From a continuing  series of articles, Who Can Vote?, a News21 investigation of voting rights in America. Read the full series. Yesterday's article dealt with varying state laws on restoring voting rights for felons (Should felons vote? In some states, it's easy. In others, impossible.), and today's article goes into the Florida situation in more depth.

By Andrea Rumbaugh
News21

Vikki Hankins is one of about 1.5 million Floridians fighting for the vote — a right more difficult to regain under Republican Gov. Rick Scott than his GOP predecessor.

Hankins, 43, served 18 years in federal prison for selling crack cocaine. Since her release in 2008, she has completed an associate’s degree, started a publishing company and run an advocacy group for criminal justice.

Although Hankins has never voted, she said she’s earned that right. But she is frustrated and worried that regaining her rights — to vote, serve on a jury and hold public office — might not happen until she’s “50, 60 years old,” Hankins said.

Florida leads the nation in disenfranchising felons, especially African Americans. In 2010, about 520,500 African Americans — 23 percent of the state’s black voting age population — could not vote because of a felony conviction, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., criminal justice reform group.

An estimated 5.85 million felons across the country could not vote in 2010, the last year for which The Sentencing Project has data.

Florida’s process for restoring a felon’s civil rights grew stricter last year when Scott and his Cabinet — Attorney General Pam Bondi, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam — established a five- or seven-year wait, depending on the offense, before felons could apply to have their rights restored.

In 2007, former Gov. Charlie Crist’s first year in office, 38,971 felons regained their civil rights. Last year, Scott and his Cabinet, acting as the Board of Executive Clemency, restored civil rights to 78 people.

As of July 1, a backlog of 21,197 applicants awaited their civil rights, according to the Florida Parole Commission.

The 78 felons who regained their rights last year is “not only low — it’s shockingly low,” said Mark Schlakman, senior program director for the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University. Schlakman is running as a Democrat in the Aug. 14 primary for the 2nd Congressional District, which includes the eastern panhandle and Tallahassee area.

Scott, in a press release last year, said his policy is “intended to emphasize public safety and ensure that all applicants desire clemency, deserve clemency, and demonstrate they are unlikely to reoffend.” He denied multiple News21 requests for an interview.
 
While felons could have applied to restore their civil rights under Crist, who served until 2011, a backlog that began accumulating in 2001 meant many cases were not reviewed while he was in office.

In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida found through a public records request that 17,604 restoration of civil rights certificates have been returned to the Florida Parole Commission as “undeliverable.” Of these, 13,517 people have not registered to vote.

Jane Tillman, communications director for the commission, said the undeliverable certificates are mainly for felons who did not request to have their civil rights restored, but qualified under clemency rules in effect under Crist. Tillman said there might have been around 30,000 undeliverable certificates, but the commission has worked to decrease that number. Within the last three months, all 17,604 cases were put into the online database available for felons to search, she said.

Tillman said applications now are processed only if they meet Scott’s new criteria, including the waiting period.

Otherwise, the applicant is contacted and told when and how to reapply. As of July 1, there were 1,056 applicants deemed ineligible.

In 2001, the Florida Department of Corrections was sued for its “failure to assist inmates with the RCR (Restoration of Civil Rights) application process as required by law,” according to a report by the Florida Parole Commission. As a result of that suit, a state judge ordered the state to review the rights restoration of 150,000 felons. Tillman said this took about two years to process, during which time another backlog developed.

For the first time since 2003, the Florida Legislature this year gave the Parole Commission money — $350,000 annually for three years — to process applications that do not require a clemency hearing.

State Rep. Darryl Rouson helped secure that money. The St. Petersburg Democrat said he is passionate about restoring civil rights because he once battled drug addiction. His actions could have resulted in a felony conviction, but he got a second chance, Rouson said.

“I’m now 14 years, four months clean with total integrity,” Rouson said. “And, during this period of time, I’ve had to work hard to rebuild my life. And there were those people along the way who saw rehabilitation and reached back and gave me a chance.”

Jessica Chiappone is also seeking that chance. She is vice president of the Miami-based Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, an advocate for education about and restoration of civil rights to felons.

Chiappone, who applied to have her civil rights restored in 2008, graduated from Nova Southeastern University law school last year but cannot apply to the Florida bar until her rights have been restored.

“It shouldn’t be this hard to become a productive member of society,” said Chiappone. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, she was convicted in 1999 of conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

She calls once or twice a year to check on her application. This year, she was told her case was closed because the Parole Commission couldn’t contact her. She requested it be reopened but has not heard anything.

Florida is one of three states — along with Kentucky and Virginia — where about 20 percent of African Americans could not vote in 2010 because of felony convictions, the Sentencing Project reported.

“It certainly has a racially disproportionate impact, just as the criminal justice system has a racially disproportionate impact,” said attorney Dante Trevisani, a fellow at the Florida Justice Institute, a nonprofit civil rights law firm in Miami.

But Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, conservative public policy research institute, said felon disenfranchisement is not racially motivated.

