racial minorities. The racially biased measures of old have since been condemned and revoked but they were allowed to stand for long periods of American electoral history.

Count me as agreeing with Michael Steele on this one.

(h/t Sean McElwee)

If you can’t let them join you, kick them out of the country

by digby

“There’s a reason why I think the new politically correct term is no longer illegal aliens; it’s undocumented Democrats.” — Ted Cruz

I have written a ton of stuff about immigration over the years. It’s been bubbling up in the GOP as a major voting issue for decades.  I have this up today at Salon:

Happy New Year everyone!

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Restoring the white franchise

by Tom Sullivan

Give me that old time religion. Or at least, that old time franchise. Bring back the good old days when white, Christian men could run this great democracy the way God intended when he handed down the U.S. Constitution on tablets to George Washington in 1776.
Writing in the Washington Post, William H. Frey of the Brookings Institution examines the latest rearguard effort to stave off white political obsolescence. The Supreme Court earlier this month heard arguments in Evenwel v. Abbott. At issue: whether government exists to represent all the people or just eligible voters. As Dahlia Lithwick explained:

If the court sides with Evenwel and accepts the view that only voters or even registered voters are to be counted when drawing district lines, children, legal residents, and people who have committed felonies or the mentally ill—all of whom are certainly affected when legislators legislate—are not to be counted for apportionment purposes. In the words of the Obama administration, which sides with Texas in this case against the two plaintiffs, whole swaths of the population become “invisible or irrelevant to our system of representative democracy.”

And your point is? That’s how this nation was founded. The plaintiffs just want America to get back to its founding principles.
Their worry is apportionment by total population rather than by voting population dilutes (and saps and impurifies?) the votes of rural voters compared with those in urban centers where larger populations of underaged (and possibly undocumented) people reside. The principle at issue, they argue, is not equal representation, but equal protection for eligible voters. (If they are the right kind of voters.) These are the people who chase voter fraud for the same reason: fear of losing control to the Other. Is it about race? Yes. But even more, it’s about power.
Frey writes:

This month in Evenwel v. Abbott, the Supreme Court heard arguments for altering the long-standing principle of “one person, one vote” by substituting voting-age citizens for total population when drawing legislative districts within states. While much has been said about the implications of eliminating noncitizens from the population on which district lines are based, a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in this case could have an even larger impact: shortchanging the interests of minority children and their families. That’s because nearly half of the nation’s under-18 population is made up of racial minorities, while 70 percent of voting-age citizens are white. The United States is undergoing a boom in demographic diversity, but it’s the younger population that’s being transformed first.
Removing the racially diverse youth population from the apportionment calculation would intensify a divisive cultural generation gap that pervades politics and public attitudes in this country. Pew Research polling has shown that the mostly white older population is far less accepting of immigrant minorities and government support for social programs than is the increasingly minority younger population. The rise of immigrant-bashing presidential candidate Donald Trump as a hero among older white Republican primary voters represents an extreme version of the pushback against a demographically changing country.

One imagines that if Frank Luntz gathered a focus group of Trump supporters and told them this decision might disenfranchise young people, especially minority young people, their all-American reaction might be, “Yeah, so?” If people want representation, they ought to have (white) skin in the game.

*I hope we can keep this old blog going over the next year.  If you would like to keep reading what we produce here, I hope you’ll consider dropping a little something into the kitty.

Happy Hollandaise everyone! — d

The GOP increasingly believes they have the election in the bag

by digby

I forced myself to watch some wingnut TV last night — Fox, OAN and Newsmax  — and it’s clear that they all believe the election is in the bag no matter which Republican gets the nomination. Or, at least that’s what they are saying.

Why? Well, because that dreamy Republican FBI Chief James Comey is going to put Hillary Clinton in jail:

Comey appears fearless. As a kid, he was held hostage by a gunman during a home invasion; with his younger brother, he escaped twice, only to be caught again. This is the kind of straight arrow that Mrs. Clinton does not want on her case, and that Attorney General Loretta Lynch may not be able to corral. Asked by Scott Pelley during the 60 Minutes piece whether he didn’t have a duty to support President Bush on the eavesdropping matter, Comey answered, “No, my responsibility, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

What could bring Hillary down? According to some who have followed the case closely, Mrs. Clinton could be charged with breaking several laws, including willfully transmitting or retaining Top Secret material using a private server, unauthorized removal of classified information from government control or storing such information in an unauthorized location, lying to Congress, destruction of government property (wiping the server), lying under oath to a judge about having given the government all her emails or obstruction of justice.

