Ex-felons’ voting rights fool officials

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Survey finds almost half are unclear on certain aspects of the law

By Gina Smith

The State

S.C. election officials lack knowledge of some voting rules for people with criminal records, according to a new survey. Wednesday, representatives from the ACLU and the S.C. Progressive Network released a survey of election officials in each of South Carolina’s 46 counties.

On questions like whether people with misdemeanor convictions and people with out-of-state felony convictions may vote, an average of 48 percent of officials got it wrong. On basic eligibility questions, like whether residents with felony records could vote, officials fared much better, with about 5 percent getting the answer wrong.

“The history in South Carolina is preventing people from voting, and we’re still living that history,” said Brett Bursey, director of the S.C. Progressive Network. Several people the Network attempted to register to vote recently thought they couldn’t vote because of past incarcerations.

“The people on the streets don’t understand (the rules), and if they go to their election commission, they’re going to get this kind of wrong information,” Bursey said.

The two organizations hope the survey will result in more training for election officials. They also want the state to notify people when they regain their right to vote.

The State Election Commission, which oversees the 46 county election commissions, is questioning the survey’s methodology.

“I don’t know what to think about the survey,” said Chris Whitmire, commission spokesman. “I don’t know how it was conducted and who they talked to at the (election commission) offices, how were the questions asked and if there was any bias in the questions.” Whitmire also noted some of the questions were misleading.

Under South Carolina law, those convicted of felonies are prohibited from voting until they complete their sentences, including parole and probation. Those convicted of violating any election law – felonies or misdemeanors – are also prohibited from voting until their sentences have been served. Then, the right to vote is restored.

If convicted of any other misdemeanor, the person loses the right to vote while incarcerated.

All employees of the state’s election commissions must complete a state certification program, Whitmire said. An additional class is required annually.

Survey questions were asked of whoever answered the phone at the election commissions, to simulate the experience of regular callers, said Rachel Bloom of the ACLU.

Whitmire said the election commission may send a letter to the county commissions, reiterating voting rules to workers.

Results mixed in voting rights study

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State restores rights when sentences finished

By Jim Davenport

Associated Press

Sept. 18

COLUMBIA — An American Civil Liberties Union survey released Wednesday finds South Carolina election officials generally know that ex-felons can vote when they’ve completed their sentences. But the survey also shows that those officials don’t do so well when they are responding to more specific questions that affect 1,500 people completing prison, jail or probation time every month.

The civil rights organization has conducted similar surveys in 20 states, said Rachel Bloom, who oversees the group’s ex-felon voting programs. “The news isn’t all bad in South Carolina,” Bloom said.

The surveys were conducted in the state’s 46 counties with college students phoning and telling an election official they were conducting a survey on felon voting.

The results showed correct answers from 40 counties when asked about whether people could register to vote if they had completed parole, probation or incarceration time for a felony convictions. However, just over half got it right when asked about voting after being convicted in another state or for a federal offense.

South Carolina Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire said that some of the questions appeared to be confusing and that he wasn’t sure about the methodology used. “It’s hard for me to put a value on what their percentages are,” Whitmire said.

Still, he said, “county voter registration officials can do better jobs. We all can do better at what we do.”

The ACLU and South Carolina Progressive Network say the survey’s results show local election officials need to have a better understanding of the law. “The history of voter registration in the United States is a history of preventing people from voting and we’re still living that history,” said Brett Bursey. the Progressive Network’s executive director.

The groups called for better training of election officials and law changes that would restore voting rights immediately after someone leaves prison or jail. They also want to add the state Corrections Department and Parole and Probation to a list of agencies responsible for registering voters.

Whitmire said there are regular training sessions for county election officials and the Election Commission doesn’t oppose allowing those two agencies to join others as so-called “motor-voter” agencies.

A handful of state agencies register voters now, including the state Department of Motor Vehicles, Department of Social Service, Department of Health and Environmental Control and others that serve people with disabilities, such as the state Commission for the Blind.

Bursey also said the state quickly notifies felons after they’re convicted that they’ve lost voting rights, but does little afterward to tell them when they can vote.

Whitmire said letters mailed in the future to notify felons they’ve lost voting rights will tell convicts they can re-register once they’ve completed their sentences.ACLU: SC officials know when ex-felons may vote.

The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy

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By Joan Lamunyon Sanford
Executive Director, NM Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

Much has been said about 17-year-old Bristol Palin’s pregnancy and the so-called “right” decision she made to choose parenting over abortion. But we should remember that what is the right decision for Bristol may not be the right decision for all young women with an unplanned pregnancy.

Bristol is fortunate to have loving parents who support her decision, and all of our youth deserve the same. Loving parents who will support them in whatever decision they make. Sadly, this is not always true.

The decision about how to resolve an unplanned pregnancy, whether through abortion, adoption or parenting is a deeply personal decision for a young woman. Most talk to their parents or other trusted adults, including their clergy. Many seek prayerful guidance from their own religious or spiritual traditions. The notion that their religious tradition would insist that they continue their pregnancy is inaccurate. The mainline Protestant and Jewish denominations that are members of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice support a woman in making what ever is the best decision for her, including abortion, according to her faith and her life circumstances.