“Opponents of taking away the right of felons to vote have long said that this is racially intended and has been for a long time,” he said. “We know that’s not true because, in fact, felon disenfranchisement has been going on for centuries. It was the policy of a majority of the states even before the Civil War when African Americans couldn’t vote.”

Vikki Hankins, who is black, disagrees. While she wants to give Scott the benefit of the doubt, Hankins says she feels the changes that have so far kept her from voting may be racially or politically motivated. She says she feels she shouldn’t have to keep proving herself.

“Is this some type of ploy?” she said. “You’re using people’s situations, such as mine, to ensure that a certain amount of votes do not take place … in 2012.”

But Hankins said she is determined to make it — to vote, continue her education and have a voice that is taken seriously by her legislators.

“When I’m able to vote, I (will) feel like I am a part of my community,” she said. “It’s just that simple.”

Discuss this series of stories on the Facebook page for Open Channel, the NBC News investigative blog.

Or send feedback to News21.

News21 is a program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that is helping to change the way journalism is taught in the U.S. and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry. It is headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Since 2006, nearly 500 top journalism students in the U.S. have participated in the landmark national initiative.

From a continuing  series of articles, Who Can Vote?, a News21 investigation of voting rights in America. Read the full series.

By Maryann Batlle and Carl Straumsheim
News21

Josh and Katy Vander Kamp met in drug rehab. In the seven years since, they have been rebuilding their lives in Apache Junction, Ariz., a small town east of Phoenix.

He’s a landscaper; she’s studying for a master’s degree in addictions counseling. They have two children, a dog and a house. Their lives reveal little of their past, except that Katy can vote and Josh can’t because he’s a two-time felon.

She’s been arrested three times, but never convicted of a felony. By age 21, Josh was charged with two — for a drug-paraphernalia violation and possessing a burglary tool.

“I didn’t do anything that he didn’t do, and he’s paying for it for the rest of his life,” Katy said.

With voting laws a heated issue this election year as civil rights groups and state legislatures battle over photo ID requirements in this election year, felon disenfranchisement laws have attracted less attention despite the potential votes at stake.

A patchwork of restrictions in every state but Maine and Vermont keep about 5.85 million Americans with felony convictions off voting rolls, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., criminal justice reform advocacy group. The report also suggests that some races are hit by these laws more than others.

A felon in Maine can vote from prison using an absentee ballot, while a felon convicted of the same crime in Florida, the state with the highest percentage of disenfranchised African Americans in the nation, might never regain the right to vote — even after release.

People convicted of more than one felony in Arizona lose gun ownership and voting rights until a county court restores them. Josh Vander Kamp’s first attempt at regaining his rights failed last year.

With his wife’s help, Josh Vander Kamp applied to the county court that sentenced him in both cases. About three months later he was rejected. Vander Kamp said he’s not sure why his past is still a problem.

“It’s over and done with. I’ve put it behind me. I wish other people would put it behind them,” he said.

Laws vary widely on how felons lose their voting rights and how states restore them.

In Mississippi, 22 categories of crime result in disenfranchisement. Timber larceny is on the list; manslaughter is not. Felons who want their voting rights back must be approved by a two-thirds vote in both houses of the legislature, and the governor can sign or veto it.

Until 2007, Maryland disenfranchised people convicted of misdemeanors involving corruption or fraud. Alabama denies the vote to anyone convicted of distributing pornography, even if it depicts consenting adults.

Pennsylvania felons can register to vote when they are released from prison. Kentucky felons must apply to the governor.

Reform advocates see voting as a symbolic key step to returning felons to communities.

“When people are punished for crimes that they’ve committed, that should not involve forfeiting their basic rights of citizenship, which is what felony disenfranchisement does,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project.

The group estimates that 75 percent of disenfranchised felons are no longer incarcerated.

Allen Jenkins, a black resident of Nashville, Tenn., was released in 1996 after serving one year for a drug charge. Jenkins, 51, still hasn’t regained his voting rights.

“I’m a U.S. citizen,” Jenkins said. “I should be able to vote for whoever I want and to give my opinion.”

Across the country, racial minorities are more likely to be barred from voting because of felony convictions, reform advocates say. Blacks made up 12.6 percent of the U.S. population in 2010, but 37.9 percent of the more than 1.5 million people in federal and state prisons, according to data from the Census and the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

“Much of it involves the fact that law enforcement agencies have targeted low-income communities of color in particular … often to the exclusion of more well-off communities where drug use and drug selling may be more likely to take place behind closed doors or where there’s less efforts made to address drug-selling activity,” Mauer said.

Michael Ciaglo/News21

Click on the photo to see a News21 slideshow of felons seeking voting rights. They've served time for the crimes they committed. They paid restitution and all other costs. Still, their path to restored voting rights is filled with obstacles. There's no national standard for restoring a felon's voting rights.

In Tennessee, drug offenders were about 16 percent of the inmate population in 2010-11, according to the state Department of Correction.

