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A Tax Cut Everyone Should Support
A TAX CUT EVERYONE SHOULD SUPPORT....Riffing off a Rachel Maddow segment about stupendously long lines to vote, largely in poor urban precincts, Ezra Klein says:
The poll tax was a sly system of disenfranchisement used in the Jim Crow era to disenfranchise Southern blacks. Aware that the Constitution now assured everyone the "right" to vote, Southern states imposed a voting fee heavy enough that African-Americans would deem it a right too pricey to exercise. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, of course, did away will all that. But as Rachel Maddow says in the clip above, voting lines are just another form of poll tax. They are a time tax. How much is four hours worth to the average voter? How many voters can take four hours off from their job, or their family, to stand at a precinct? We tend to frame long voting lines as an inspiring vision of democracy, but they're quite the opposite: They are disenfranchisement in action. A longer line does not simply mean more people are voting. It means more people are not voting, as they could not afford the time tax.
Just for the record, the poll tax wasn't actually especially "sly." Everyone knew exactly what it was for. But point taken anyway. The flip side, of course, is neighborhoods like mine. I live in an upscale, white, suburban city, and you will be unsurprised to learn that I haven't had to wait more than five minutes to vote since the day I moved here. Quite a coincidence, eh?
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Everyone should vote like we do in Oregon. Voting by mail increases participation, reduces error and costs much less.
Everyone wins. Heck, sometimes in this state, even Republicans.
What JMonkey said. Washington votes by mail too.
You quote: "Southern states imposed a voting fee... The 1964 Civil Rights Act, of course, did away will all that."
Actually, the 24th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1962 and ratified as of January 23, 1964, abolished "any poll tax or other tax" that denied or abridged the right to vote.
It was not enough.
It took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to actually get African-Americans registered and into polling places throughout the South.
By the way, I think Lyndon Johnson, Democrat from Texas, should be credited with the greatest act of political courage in modern American history for his leadership on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 65. A large majority of his fellow white Southerners turned against him and his party, but (pressured by King and the Civil Rights Movement) he saved America's soul.
And now, America, it is time for Barack Obama, Democrat.
I agree. Because I live in the affluent suburbs of the Northeast and have also never waited for more than 5 minutes to vote. Tomorrow might be a little different, however. CT is changing its voting system from the ancient but reassuringly klunky voting machines to an optical scanner system. We will see if all goes well!
Yup, we Oregonians are trying to figure out what all the fuss is about. The vote-by-mail system has been in place for years and seems to work very well. And sending in your ballot as early as possible even puts a stop to campaign calls.
I suppose the stamp required to mail a ballot could be considered a poll tax, but there are plenty of free ballot drop-off sites and getting to a polling place ain't free, is it?
Other than the excitement of gathering with your neighbors at the polling place, can anyone tell me why we shouldn't have vote-by-mail everywhere?
Voting day should be a national holiday (as it is in plenty of other countries). Anything else discriminates against working-class folks who simply can't spare the time in their work day.
For the record, vote by mail has its problems too. It is more vulnerable to vote coercion/buying. Regardless, I'd prefer the national holiday.
I've had the opposite experience with waiting in line. I currently live in the DC suburbs and when I lived in a really poor, mostly minority neighborhood, I waited around 30 minutes to vote in the 2004 presidential election. We bought a house a while back and now live in a relatively upper-class area. For last year's primary, I waited 1.5 hours. I expect tomorrow will be even worse.
Despite my experience, I do believe that, in general, voters in poorer neighborhoods are being royally screwed.
kamajii: WA won't be completely though mail until Feb 09. King and..I think Pierce counties still have polling locations. (Positive about King as I live in Seattle.)
jrw: I imagine government would be forced to pay for the postage if anyone complained. A year or two ago, our ballots were long enough that they took 2 stamps -- there was a notice, but if you only had 1 then the county would pay the rest.
Add to this that lines don't seem to be bad in more affluent areas. I've never had to wait in a long line to vote.
Count me in with C. I live in a pretty affluent neighborhood in Nashville, and waited 1 1/2 hours to vote in 2004. That's one reason I opted for early voting this time; a 15-20-minute wait.
Vote by mail should raise eyebrows among feminists and others - too easy for the patriarch to get the whole family around the kitchen table and make sure that they vote "right".
Make it a national holiday, or at least a Saturday, and keep the polls open. Missouri and Indiana might have a different profile if they closed at 8:00. 6:00 is tough if you work all day then have to get the kids dinner, etc. Long lines aren't the only way to skew the results.