There is no evidence that the FBI is even investigating Clinton much less suspecting any of that but it’s an article of faith that she will be indicted before the election is even held and then the whole country will vote in whatever Republican is on the ballot pretty much by acclamation. Then Democrats will all admit they’ve always been wrong, wrong, wrong and let the Republicans run everything as God intended. Just so you know.

I did enjoy this though:

That dogged quest for justice and independence streak may come to haunt Hillary Clinton. Comey’s credibility expands when he warns Americans to be “deeply skeptical of government power,” as he did in a 60 Minutes interview. He cautioned, “You cannot trust people in power,” noting that the “founders knew that. That’s why they divided power among three branches, to set interest against interest.” Pressed to reassure the nation about the FBI’s surveillance activities, Comey confirmed “The promise I’ve tried to honor my entire career, that the rule of law and the design of the founders, right, the oversight of the courts and the oversight of Congress will be at the heart of what the FBI does.”

There’s certainly no reason to question whether a police agency injecting itself into the middle of an election might be suspect at all, though. No “government power” run amok there. That’s just upstanding law enforcement. But then Republicans pretty much insist on doing that sort of thing whenever they can get away with it so maybe they’ll do it this time too.

Recall the US Attorney scandal?

One of the fired prosecutors, David Iglesias of New Mexico, testified that he felt “leaned on” by Sen. Pete Domenici over a case he was pursuing. Iglesias said the New Mexico Republican and former mentor hung up on him after learning Iglesias would not seek indictments in a criminal investigation of Democrats before the 2006 election. “He said, ‘Are these going to be filed before November?'” Iglesias recalled. “I said I didn’t think so… to which he replied, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’ And then the line went dead. “I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach,” Iglesias testified. “Six weeks later I got the call that I had to move on.” The ousted prosecutor also said that Heather Wilson, a Republican House member from New Mexico, had called him about the same issue.

Using whatever means necessary whether it’s calling bogus voter fraud, closing polling stations or indicting opposition politicians on flimsy charges is a legitimate democratic process in their eyes. If Comey and the FBI are good partisan Republicans they’ll help out any way they can. And that means they may not be able to press charges but you can bet they’ll leak misleading information to feed the hungry little birdies in the press and the wingnut mob.

Anyway, this is what the wingnuts see as their “trump” card and they are very, very confident they’ve got the win.

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Stabbing yourself in the back

by digby

For some unknown reason I’ve been thinking about this all day today:

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was a collection of community-based organizations in the United States and internationally that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues…

ACORN conducted voter registration drives, as well as working to remove systemic barriers to registration of low and working-class voters. The Republican Party regularly alleged that it committed voter fraud, but few cases have been found or prosecuted. The organization conducted its own audits and cooperated with investigations of employees, referring some cases to law enforcement.

ACORN suffered an extremely damaging nationwide controversy beginning in the fall of 2009 after two conservative activists secretly made and released videos of staged interactions with low-level ACORN personnel in several offices, portraying them as encouraging criminal behavior. Some media publicized the videos without investigation. These videos were later found in several independent law enforcement investigations to have been partially falsified and selectively edited by the activists, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles.

The organization suffered an immediate loss of funding from government agencies with which it had contracts, and from private donors prior to the results of any investigations. Legislative amendments to spending bills in the United States House and Senate prohibited government funding of the group.

Four different independent investigations by various state and city Attorneys General and the GAO released in 2009 and 2010 cleared ACORN, finding its employees had not engaged in the alleged criminal activities and that the organization had appropriately managed its federal funding. Their reports described the videos as deceptively edited to present the workers in the worst possible light. The loss of funds had been too damaging and by March 2010, 15 of ACORN’s 30 state chapters had already closed. ACORN announced it was closing its remaining state chapters and disbanding.