Nonviolent felons in Tennessee can apply to have their voting rights restored, but the felony charge remains on their records even if their application is approved. As of July 1, one-time felons also can restore their rights by expunging the charge from their records.

Jenkins, a single father of two, has struggled financially since his conviction. He thought a clean record could help him find a job, which is why he will apply to expunge the drug conviction, he said.

“I should not be condemned over something I’ve done in the past when that past is dead,” Jenkins said.

Supporters of disenfranchisement laws said the policies preserve the integrity of the American legal system by stopping people who might choose to undermine it with their votes.

“If you are unwilling to follow the law, then you can’t demand a right to make the law for everyone else, and that’s what you’re doing when you vote,” said Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Falls Church, Va., Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank on issues of ethnicity and race.

Voting rights should be restored case by case, Clegg said, and only after felons can prove they’ve “turned over a new leaf.”

The governors in Florida, Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia have the last say when determining who that might be.

After taking office in January 2011, Iowa’s Republican Gov. Terry Branstad revoked the automatic restoration process established by former Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat.

Iowa’s application process has drawn complaints from the American Civil Liberties Union and felons who want to vote. Applicants must submit a criminal history, a credit report and pay all fines and court fees to regain voting rights.

David Christian, 33, owes $155,000 in restitution related to a 2008 voluntary manslaughter charge. He’s paid $941 of it in nine months. The Iowa City resident, who lives with his parents and works full-time at the family store, said it will be difficult for him to pay his debt.

“I will be disenfranchised for the foreseeable future, maybe a few decades, because I can’t pay restitution,” he said.

Christian, who is on parole until May 2013, filed to have his rights restored though he knew he was ineligible. His rejection letter came in the mail June 25.

He registered to vote when he was 18, and last voted during the 2008 presidential election while he was a pretrial detainee. Christian said he feels like a second-class citizen now.

“I want to be able to have a voice,” Christian said.

Branstad has approved the only 10 applications that crossed his desk between December 2011 and May 15, according to Larry Johnson, deputy legal counsel for the Iowa Governor’s Office. Johnson said three other applications were returned because they were incomplete.

Felons in Florida must apply to the state Board of Executive Clemency — Gov. Rick Scott and his three-person Cabinet — after they have completed their sentences, paid restitution and waited five or seven years, depending on the offense.

Scott tightened the state’s policy in March 2011 and has approved dramatically fewer applications than his predecessors, Republican Govs. Charlie Crist and Jeb Bush, who both streamlined the process.

Between 2011 and early July, 188 felons regained their rights, according to the Florida Parole Commission. But a backlog of 21,197 applications as of July 1 means Florida felons who have completed their sentences could wait a decade or more for a decision.

Humberto Aguilar, a Cuban-born Miami resident who applied in 2005, is still waiting.

Aguilar, an attorney for drug smugglers in the 1980s, was indicted for tax evasion and drug crimes. He fled and was a fugitive in Europe before being extradited to face the charges.

He returned to South Florida as a parolee in 2000. After working at hotels and a non-profit, Aguilar became a money-laundering consultant.

It’s been about seven years since he applied to become a “whole human being again.”

“If you cannot participate in the everyday political life of this country, you are like an 1840s slave. You have no rights,” Aguilar said.

Unlike Branstad and Scott, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has made voting rights restoration easier. He campaigned on a promise to process applications within three months, but completes the work in 60 days. Under former Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, restoration could take up to one year.

McDonnell has restored the rights of about 3,000 Virginians during his first two years in office, signing off on nearly nine of every 10 applications. Kaine approved a record 4,402 applications over four years. McDonnell is on track to surpass that number.

Richard W. Walker, 54, regained his rights under McDonnell after a 2004 drug conviction. The prospect of getting his rights back inspired him to beat a 40-year addiction, Walker said.

While in rehabilitation in 2007, Walker met McDonnell, then Virginia’s attorney general. Walker said McDonnell promised to personally hand his application to Kaine.

“I knew at that time I was done with drugs and alcohol,” Walker said.

McDonnell restored Walker’s rights in April, and in December, Walker will mark five years of sobriety. He now heads Bridging the Gap in Virginia, a nonprofit that helps felons readjust to society.

Felon disenfranchisement has an impact on the national political debate,  said Christopher Uggen, a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota and the lead researcher for The Sentencing Project report.

“Whether it’s welfare reform or whether it is progressive taxation or whether it is the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, each of those issues is going to be decided without the voices of six million people who are disproportionately poor, disproportionately persons of color,” Uggen said.

The 1985 Supreme Court decision in Hunter v. Underwood held that Alabama’s felon disenfranchisement law was intended to remove blacks and poor whites from voter rolls, and established a high bar for suits that allege racial discrimination, said Louis Seidman, a Georgetown University professor of constitutional law.

“In this particular case it was much easier because these people just got up... on the floor of the legislature and said, ‘This is a way to prevent blacks from voting,’ and nobody who is around today is that unsubtle,” Seidman said.

Legislation that would create a national standard also has failed in Congress. Democrats introduced the Voter Empowerment Act of 2012, which proposes sweeping changes in how federal elections are conducted and would let felons who are out of prison vote in federal elections.