I live in Oregon. We vote by mail - or drop it in a county drop box. I voted about a week ago sitting on my sofa in the living room. Dropped the ballot in a box at the local store when I was there anyway.
Given that anyone may request an absentee ballot I just can't work up any indignity at the lines, so long as voting devices are provided at the same ratio to population in all precincts in a given jurisdiction.
The lines to vote early seem irrelevant. Early voting was never supposed to handle full capacity. If people are excited enough to vote early that the lines get crazy, well and good, but they have the option to wait until Tuesday. If there are similar lines on election day, then that seems like a good time to call it disenfranchisement.
Some states you need to qualify for an absentee ballot.
Here in Northern Virginia, we get royally screwed also. It's got one of the highest median incomes.
When rural voters wait 5 minutes and urban voters measure theor wait time in hours - it's disenfranchisement.
Here in Texas early voting went on for two weeks and ended 7 PM on Fri. I waited til the end and spent 1.5 hours in line.
Two weeks of early voting (with many locations here in Houston)make the process a lot less bothersome.
Yeay, us!
Obama's grandmother has died.
It is hard to believe the timing of this.
Just this weekend I could not believe that Studs Turkel, the heart and the voice of Chicago had died, as well.
Echoing what others said - in '04, I waited two hours in a line of 100 percent white folks in rural/exurban Colorado. This time I voted by mail (well, I actually dropped it off - which gave me the chance to marvel at the two-hour line for early voting).
Your crappy website is not mobile phone friendly. I had a great essay, and had typed it in, pressed submit, and all I got back was beep, beep, beep. Ellen Feiss I ain't but it was a really good comment.
It is absolutely shameful that anyone has to wait more than 15 minutes to vote. And I am curious about the statistics and demographics regarding these waits. It may not be just shameful, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't a civil rights violation.
I give people who wait in line to vote for 20 minutes or more enormously more credit than I could give myself. It's damn heroic.
WHY DON'T WE HAVE WEEKEND VOTING? THREE DAY VOTING PERIODS?
Vote by mail or absentee voting is not what it's cracked up to be. (Except perhaps in Oregon.)
Where I live, these votes will not begin to be counted until Wednesday, long after the various elections have often been settled by the apparent losing candidate dropping out.
And so it's not uncommon to have these votes never counted. And when they are counted, often misspellings in address or slight errors result in the entire ballot being tossed.
How expensive is a non-electronic voting booth? It is disgusting in this day and age that anyone is forced to wait more than 15 minutes to vote.
I live in a fairly upscale ethnically diverse neighborhood of San Francisco (just outside Forest Hill, which was one of the all-white neighborhoods until it officially desegregated in 1969). In my district, it's roughly half-and-half Euro(east and west) and Asian.
I've never had to wait in a line at my polling place in ten years of living here.
I vote in Prince George's County, Maryland, hardly an affluent area. Voting has not taken more than ten minutes. How's that for anecdotal evidence? All that can be taken away from this thread is that a lot of commenters live in affluent areas.
Before we talk about the "right to vote quickly", is there any evidence that voter lines are being manipulated to be longer in poorer areas? As much as I agree with Maddow's point that such lines are intolerable, I think its inappropriate to compare it to a poll tax without evidence of malice.
what I miss the most about voting or oregon is the voter's pamphlet. even if sometimes it seemed as if there were a hundred ballot initiatives on it, and a lot of written opinions from idiots (anybody with a few bucks can get their opinion and name up in lights) still it was very pleasant to spend a leisurely amount of time reading the text of the initiatives and the opinions of one and all before voting. contrast that with hicksville, NY, where I now live: good luck figuring out how to vote based on the ravings of the local hobby paper or the slightly larger one to the north.
that's "about voting *in* oregon", dang no edit comments to heck ;-)
I think easier and equal voting access needs to be considered a basic civil right.
Four years ago we voted early at a local library. This year, no dice. The only onsite early voting in LA County is in Norwalk, more than a two-hour round trip from here. That's a change in the wrong direction.
We need early voting everywhere, and nowhere should anyone wait more than 15 minutes. I live in a nice part of town and that's as long as we've ever had to wait. It can be accomplished.
