Two days ago, Chief Justice Roberts and the rest of that crowd launched an attack on minority voting. As usual, it seems like they twisted reality like so much Play-Doh in order to meet their needs.
Roberts claimed that Massachusetts has the worst rate of African-American voter participation in the country, which has (predictably) turned out to be nonsense.
From today’s Globe:
The problem is, Roberts is woefully wrong on those points, according to Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who on Thursday branded Roberts’s assertion a slur and made a declaration of his own. “I’m calling him out,” Galvin said.
Galvin was not alone in his view. Academics and Massachusetts politicians said that Roberts appeared to be misguided. A Supreme Court spokeswoman declined to offer supporting evidence of Roberts’s view, referring a reporter to the court transcript.
On Thursday, Galvin tried to set the record straight. “We have one of the highest voter registrations in the country,” he said, “so this whole effort to make a cheap-shot point at Massachusetts is deceptive.”
Massachusetts official challenges Chief Justice Roberts’ claim about voting
I guess if Roberts was honest and fair… he’d be a Liberal.
Roberts’ whole point is misleading to begin with. There is an inverse relationship between “selectivity” in registration and rate of voter participation.
Let’s say that a state puts up hurdles and precisely 1 black voter qualifies to register. Odds are pretty high that this voter will vote because she went through all that trouble to make it – so you get a 100% participation rate.
Let’s lessen the hurdles and make it so that 100 black voters will qualify. Again, the participation rate will be high because the hurdles screened out the less enthusiastic voters.
Let’s now say that a state lowers the barrier and aggressively registers every single black voter – maybe by making it automatic when you pay some kind of bill. The voter participation rate will decline because not every voter has the same level of enthusiasm. You’ve registered a lot people who don’t care about voting at all. By making it easier to register, you ensure that the participation rate will go down.
That is the very crux of the Voting Rights act. Conservatives want to make it harder for people to register to vote, liberals want to make it easier. The latter effort will reduce participation rate, but it will create a higher number of voters out of the population.
It still isn’t quite that simple; voter participation also decreases when poverty increases. See Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – if you’re struggling to survive, voting isn’t at the top of your to-do list. I’d bet that Massachusetts has a lower percentage of middle-class blacks than some Southern states. Additionally, Massachusetts does not allow early voting. That probably has something to do with decreased participation compared to states that do.
… is if Robert’s is a victim of (having participated in) epistemic closure. The source according to the Globe is probably a census document, badly interpreted and ignoring the margin of error. I’d be willing to bet, however, that this was the primary source and that he probably heard this idea from a news source rather than concluded it from looking at the raw data.
So what was his (news) source? (The court isn’t disclosing that.)
I can only hope that this gets him burned enough to be a learning opportunity for him on where he gets his analysis from.
Is anyone else concerned that Roberts, who was so active in the 1980s opposing efforts to strengthen the Voting Rights Act, is apparently now doing some of his own research (and not very well, it seems), or accepting non-record research from others, in order to strike down the Voting Rights Act? If a juror were doing this, the presiding judge would issue an instruction or a warning, oust the offending juror or even declare a mistrial.
But something like this might have been in a right-wing amicus brief.
to encourage voter participation.
The Canadian elections website states it well,
Roberts allegation was quite surprising and does not fit my experience from working on campaigns and voter registration in many communities across the state. In an effort to find what numbers Roberts was using to come to his conclusion, I found a thing called VEP, (Voter Eligible Population), which differs from the VAP (Voting Age Population). The United States Election Project has Massachusetts with 8.9% immigrant population and Mississippi with a 1.8% immigrant population. Much of our immigrant population consists of members of minority groups. This would naturally skew the percent of Massachusetts minorities that participate in elections.
One of my favorite political memories is participating in a voter registration drive at a new citizenship ceremony and there was the Secretary of the Commonwealth himself, with his sack lunch in one hand while directing us and his staff. “They come out the side door all at once, take a picture with their family and are gone in 5 minutes, so be ready, use 2 clipboards and move fast.” I have been a huge fan of Bill Galvin ever since. While there is always room to improve, there are a lot of hardworking activists and local election officials in Massachusetts, who are working with a passionate, hands on SOS, instead of fighting against the system. Something to celebrate.
Bill Galvin has done almost nothing to encourage voter participation. Think about the long lines to vote in the 2012 election and then consider his positions:
-He opposed pre-registration of 17 year olds
-He opposes early voting
-He opposed ballots in Chinese for our Asian citizens in precincts in Boston
Bill Galvin is a major embarrassment who occasionally tries to make a headline.