In 2011, President Barack Obama said the Department of Justice has the “capacity and the obligation” to monitor states’ felon-disenfranchisement laws to make sure they are not “purposely exclusionary.”

“One of the strengths of America has always been that this is a land of second chances,” Obama said.

But states’ rights advocates disagree.

“The 14th Amendment of the Constitution makes it very clear that states have the ability to remove the voting rights of individuals who have been convicted of rebellion or other crime,” said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C., conservative public policy research institute.

Meanwhile, these laws can change rapidly, through an executive order as in Iowa — or the process could take longer.

Rhode Island voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2006 to give parolees and probationers voting rights.

Felon volunteers and their advocates spent about two years door-knocking, lobbying and campaigning to “change hearts and minds,” said Sol Rodriguez, executive director of OpenDoors, a Providence, R.I., nonprofit that provides re-entry services for felons and led the voting rights effort.

The voting rights of 17,606 Rhode Islanders were restored and 6,330 of them registered to vote by the 2008 general election, according to OpenDoors.

When Jaleeza Oliver, 20, was released in May, she went to OpenDoors to sign up for services. When asked if she’d like to register to vote, Oliver said yes.

“It makes me feel I’m more part of the community rather than being rejected because of a record,” she said.

Andrea Rumbaugh, Jeremy Knop, Alissa Skelton and Michael Ciaglo contributed to this article. Maryann Batlle was an Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation fellow this summer at News21. American Public Media’s Public Insight Network contributed to this article.

Discuss this series of stories on the Facebook page for Open Channel, the NBC News investigative blog.

Or send feedback to News21.

From a continuing  series of articles, Who Can Vote?, a News21 investigation of voting rights in America. Read the full series.

By Alissa Skelton, Emily Nohr and Alia Conley
News21

Shrinking budgets are forcing state and local election officials to look for ways to save money, including ways that could have an impact on the November election.

Closing polling places is one of several cost-cutting plans that pit officials against voting-rights advocates who say the budget cuts put minority voters and rural residents at a disadvantage because of fewer urban polling places and more distant rural ones.

State and local officials also are drawing criticism from civil rights groups who oppose the photo ID laws adopted or under consideration in 37 states. Many states cannot afford the cost of providing free photo IDs or providing free documents – birth certificates and marriage licenses, for example – to obtain photo IDs.

The Douglas County, Neb., Election Commissioner Dave Phipps closed 166 of 353 polling precincts just weeks before the May 5 primary. He said it would save $115,000. Although state law allows Phipps to make that decision, the Nebraska Secretary of State, a Republican, expressed concern about it.

The state preferred closing no more than 20 percent of precincts rather than 47 percent, said Neal Erickson, Nebraska’s Deputy Secretary of State.

Voting rights groups say Phipps, a Republican, closed precincts used by minority voters, who tend to vote for Democrats.

“It would save money, but the details are that it disproportionately closed polling places in the two strongest Obama voter areas. What a coincidence,” said Preston Love Jr., a North Omaha community activist involved with the nonprofit North Omaha Voters Call to Action Coalition.

“The ultimate result is that some percentage of our voters did not vote, but tried to,” Love said.

Precincts close in Detroit
In Michigan, Detroit Election Director Daniel Baxter said he worries there won’t be enough money to effectively administer the presidential election in November.

“Bigger election, bigger turnout, we need more resources in place,” he said. “More poll workers to make sure voters are being processed in a timely manner. The problem comes in when you cut too much and you cannot manage the things people take for granted.”

Detroit spent $11.2 million for the 2008 presidential election to account for the dramatic increase in turnout from 15 percent for the primary to 55 percent for the general election. This year, the department requested $8.5 million, the mayor slashed it to $5 million, then approved $7.3 million. Baxter said they still need $900,000 more.

Detroit eliminated 40 precincts, and about 90 more are scheduled to close in the next four years.

“There should be protection in the democratic process,” Baxter said. “The bottom line is if you don’t pay for good elections on the front end, then you’ll pay for bad elections on the back end. If you can’t afford to pay for your poll workers to be paid for Election Day, then you’re going to have problems on Election Day.”

Out of ballots in Alaska
In Anchorage, Alaska, 53.7 percent of precincts ran out of ballots during the April mayoral election, Daniel Hensley, a former judge who was hired to investigate the ballot shortage, wrote in his report.

Of the 71,099 who turned out, at least 300 were directed to another precinct to vote. Others had to wait for more ballots, and an unknown number were discouraged from voting and went home, according to Hensley and the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Early reports to a phone line that we have set up to field concerns regarding the election indicate that confusion, irregularities in distribution of ballots, use of ad hoc ballot substitutes (such as photocopies of sample ballots), redirection of voters to one precinct after another, long lines and waits, and complete denial of the right to vote occurred in many instances,” Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of ACLU of Alaska wrote to the city.