Bristol is also fortunate that she has access to affordable pre-natal care, and that her family has the resources to make sure she has the support she needs to finish high school. Again, not all of our youth have these options, especially in primarily rural states like Alaska or New Mexico.

The Palin family has requested privacy for themselves and Bristol during this difficult time, something we all should have, even though Governor Palin has chosen to put her family and their values under a spotlight. Bristol and her future husband should be treated respectfully, but we as a nation now have the opportunity to learn more about an issue that most of us and most candidates would rather not face, our country’s high teen pregnancy rate, the highest for all industrialized nations.

So before you make your decision about any candidate, state or federal, ask them if they support medically accurate, comprehensive sexuality education for our youth. We have a moral obligation to provide our youth with the best and most accurate information so that if they become sexually active, they can make an informed decision to protect themselves from unplanned pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Punitive, mandatory parental notification or consent laws do not reduce abortion and teen pregnancy; they only drive youth without loving, supportive parents to desperate measures when they are facing an unplanned pregnancy. Young women who do not inform their parents may have very sound reasons. Often they fear physical abuse or abandonment, or their pregnancy may be the result of incest. Compassion demands that we not subject them to more trauma.

We should all work to provide our youth and their families with all of the resources they need to make their best decisions regarding sex and sexuality, in keeping with their own faith and values.

Sanford is the executive director of NM Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

Postville hearings: justice lost in translation?

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By Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas

I was one of 16 interpreters who served both weeks of the Postville [ICE raid] hearings. Unlike judges, prosecutors, or attorneys, I was present at every step of the process. It is my duty as an impartial expert witness and officer of the court to ensure that the court is not misled, and to bring to its attention any impediments to due process.

I have done so in the best interest of the Federal Court I am proud to serve, and with the conviction that if our honorable judges had known how this judicial experiment would turn out, they would have never allowed it.

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During these two weeks in May I observed these flaws:

• Detainees’ quarters were not certified.

• The court failed to maintain physical and operational independence from ICE prosecution, and a level playing field for the defense.

• There was inadequate access to counsel.

• No meaningful presumption of innocence.

• Defendants appeared not to understand their rights and charges.

• Bail hearings and other due process rights were denied.

• The charge of identity theft, used to force a plea, lacked foundation and was never tested for probable cause.

• Defendants did not know what a Social Security Number was, and were not guilty of “intent” crimes.

• Guilty pleas were obtained under duress.

• Judges had no sentencing discretion, pursuant to a binding plea agreement.

• Sole providers, whose families are in jeopardy, now endure a cruel and unusual psychological punishment, the foreseeable effect of prison time on common parents.

Abridgement of process produced wholesale injustice at the other end:

• Parents, begging to be deported: put in jail at public expense.

• Proud working mothers: branded like cattle with the scarlet letter of an ankle monitor, dehumanized, and reduced to begging at the doors of the church, as they were released on “humanitarian grounds.”

• The town of Postville devastated; and the kinship ties our noble people are quick to forge with all newcomers, painfully severed.

• Families and friends separated.

I saw the Bill of Rights denied and democratic values threatened by the breakdown of checks and balances. And it all appeared to be within the framework of the law, pursuant to a broken immigration system.

Postville lays bare a grave distortion in the legal structure of government.

Post 9/11, ICE was granted power to wage the war on terror. But since 2006, it has diverted resources, even from disaster relief, to an escalating and unauthorized war on immigration.
The fact is our laws have not kept up with the growth in enforcement. Congress failed to pass immigration reform and ICE has filled the legal void by enacting its own version of it.
Now, we have a serious contradiction: the growth of authoritarian rule inside a democratic government. This entity can simultaneously wield immigration and criminal codes, plus issue administrative rules; leaving no room for constitutional guarantees. It co-opts other branches of government: Social Security, U.S. Attorney, Federal Court…and uses appropriations to recruit local police for immigration enforcement: setting neighbor against neighbor, and dangerously dividing the nation.

With the help of local sheriffs, Postville repeats itself daily, while the harshness of border enforcement is reenacted in the American Heartland, with great collateral damage to our citizens and communities. It is a rush, to raid as much as possible, before Congress regains the vision and courage of the Founding Fathers to restore the law of the land. Part of immigration reform is redefining ICE jurisdiction over immigration and criminal matters, without impairing the agency’s ability to defend us from terrorist threats.

Our national unity requires not just comprehensive, but compassionate immigration reform, to befit the dignity of this great country, built upon the shoulders of immigrants, by their children.

Camayd-Freixas is a professor of modern languages at Florida International University. This article was provided by The American Forum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational organization that provides the media with the views of state experts on major public concerns in order to stimulate informed discussion.

Katrina Pain Index: New Orleans Three Years Later

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By Bill Quigley
t r u t h o u t

Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast three years ago this week. The president promised to do whatever it took to rebuild. But the nation is trying to fight wars in several countries and is dealing with economic crisis. The attention of the president wandered away. As a result, this is what New Orleans looks like today.

0. Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post-Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant – compared to 116,708 homeowners.

0. Number of apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing Development.

0. Amount of data available to evaluate performance of publicly financed, privately run charter schools in New Orleans in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years.

.008. Percentage of rental homes that were supposed to be repaired and occupied by August 2008 which were actually completed and occupied – a total of 82 finished out of 10,000 projected.

1. Rank of New Orleans among US cities in percentage of housing vacant or ruined.

1. Rank of New Orleans among US cities in murders per capita for 2006 and 2007.

4. Number of the 13 City of New Orleans Planning Districts that are at the same risk of flooding as they were before Katrina.

10. Number of apartments being rehabbed so far to replace the 896 apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the Lafitte Housing Development.

11. Percent of families who have returned to live in Lower Ninth Ward.

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Women’s Equality Day

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Today marks the anniversary of women’s securing the right to vote, in 1920, after 72 years of struggle.

We’ve come a long way. But we have a long way to go. Consider:

• Women lack equal pay, making $.77 for every dollar men earn.

• The US has no guaranteed medical leave for childbirth. (168 countries do.)

• The US is near the bottom of the list in our public support for quality child care for children of working parents.

• Access to affordable birth control is under attack.

• Reproductive rights are threatened.

• Women make up 16 percent of representatives in Congress.

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Who’s more elitist?

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By Jamison Foser
Media Matters

Coverage of candidates’ ability to relate to voters ignores their policy positions

With Barack Obama and John McCain each trying portray the other as an out-of-touch, wealthy elitist, there’s one thing missing from media coverage of the skirmish: an assessment of what the two candidates’ policy positions say about how well they understand and care about the needs of average Americans.

The latest imbroglio was sparked by John McCain’s admission on Wednesday that he does not know how many houses he owns. That statement came on the heels of McCain’s initial refusal last weekend to define “rich,” after which he indicated a yearly salary of $5 million is the threshold for being rich, a comment he then suggested was a joke. But McCain never did define the term, even though he has in the past based his opposition to tax cuts he now supports on the fact that they disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

The Obama campaign quickly responded with an ad pointing out that McCain didn’t know how many homes he owns, and answering the question for the Arizona senator: seven homes worth a total of $13 million, according to the Obama campaign.

McCain’s camp responded angrily, with spokesperson Brian Rogers defending McCain: “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison” and saying Obama’s house is “a frickin’ mansion.” Apparently forgetting that just a few days earlier, their candidate suggested that you aren’t rich unless you make $5 million a year, McCain’s campaign also mocked Obama for making $4 million last year.

Naturally, the news media rushed to cover the fight. Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post explained the importance:

In politics, there is nothing worse than appearing out of touch.

From time immemorial, a candidate who is effectively portrayed as forgetting about the “little” people, of having “gone Washington,” of living higher on the hog than voters, loses.

Class remains a powerful motivator for many voters in the country. Politicians are forever trying to cast their candidacies as closely rooted in the communities from which they sprung — a purposeful attempt to ensure that voters know that the candidate “understands the problems of people like you.” Put simply: The worst thing you can call a politician is an elitist.

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Making Money on a New Cold War

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By Morgan Strong
Consortium News

The Russia-Georgia clash has generated heated anti-Moscow rhetoric from John McCain and U.S. neoconservatives about a new Cold War, a prospect that most people might see in a negative light but which many military contractors surely view as a financial plus.

One unstated reality about revived tensions between Washington and Moscow is that it will mean a bonanza in military spending – billions of additional dollars for anti-missile weapons systems, larger armies, construction of new bases in Eastern Europe, etc.

Indeed, the spending on Cold War II could dwarf what military contractors are now making on the “war on terror” – and the prospect of spending on both conflicts simultaneously should make arms industry executives drool.

Others who stand to profit grandly from a new East-West showdown include tough-talking politicians and their friends in Washington think tanks – like Heritage, AEI and CSIS – that have long fattened up on contributions from the defense industry and related corporations.

There would be losers, too, like taxpayers who would see more of their dollars go to “national security” and less to domestic needs, from repairs to the crumbling infrastructure to the costs of health care, education, the environment and Social Security.

But, in many ways, the exploitation of Cold War fears – to divert money away from domestic needs to the coffers of what Dwight Eisenhower dubbed “the military-industrial complex” – is nothing new.

Arguably, the original Cold War ended under Eisenhower’s former Vice President, Richard Nixon, who as President returned from Moscow in 1972 carrying a strategic agreement that he had reached with what was already a rapidly decaying Soviet Union.

“In Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945,” Nixon said. “With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear, our two peoples, and for all the peoples of the world.”

Nixon unveiled a new era of realpolitik cooperation between Washington and Moscow that he called “détente.”

However, while reducing fears and lowering tensions might be good news for many people, it wasn’t welcomed by the corporations that profited from the fears and the tensions, nor by the intellectual hired guns who had built lucrative careers in politics, media and academia by exaggerating those fears and exacerbating those tensions.

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