There was a lot of talk at the Missouri Democratic Convention about the new voter ID bill. Robin Carnahan made an excellent speech detailing the problems with the proposed bill (she expanded on this in a Huffington Post diary), and Rep. Lacy Clay highlighted Jay Nixon’s strong stance against new voter ID restrictions. Basically, the law would knock up to 240,000 Missourians off the voter rolls to combat a problem for which no evidence exists.
So what do we do about it? The bill is headed for the Missouri Senate, and about the best we can hope for is that a filibuster holds. This would be a good chance for Senator Koster to show he is a true Democrat and is willing to fight for the rights of the elderly, the poor, and minorities who would overwhelmingly be affected by the voter purge. Even in the event of a filibuster, the Republicans will probably break it with a PQ (“moving the previous question”, also known as the nuclear option) as they have done in recent sessions to get their way. So it then becomes paramount that the public be made aware of the problems with this bill before they vote on it in early August.
Fortunately, there’s also an extremely high profile statewide Democratic primary the same day the voter ID law would be placed on the ballot. Three Democrats are running for Attorney General, and if all of them speak often and loudly against the proposed law, in conjunction with other Missouri Democrats with big megaphones, the larger Democratic turnout might be able to overcome it. Jeff Harris is doing just that with a prominent anti-voter ID tool on his website: http://www.electjeffharris.com…
Let’s hope the other Attorney General candidates join him soon in this effort.
I’m only too happy to see Chris Koster and Margaret Donnelly also display proudly that they are against a new voter ID law. This includes frequently telling the press, blasting e-mails to their lists, and/or prominently displaying it on their websites. If so, I’ll update my post.
Of course, my senator is Jeff Smith so I feel confident he would do the right thing anyway.
This is a good point about Koster:
We’ll also see if this Harris tool is just a way to harvest e-mail addresses and ask for money. Oh look – a message from him already asking, yes … asking for a contribution. What a surprise. Not. And with no link to click for me to unsubscribe. So hopefully there is no subscription aspect to this and I won’t get another e-mail from him. Shall we place bets on that?
Back in 2006, when cats were cats and the Senator from Cass County was still a Republican, Koster voted for the Voter ID Bill. As
The Political Fix notes, this puts Koster in a pretty tough predicament. Either he is a flip-flopper or he continues to be in favor of disenfranchising thousands of voters. Twenty bucks says Donnelly and most certainly Harris have their press releases ready, regardless of which position Koster takes.
You know, the “this proposal will cost [x]” sort of thing?
Just curious since I was reading through my 95/96 Blue Book (thanks Dennis Bonner), and spotted the Hancock II vote, which had an impacts section that presumably tilted the undecideds against it big time (not that it wasn’t doomed before election day, but..).
Just curious, is the impact a commission decision, a decision by Carnahan’s office? or by Nixon? or someone else?
(For reference, the Hancock II whupping is preserved here.)
The other example of the power of impacts is here. But JAIL for Judges is vastly more insane than Voter ID. So it makes sense to put “If approved, the proposed amendment will likely be challenged in court and may be declared to be in violation of the US Constitution” for the JAIL Amendment. Nothing says whupping like a 89/11 victory for No on an amendment.