The municipal clerk’s office by law must print ballots for 70 percent of registered voters in Anchorage, but did not. Jacqueline Duke, the deputy city clerk who is responsible for elections, didn’t prepare enough ballots because she expected a low turnout, based on previous elections, Hensley concluded after investigating the incident.

In writing to the city, Mittman said, “disenfranchisement of voters for no better reason than the simple unavailability of ballots is wholly unacceptable.”

In 2010, Anchorage reduced its election budget and cut an election coordinator/deputy municipal clerk position.

The impact of budget cuts on elections is hard to measure because few counties keep track of election costs, said Ernest Hawkins, board chairman of the Election Center, a non-profit made up of government employees working to improve the election process, democracy and voting.

“Local governments are trying to cut, trim and squeeze,” Hawkins said. “Each jurisdiction is justifying their expenditures, including election costs.”

Costs of new IDs
Many states with new voter ID laws are picking up the cost of issuing photo IDs for voters who cannot afford, but will need, ID to vote. Estimated state costs for providing photo IDs and related documents range from less than $1,000 into the millions.

Through June 11, the Kansas Department of Revenue issued 44 photo IDs that cost the state $22 each. In the same time, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment issued 40 birth certificates at a cost to the state of $15 each.

Virginia lawmakers have proposed free IDs, but that measure will cost $7.91 million to $22.59 million, according to the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, a Richmond, Va.-based independent nonprofit that researches economic issues, with particular attention to the impact on low- and moderate-income persons.

Handing out free voter IDs in Wisconsin would cost the state an estimated $6 million the first year, and about $4 million every year after, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

In separate rulings, two judges have so far blocked implementation of Wisconsin’s voter ID law, saying it creates a “substantial impairment” to the right to vote and that violates the state constitution.

Some states might accommodate voters who cannot afford the documents or photo that newly adopted laws will require for voting. But the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a public policy group that opposed many of the voting law changes nationally, reported that voters in many states will have to pay $8 to $25 for birth certificates and up to $20 for marriage licenses.

Running elections at 'bare minimum'
Beyond the costs to residents, advocates for fair elections said the reduced election staffs will affect voting.

An Alabama county made history last November when it filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in the country. Hundreds of Jefferson County employees lost their jobs to offset the county’s $4.23 billion debt. Nearly 50 elections jobs were slashed, causing officials to double up on responsibilities. Workers who monitored six to eight urban precincts, will have to manage 12 to 15 precincts.
 
The county is running elections at the “bare minimum,” said Barry Stephenson, chairman of the Jefferson County, Ala., Board of Registrars, but “the voters won’t be affected by everything that is going on behind the scenes.”

The county reassigned workers to administer its March primary election. Road repair crews got a day off from filling potholes to deliver election machines and assist poll workers. Typically, the county has 100 employees working the polls for a local primary election. In March, the county had half that number. Poll workers from other county jobs ran the election.

Reduced staff aside, Stephenson said the primary, in which 50 percent of voters turned out, went smoothly.

Vote centers have been changing the way elections are run since the early 2000s. These “super precincts” consolidate polling places and allow voting within a precinct boundary instead of restricting voters to a polling location. South Dakota is using vote centers.

“People who live on the east side of town, but work downtown could vote anywhere as long as they were traveling across the jurisdiction,” said Jason Gant, South Dakota secretary of state. The June primary was the third election for vote centers in South Dakota.

“When you go from 57 polling locations down to 10, you’re saving dozens and dozens of poll workers you don’t have to hire,” Gant said.

For the 2008 primary, McHenry County, N.D., switched to mail voting, and the only polling place was the courthouse in Towner, N.D. Auditor Darlene Carpenter said the switch hasn’t cut overall election costs because postal expenses have increased by nearly $1,500.

“Because of the rising postage costs, it’s not saving us any money, probably costing us a little more,” she said. “But the workload in the auditor’s office has decreased tenfold.”

From the 2006 election to 2010, the election cost increased $400, and almost 100 more people voted, which Carpenter said is always the overarching goal.

“I don’t think our increase in costs have been that substantial,” she said. “What we’re looking at, too, is trying to increase voter turnout. That’s the big intent.”

Discuss this series of stories on the Facebook page for Open Channel, the NBC News investigative blog.

Or send feedback to News21.

News21 is a program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that is helping to change the way journalism is taught in the U.S. and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry. It is headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Since 2006, nearly 500 top journalism students in the U.S. have participated in the landmark national initiative.

From a continuing  series of articles, Who Can Vote?, a News21 investigation of voting rights in America.

By Ethan Magoc
News21

African-American civic groups, politicians and church leaders are concerned that changes in Florida’s early voting schedule will lower minority turnout, which could mean fewer votes for Democrats in November.

Florida’s early, in-person voting period almost certainly will shrink this fall. Since 2004, when the state began early voting, county election officials had to provide a minimum of 14 voting days, or 96 hours, of early voting opportunities, including limited weekend hours. Under a law passed in 2011, counties can still offer 96 hours of early voting, but those hours cannot be spread over more than the state-required eight days.