Yeah, I guess the reason I’ve been thinking about this all day — and Shirley Sherrod and “General Betrayus” too — is because I’m seeing a bunch of embarrassing, timorous Democrats talking about Planned Parenthood and Clinton’s ridiculous email controversy and this story is a perfect example of how often they are easily frightened once the Villagers determine that something’s ripe for one of their feeding frenzies. Planned Parenthood will likely survive the assault but will be seriously weakened. That’s a scalp the Democrats know would be suicidal to give up entirely, no matter how much they would like to do it. It remains to be seen if they will adequately defend Clinton from this inane email nonsense.

I can’t think of such examples on the right. But then they don’t loathe themselves the way Democrats do.

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National Voter Registration Day – Tuesday
by Tom Sullivan

In which Latino voters flex their American muscle. And in which I agree with Team Trump. Politico reviews the part Latino voters will play in the 2016 elections:

Hispanic activists have two words for Donald Trump — thank you.

“I think the greatest thing to ever happen to the Hispanic electorate is a gentleman named Donald Trump, he has crystalized the angst and anger of the Hispanic community,” U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Javier Palomarez told POLITICO in an interview. “I think that we can all rest assured that Hispanics can turn out in record numbers.”

Let’s hope that’s true.

The Trump camp is not worried, and it says it sees more Hispanic voters as a good thing.

“I don’t hear any empirical evidence that that is going to happen,” campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said about the idea that more Hispanic voters could hurt his chances. “The more people that take part in the election process, the better, and I think it’s clear that Mr. Trump has invigorated people who aren’t traditionally participating in the process.”

I couldn’t agree more. That is a rather refreshing sentiment coming from a Republican campaign, considering Republicans’ decades of pretzel logic, “voter fraud” propaganda, and legislative legerdemain aimed at defunding and disenfranchising voters who traditionally do not support Republicans. How much of the cheap talk from Team Trump is any more than that remains to be seen. Cheap talk being its candidate’s stock in trade and all.

The Center for American Progress provides Top 6 Facts on the Latino Vote:

1. The number of Latinos is growing

By 2016, there will be an estimated 58.1 million Latinos in the United States. As of 2014—the most recent population estimates available—there were 55.4 million Latinos in the United States, making up 17.4 percent of the population. Between the last presidential election in 2012 and the next one in 2016, the Latino population will increase by 5 million people. Between 2014 and 2060, the Latino population is expected to increase 115 percent to some 119 million people; Latinos will be 29 percent of the U.S. population. 

2. The Latino electorate is increasing

Latinos over the age of 18 will comprise 16 percent of the U.S. adult population in 2016. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the 2016 Latino over-18 population at nearly 39.8 million. A total of 800,000 Latinos turn 18 each year—one every 30 seconds or more than 66,000 individuals per month. Ninety-three percent of Latino children are U.S.-born citizens and will be eligible to vote when they reach age 18. As of 2014, one in four children in the United States—17.6 million total—were Latino. This contributes to the fact that people of color already make up nearly a majority of the under-18 population nationally. The share of the U.S. population under age 18 that is Latino is expected to increase from around 24 percent in 2014 to more than 33 percent in 2060.

3. The Latino share of eligible voters is growing

Latinos will make up 13 percent of all eligible voters in 2016, a 2 percent increase from 2012. And the numbers are much higher in some states. In Florida, for example, the share of eligible voters who are Latino will increase from 17.1 percent in 2012 to 20.2 percent in 2016. In Nevada, the 2012 to 2016 Latino eligible voter increase is 15.9 percent to 18.8 percent. Projections show that Latino eligible voters could reach 28.5 million nationwide in 2016.

4. Latinos are underrepresented on registered voter rolls

In 2012, there were 13.7 million Latinos registered to vote. However, given that 23.3 million Latinos were eligible to vote that year, 9.6 million Latinos—41 percent—were eligible to vote but did not register. And this does not include Latinos that could naturalize but have not. As of 2013, 8.8 million lawful permanent residents were eligible to become citizens that had not naturalized; at least 3.9 million of them were from Latin American countries, with more than 2.7 million from Mexico.