Everyone makes mistakes, Galvin on the Chinese ballots and you have erred on some of the other issues.
Currently, the Massachusetts Constitution restricts absentee voting to people who will be absent from their city or town on Election Day, have a physical disability that prevents them from voting at the polling place or cannot vote due to religious beliefs. Bill Galvin has gone on record numerous times encouraging local election officials to interpret this in the most liberal terms possible.
The pre-registration was to include 16 year olds. While Galvin worked with the parties to craft a bill, he has concerns along with local clerks on the current systems ability to track the info. A large percentage of 16 year olds will no longer be living at the same address when they vote for the first time. A national voter registration, where individuals are permanantly registered and only update their voting address may be a solution. A Pew study estimates approximately 2.7 mil duplicate voter registrations and 2.2 mil votes lost due to registration problems.
As to the long lines at some polling locations, local election officials are responsible for staffing polling locations, maintaining voting machines, training wardens and clerks, conducting an orderly voting procedure. Galvin was out on November 5th, initiating studies and soliciting suggestions to put a plan in place before the next election.
Massachusetts has been conducting elections for hundreds of years. There are regularly new challenges. Galvin has been part of the solution.
It looks like we agree that Galvin was just plain wrong on Chinese ballots.
Instead of blaming local election officials for the lines, here is a list of some of the reasons we have lines (which Galvin has not tried to fix):
1. Outdated Personnel Rules: Massachusetts is the only state in the country that requires a police officer to be present at every polling place, all day long. That’s ridiculously expensive. Generally, the police details costs as much as all of the other poll workers combined. We are also the only state that requires voters to “check out” by stating their names and address to a second set of voters. Galvin has not done anything to change our archaic election laws.
2. Massachusetts is one of only five states that does not have a web-site where voters can go to see where they are registered to vote. (The state’s web site, wheredoIvotema.com requires voters to already know whether and where they are registered). Frequently, voters go to the wrong location, which causes poll workers to do extra work to try to help (like calling city-hall). On Election day, phone lines become overwhelmed as people request information that should be available on-line.
This discussion is about A) people who make decisions and 2) the underlying facts they use to make those decisions. You can disagree with ultimate decision they make and even with the way they make it, but you can’t evaluate their decision without knowing the facts they use to make those decisions. In the instance of CJ Roberts, he’s using made up facts, on that we can all agree: that’s the whole raison d’etre of this post.. In the case of Bill Galvin, whether or no you agree with the the outcomes, I’m not hearing, at all, that his decisions are based upon manufactured facts…
Tho’ I am very much a proponent of early voting there are significant operational constraints involving poll workers, ballot security and polling place availability/use.
prohibits early voting. Galvin has recommended that election officials give the most liberal interpretation and grant requests for early absentee applications whenever possible.
Most of our elected officials hold some opinion that I disagree with, but I hardly consider them an embarrassment. Galvin has most issues right.
PS Except Congressman McGovern….has he ever been wrong?
There are serious problems with voting in Boston, and Galvin has not been a leader to fix them. I don’t like John Roberts, but he might be right. The voting process in this state is an embarrassment. For example, unlike every other major city in the United States, Boston does not adjust voting precinct boundaries every ten years to keep up with population changes Boston’s precinct map is now 80 years old. Some precincts include 7,000 voters or more, which exceeds the legal limit of 4,000 for the rest of the state. Frequently, two or three mismatched precincts vote in the same location On Election Day, voters from one overstuffed precinct end up waiting for two hours, while voters from a block or two away voted in just minutes… unless they got in the wrong line.
It’s time that Boston had a new precinct map, and it’s time that Massachusetts had a good conversation about its archaic voting processes. As President Obama said in his victory speech–“We have to fix that”
My bet is he has rewarded the conservative coalition with his vote on health care and now on the voting rights act to give him wiggle room to dump DOMA and maybe broadly declare a right to marriage by writing a majority opinion that puts him in the history books and flatters his over inflated ego . Too bad the rights of gays will have to come at the expense of the rights of so many poor and brown peoples still unjustly discriminated against. As an aside, I felt at the time that the appointment of the seemingly less well known and distinguished Sotomayor was a political move to shore up Hispanic support, while Kagan had the greater chance to be an intellectual liberal firebrand like Brennan or Marshall but it seems I had that backward. Her questions and comments in this case and many others show what a force she has become, and her dissent and Kennedys wiggle room are the only silver linings on this case.
Kennedy has a lifetime post. I don’t understand the theory that, despite that, he’s horsetrading decisions in an effort to keep a large enough constituency base just happy enough.
He’s not a Congressman, he’s a Justice.