The 2011 law also eliminated voting on the Sunday before the election, which was offered by 10 of the state’s 67 counties in 2008. African-American churches traditionally reserved that day for “Souls to the Polls” campaigns, in which voters went from churches to early-voting sites.

“We do believe it’s a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise the voters,” said state Rep. Barbara Watson, a Democrat from Miami Gardens, concerned about the law’s effect on turnout in large counties such as Miami-Dade.

Rep. Dennis Baxley, a Republican from Ocala who sponsored the legislative change, said that eliminating Sunday hours was about timing.

“It seems like we had too tight a squeeze" before Election Day on Tuesday, he said. “You had to count the early votes and be all set up in the counties for a general election in two days. What’s the big deal? It’s just a scheduling issue.”

President Barack Obama won 96 percent of Florida’s black vote in 2008. African Americans that year cast 22 percent of the state’s early in-person votes, although they were only 13 percent of registered voters, according to an analysis by Daniel Smith, a University of Florida political science professor, and Michael Herron of Dartmouth.

Democratic turnout for early and absentee voting in Florida increased 5 percent from 2004 to 2008, while Republican early votes dropped 6 percent, according to data compiled by Michael McDonald, a political scientist at George Mason University.

“What we have to do is act like that old Florida chameleon that changes colors,” said Elder Lee Harris, 68, pastor of Mount Olive Primitive Baptist Church in Jacksonville. “We have to adapt to whatever our environment is.”

Harris said his church and its 300-member congregation joined another 60 churches to encourage Sunday voting the weekend before the 2008 presidential election. He said the group will organize on one of the other weekend days this year.

State Sen. Chris Smith, a Democrat who represents Broward and Palm Beach counties, is encouraging churches in his district to hold services on Saturdays during early voting.

Voters like Anita Smith, 38, of Gainesville, enjoy the convenience of voting early.
 
“I didn’t want to be in the long lines,” said Smith, who voted early in the 2008 primary and general elections. “I went early and got it out of the way.”

In Palm Beach County, Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher wants to keep turnout near 2008 early-voting levels. She plans to open two additional early voting sites, which she said will cost $52,000 for voting machines and salaries.

Rodney Long, a retired Democratic politician in northern Florida’s Alachua County, said his group, the African American Accountability Alliance, will organize church and political leaders for early voting.

“If you tell me that there’s a problem with that Sunday, there should be some evidence. There’s 67 people in Florida who could provide it." Lawmakers "did not receive any testimony from the 67 county officials about Sunday processing. Everyone’s voting electronically – no more chads, no delays,” Long said.

Andrea Rumbaugh of News21 contributed to this story.

Discuss this series of stories on the Facebook page for Open Channel, the NBC News investigative blog.

Or send feedback to News21. News21 is a program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that is helping to change the way journalism is taught in the U.S. and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry. It is headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Since 2006, nearly 500 top journalism students in the U.S. have participated in the landmark national initiative.

From a continuing series of articles, Who Can Vote?, a News21 investigation of voting rights in America.

By Alia Conley and Alissa Skelton
News21

New technology can make voting a very efficient matter, making it possible to verify a voter's identity at the poll even without a photo ID.  But the new electronic wizardry does little to eliminate problems some voters face in registering to vote in the first place.

Electronic poll books, which contain computer software that loads digital registration records, are used in at least 27 states and the District of Columbia. Poll books are emerging as an alternative to photo ID requirements to authenticate voters’ identity, address and registration status, when they show up at polling places to vote.

Voting is the same, but signing in with electronic poll books is different. Poll workers check in voters using a faster computerized version of paper voter rolls. Upon arrival, voters give their names and addresses, or in some states, such as Iowa, they can choose to scan their photo IDs.

Georgia and Maryland were the first to use electronic poll books statewide in 2005, said Merle King, executive director for the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

Poll books can be used to verify voters’ identity at polling places, but voters can face the same obstacles securing official documents for the electronic books as they do in getting birth certificates, photo ID and related documents to register to vote.

Ken Kline, auditor for Cerro Gordo County, Iowa, is neutral about laws that require photo ID at the polls. But he said his Precinct Atlas, which is an electronic poll book, does a far better job of identifying a person than a poll worker glancing at a picture that might be outdated.

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and his bipartisan Election Integrity Task Force proposed using poll books to connect voter registration from the state elections division and cross-reference that database with photos from the state department of motor vehicles. This wouldn’t help people who lack driver’s licenses. In November, Minnesotans will decide whether to require photo ID at the polls.

From paper ballots to voting machines, the technology for elections has advanced, but has been behind the curve, said Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center. Now with electronic poll books, technology can verify who votes.

For the November elections, the majority of Americans’ votes still will be cast on paper ballots and counted by optical or digital scanners. Disabled voters will cast ballots either with the aid of another person or on electronic machines designed to help them. In more than 30 states, voters will have some paper record of their vote, while voters in 11 states will cast votes with no paper at all, according to Verified Voting, a Carlsbad, Calif.-based nonprofit organization that tracks machine voting and advocates for verified paper trails.

