STARKVILLE —
Supporters of voter ID laws across the country have embraced the notion that such laws serve as a deterrent to voter fraud and safeguard the free exercise of the right to vote. Moreover, those same supporters have rejected the accusations that voter ID laws constitute acts of voter suppression that should be compared to the old horrors of poll taxes, literacy tests and overt voter intimidation of minority or poor voters.
The voter suppression argument becomes all the more specious in Section 5 states like Mississippi. Mississippi is one of nine states declared “covered jurisdictions” under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “Covered jurisdiction” states, counties and municipalities cannot implement voting law changes without federal “preclearance” by the Justice Department — a Justice Department that in great measure requires a citizen to produce an ID just to be allowed to enter their buildings.
But it likewise stands to reason that if voter ID laws should exist to make voter fraud more difficult as a safeguard of the right to vote, early voting laws would likewise be beneficial to help make the opportunity to vote easier and more accessible. According to a July 2011 report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, 32 states allow in-person early voting, and of those 32 states, 27 allow both in-person early and no-excuse absentee mail voting.
Traditionally, Republicans in Mississippi have favored voter ID and opposed early voting. Democrats have favored early voting and opposed voter ID. The suggestion that both election “reforms” don’t have a strong basis in achieving partisan gain is simply ludicrous.
But the numbers don’t particularly support Republican opposition to early voting. In 2008, the GOP carried 17 of the 32 states that had adopted no-excuse early voting. In the Southeast, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Tennessee all permit no-excuse, in-person early voting at election offices or other satellite locations. The GOP carried every one of those states except Florida in 2008.
The empirical evidence for Southern Republicans is that early voting has helped them far more than it has hurt them. Take a look at an analysis by the U.S. Voting Project at George Mason University shows that in the 2008 presidential election, some 39.7 million people or about 30 percent of the total votes cast in the election were cast either by early mail-in or early in-person votes - up from 20 percent in the 2004 presidential election.
In the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama carried 28 states - 13 of which had early voting. Republican nominee John McCain carried 22 states — 17 of which had early voting.
We live in a vastly different society today, one in which we fill our prescriptions at drive-through windows after renewing them on Web sites. Church services are now available earlier on Sunday for those who don’t choose to attend a traditional 11 a.m. service.
Students pursue their educations in online distance learning classes. We can arm and disarm our residential alarm systems using cell phone applications from three states away.
But we resist making voting easier and more convenient. Even as a voter ID supporter, I recognize that Mississippi’s larger issue in voter fraud is absentee ballot abuse. Why not address this rather blatant manipulation of the voting process with both absentee ballot reforms and the addition of early voting?
The participatory benefits of early voting can be achieved while tightening the obvious abuses of absentee ballots in a state in which in more than a fourth of Mississippi's 82 counties in 2011, at least 10 percent of the total votes cast were by absentee ballots.
(Sid Salter can be reached at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com)
Opinion
Most states allow early voting
- Opinion
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Opinion Headlines
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