Weighing in from Tucson, AZ, a decidedly ethnically-mixed, lower-middle income area, solidly Democrats (but this is Pima County, so that's fine). I've never waited more than 5 minutes. However, my job schedule permits me to show up during the day. Folks who don't get to the polls until 6 or 6:30 PM, or who have to vote right at 7 AM, often confront hour-long lines. That's another reason for the national holiday approach for presidential elections.
Talk about a coincidence, Campbell Brown had guests that were talking about the new political make-up of the Election with West Virginia and Georgia possibly voting Democratic. Seems that the South was Democratic up to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and then became a Republican Bastion-Check with Al Gore, he has some real interesting thoughts on this one!
How much plywood / cardboard and curtains would ONE electronic voting machine pay for?
It's not that your neighborhood is upscale, Kevin -- it's because California regulates the maximum number of voters per polling place.
A few years ago, the 1250-voter limit sunsetted without being renewed (the number fell back down to 1000, I think) and districts got redrawn like crazy.
1000 voters per polling place = max of 750 throughput on election day
750 voters / 2 check in tables / 14 hours = 2 minutes to wave in each voter
750 / 4 stations = ~190 votes per station, or roughly 4 minutes per voter
Here in posh CT, we have no early or "convenience" absentee voting (you have to be away or ill), and my polling place serves 4000 voters through only 2 "checkers" to sign voters in. With an expected 90% turnout, each checker needs to wave through 130 voters an hour, or one every 30 seconds. That's not going to happen, so even if the voters were distributed evenly throughout the day, there are going to be lines.
I'm in California, and yeah, never had to wait in a line...
I really do miss Oregon and the convenience of vote-by-mail. Seriously, why doesn't everyone do it? Once again, Oregon is ahead of the curve and no one is paying attention. I miss PDX.
Its pretty hard to get a consistently fair election when there are 50 different rules for the same game. Sorry for anyone in CT.
permanent absentee voting is the way to go
generally speaking if you submit your ballot early enough it will actually be counted first but if you turn in your ballot on election day it will likely not be counted.
Another blue stater here who never has to wait more than a few minutes to vote.
Wonder if part of the waiting is a blue state/red state issue? Or a class issue - middle and upper class areas having shorter wait times?
Someone must have looked into this by now.
Why don't you have compulsory voting AND vote on a Saturday like Australia does.
Way to go Mattw with the only materially relevant information in comments :D
I'm in blue state Mass. and I just waited 1/2 an hour to vote. It happens every time if you come in as soon as the polls open. Everybody is trying to get to work. The town has about 20K people and is upscale.
In Mass. there is no hinderance to voting absentee.
I live and vote in a northern Virginia neighborhood with a high proportion of citizens who are members of a minority group and naturalized citizens.
Every Presidential election, we spend hours in line. The registration checkers are retired people with a large book of names. The voting is electronic, but the booths are over a decade old... like something out of the days of Pong.
I work in a place with a lot of people who live in higher middle class white neighborhoods. They report 5 and 10 minute waits... with up-to-date, electonic pencil, voting booths.
All the people in the line today were excited and upbeat this year; and the weather was pleasant enought. But, the differences in the cost of voting among neighborhoods is stark... and for this white upper middle class citizen, a little disheartening.
I live in an upper-middle class white "suburban" neighborhood in Houston. For regular elections, I have never waited in a line for more than 5 minutes (note: I never vote during the rush hour times). Conversely, the lower-economic areas always have 2+ hour wait times to vote throughout the day. I believe that the county government (republican) is in charge of elections.
Lyndon B. Johnson, to Congress and the American people, 15 March 1965:
We have already waited 100 years and more and the time for waiting is gone. So I ask you to join me in working long hours and nights and weekends, if necessary, to pass this bill. And I don't make that request lightly, for, from the window where I sit, with the problems of our country, I recognize that from outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of a nation, the grave concern of many nations and the harsh judgment of history on our acts.
But even if we pass this bill the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
And we shall overcome.
Voter suppresion happens everywhere.
I liked to vote in person. Alas, It has become too difficult to do so. So I vote by absentee ballot.
I live on the edge of two voting areas in Berkeley California. At the polling station I used to go to, it would take five minutes to vote. But four years ago my side of the street was moved to a voting station down the hill, twice as far away as the one I used to walk to. It took 90 minutes to vote in the primary and over two hours to vote in November. I went to my old voting station, at my daughter's school, after I stood in line for two hours to vote. There has no line. Not at that time, nor during any election since then.
Guess which voting zone has an average income of about half the other zone...