Voting machines malfunction and have been known to fail to record votes, add or subtract votes to various candidates, or simply overheat.

Though these new technologies can help verify voters’ identities and give added accessibility, no voting system to date has proved immune to problems.

Electronic poll books
Just as contacts are stored in a phone, an electronic poll book records voters on a searchable, digital list that lets poll workers retrieve and verify a voters’ name, address, birth date and political party.

In Iowa, the computer system prints labels with voter information to place on a check-in sheet. Voters are handed the correct ballot based on their precincts and party affiliation. Poll workers can immediately fix or change any information in the database.

Kline said the poll book protects voting rights and election integrity by verifying the correct precinct, expediting voting and allowing voters to easily register or change political parties on Election Day.

He created the Precinct Atlas specifically for Iowa three years ago. The Iowa Secretary of State awarded $30,000 to develop the software, used by 55 percent of Iowa’s 1,700 voting precincts. Each poll book precinct has computers, printers and ID scanners. The initial technology and computer hardware costs about $1,500 to $3,000 for each precinct.

Larry Haake, registrar for Chesterfield County, Va., which includes part of Richmond, said poll books have cut down on waiting times in the county’s 73 precincts.

“Voters love it because they walk in, go to any line, get checked in quickly and are in and out. Poll workers say the same thing. You don’t get the lines backing up, you don’t have people grumbling.”

Poll books need Internet connection, and many rural precincts don't have wireless or dial-up Internet, said Riley Dirksen, who supervises information technology for Cerro Gordo County, where Iowa's Precinct Atlas was created.

The federal government regulates voting machines, but doesn’t have standards or testing procedures for electronic poll books because the devices neither capture nor count votes, said Kennesaw State's King. He sees this as a problem because poll books should be tested by someone other than the person who set up the poll book.

iPads used as ballot-marking devices
While electronic poll books run software that speeds up lines and verifies voters at polls, new hardware also helps make voting more accessible and transparent.

News21 is a program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that is helping to change the way journalism is taught in the U.S. and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry. It is headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Since 2006, nearly 500 top journalism students in the U.S. have participated in the landmark national initiative.

Oregon and Denver use iPads as ballots; Denver for seniors and voters who have disabilities and Oregon for the disabled. Oregon votes by mail statewide, but election officials provided iPads for voters who would benefit from them.

Both states use software from Everyone Counts, an election technology company that provides software to ensure secure elections and has conducted elections in Chicago, Honolulu, Colorado, Utah and West Virginia. Other states are looking to Oregon and Denver to see if they can implement the new method.

So far, iPads aren’t being used to verify a voter’s identity. Amber McReynolds, Denver's director of elections, said her agency tested a voter database on iPads, but based on screen size and usability, the agency preferred laptops or paper for poll books.

Disabled voters who live in Oregon’s 1st Congressional District used Apple-donated iPads first. More than 200 voters used the iPads for the November and January special election. The pilot program went so well, every county now has an iPad for future elections.

Once a voter indicates his or her choices, the ballot is printed, so there is paper proof of the vote. Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown said her state was the first to use an iPad for elections.

The iPads meet the federal requirements for voters who have disabilities. Voters can enlarge text for easier reading, use headphones to listen to a computer voice read the ballot and in Oregon, voters with cerebral palsy can use their breathing to control the device.

“It’s a very adaptable tool,” Brown said. “A couple of the citizens that I watched vote loved the iPad technology, even if they haven’t used a computer before. It’s so simple that kids can use it, babies can use it.”

The city and county of Denver followed. Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson applied to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office for a $12,900 Help America Vote Act grant for seven iPads and printers to use at residential centers.

McReynolds said when she went to voting sites, she saw that once people got the hang of the delicate touch needed to operate the iPad, they voted easily and liked the technology.

Vonsella Scott, who lives at Denver’s Porter Place Retirement center, used an iPad for the first time when voting in the June primary.

“I have a little difficulty in writing, due to a stroke, and it just was easier for me,” said Scott, 84. “It was enlarged if you needed it and explained very well.”

Not only are the iPads more portable, but they are cheaper than their large, clunky voting machine counterparts.

“An iPad, these are about $400 or $500. Whereas a voting machine could cost $4,000 or $5,000,” McReynolds said. “There’s a significant difference in price and these can be utilized for other functions as well. It’s a step in the right direction to expand the use of technology in elections.”

Ballot TRACE
Another new technology, a tracking system for mail-in ballots can increase ballot security and calm voters’ worries by texting or emailing voters the location of their ballot every step of the way.

An often-heard concern about mail voting is the uncertainty of the location of the voter’s ballot. Johnson, the Denver clerk and recorder, said she wants to make elections more transparent and says that can be done with new mail-voting technology launched in 2009: Ballot TRACE, which stands for Tracking, Reporting and Communication Engine.

“Our No. 1 call that we received in our call centers was ‘Where’s my mail ballot?’ or ‘Did you get it?’ or ‘Is it coming?’ or ‘Has it been counted?’” McReynolds said.