5. Latinos are showing up in greater numbers at the polls

More than 11.2 million Latinos voted in the 2012 presidential election. While impressive, that still means that 2.6 million Latinos who were registered did not vote. Moreover, 12.1 million—52 percent—of the 23.3 million Latinos who were eligible to vote did not do so. Latino voters made up 8.4 percent of the 2012 voting electorate. This share is 15 percent higher than 2008, an increase of 1.5 million voters. For 2016, estimates show that the Republican presidential nominee must garner the support of 47 percent to 52 percent of Latino voters in order to win the general election.

6. Immigration is the top issue for Latino voters

Polling clearly shows that immigration is the key issue for Latino voters, with wide support for comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship and implementation of the recent administrative actions. Immigration comes in significantly ahead of the next two top issues—the economy and education.

Tuesday is National Voter Registration Day. Make the most of it.

Give me that old time Constitution
by Tom Sullivan

It was good for Samuel Adams. It’s good enough for me.

Donald Trump’s championing the elimination of birthright citizenshhip is a xenophobe’s dream. Trump is getting enough mileage out of hyping the “anchor baby” threat that many among the Republican presidential field are drafting off him, hoping to hang on long enough to pass him in the final laps. Talking Points Memo’s David Leopold debunks some of the nonsense, summing up Trump’s immigration reform plan in four words: They have to go.

When it comes down to it, the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment has very little to do with immigration; it is fundamentally focused on the preservation of civil rights. Trump’s extremist proposal to end birthright citizenship — whether by elimination or reinterpretation of the Citizenship Clause — comes at the grave cost of abridging civil rights, even hearkening back to the days of Dred Scott, when people were viewed as commodities to be bought and sold.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if you listen to conservative talk radio in Iowa. Media Matters reports:

Iowa radio host and influential conservative kingmaker Jan Mickelson unveiled an immigration plan that would make undocumented immigrants who don’t leave the country after an allotted time “property of the state,” asking, “What’s wrong with slavery?” when a caller criticized his plan.

Calling the Iowa state fair “the carnival of the damned,” Charlie Pierce wonders why any American politician would ever engage, not with Mickelson, but with the audience that tunes in for this sort of vulgarity.

Michael Keegan from People for the American Way condemns Republicans for entertaining the notion that we abandon the 14th Amendment:

The Republican presidential contenders’ rush to badmouth a basic constitutional right — in an apparent attempt to appeal to their supposedly Constitution-loving far-right base — speaks volumes about what they really mean when they talk about constitutionalism. They use their pocket Constitutions for the parts that come in handy. The rest of it? Not so much.

Besides, the Founders didn’t pass the 14th Amendment, so technically it’s not really the Constitution, is it? Give us that old time Constitution, back when we didn’t need the specter of voter fraud to justify keeping lesser-thans from the polls.

“Flexibility is the first principle of politics,” Richard Nixon once told a new staffer, Rick Perlstein wrote. Whether it’s the Constitution or the Bible, that flexibility is baked into the right’s anti-gay wedding cake.

They not only tolerate the relativism of which they accuse the left, they embrace it. Betsy Woodruff at the Daily Beast explains that far from being shunned by the GOP’s evangelical base, the religious right is embracing Trump in spite of his whatever faith, his string of marriages, and advocating “getting even” in his speech at Liberty University. After all, an eye for an eye is in the Bible, right?

Watch how often believers in nominally Christian America reference the Bible. Except when the Savior’s New Testament teachings about loving your neighbor, caring for the poor, rendering unto Caesar and turning the other cheek make them feel that Christ is too soft on personal responsibility or too left on social issues. Then they turn to the 39 pre-Christian books of the Bible filled with good, Old Testament-fashioned smiting and stoning and vengeance and wrath of God stuff – hoping to get a second opinion.

Old Testament Patriots approach America’s founding the same way. The Constitution is holy writ, yes, but when keeping to its laws and principles makes them feel soft on terror and people less American than they are, right-wingers turn to pre-ratification letters and speeches by the founders – particularly the ones whose ideas lost early arguments as the Constitution took shape – hoping to get a second opinion.