Using Denver software company i3logix and working with the U.S. Postal Service, the elections department offered voters a way to know where their vote is at all times — from the first printing to when it’s counted.

On each ballot envelope is an intelligent mail barcode (IMB), that the post office can scan to register when the ballot is about to be sent to the voter or when it has returned.

Voters can sign up for the tracking service to notify them of their ballot’s location via text message or email. McReynolds said about 12,000 voters are currently signed up. They will automatically receive text messages about when their ballot will arrive, reminders to send it back and updates on when the vote is processed. That technology is available to people who have access to a computer or cell phone.

Denver is the only city with this type of automatic service, said Steve Olsen, executive vice president of i3logix. Oregon also offers a tracking service for voters, but they must log in on the secretary of state’s website.

The technology helps McReynolds' office stay accountable for the ballots, she said, because it lets her know if problems arise, such as if the post office hasn’t sent a stack of ballots to a certain ZIP code. She said the service can prevent errors, such as voters forgetting to sign ballots, the elections department needing to see an ID or undeliverable ballots.

Olsen said there have been few problems, and those get corrected quickly. “Generally when problems do occur, it’s when the printer mixes up a barcode with a data file,” he said.

The cost is based first on a setup fee, and then processing registered voter data. Olsen said the service costs a nickel a voter.

“The same comments kept coming up – voters don’t have any confidence in the mail, they feel like it’s being corrupted,” he said. “It’s technology that’s been around, we just put them together.”

Michael Ciaglo and AJ Vicens of News21 contributed to this article. AJ Vicens was an Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellow this summer for News21.

Discuss this series of stories on the Facebook page for Open Channel, the NBC News investigative blog.

Or send feedback to News21.

Khara Persad/News21

Miara Hunt, 19, registered to vote with the help of Debbie Agee during a registration drive outside the Thomas Deli in Pratt City, Ala.

At NBCNews.com we're continuing the series of articles from News21 on voter ID laws and voting rights. Here from News21 is a helpful rundown on the voter identification requirements in each state in the U.S. 

Click here to look up the law in any state on the ID required to register, the ID required at the polls, the deadlines and other information about voting rights issues.

From a continuing  series of articles, Who Can Vote?, a News21 investigation of voting rights in America.

By Joe Henke and Emily Nohr
News21

Interactive:Click on the image to learn about each of the 36 secretaries of state who also serve as their state's chief election official.

Activist secretaries of state across America are dramatically changing a once nonpartisan job that involves supervising elections.

Some have supported partisan legislation. Some have endorsed or advised their party’s candidates. In 36 states, the secretary of state also holds the title of chief election official.

The most aggressive of this new group are Republicans Kris Kobach, 46, of Kansas and Scott Gessler, 47, of Colorado.

They have been leaders in efforts to enact strict voter registration requirements in Kansas and to purge voting rolls in Colorado. Both say they want to stop voter fraud while critics, including Democrats and civil rights groups, say the measures would suppress voting.

Kobach and Gessler also have used their offices to endorse statewide and federal candidates. While Gessler endorsed Mitt Romney, Kobach said he’s an informal immigration adviser to the presidential candidate’s campaign.

However, Romney campaign regional press secretary Alison Hawkins told News21, that Kobach isn’t an adviser to the campaign on any issues, either formally or informally.

Kobach and Gessler aren’t alone.

Secretaries of State Brian Kemp of Georgia and Matt Schultz of Iowa, both Republicans, have supported voter ID legislation. All the states that have passed ID laws have Republican-majority legislatures except Rhode Island, which had a Democratic majority in 2011 when its law passed with bipartisan support.

Arizona’s Republican Secretary of State Ken Bennett added to the birther debate, largely Tea Party-driven, when he threatened to remove President Barack Obama’s name from the general election ballot unless Hawaii sent him the president’s birth certificate.

Bennett has since received it and apologized if he offended anyone.

Kobach and Gessler, more than others, are changing the role of a state’s election officer.

Kobach has been involved in national Republican politics since 2001 when he was chief immigration adviser to then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

He went on to write S.B. 1070, Arizona’s contentious anti-immigration law. Three of four parts of that law were rejected in June by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gessler addressed the Republican $250-a-plate Lincoln Day Dinner in Denver in June about voter fraud, saying, “People on the left say it doesn’t exist … but I’m from Chicago originally, where they used to say, ‘Vote early and vote often.’”

“In Denver, there are lots of unaffiliates," or independent voters, "there are lots of Democrats,” said Gessler. “We call it a target-rich environment. We are going to win this state. We are going to do it in Denver by converting people over to our banner, our point of view.”

Trey Grayson, who was Kentucky’s Republican secretary of state from 2004 to 2011, said he “cringes” today at partisan comments by Republican secretaries of state.

“I was a very proud Republican, but I was very cognizant of the fact that people needed to be able to trust elections,” said Grayson, who now directs the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

“So I tried to remember that in what I said, whether it was on a policy, on politics or on an individual, and always being aware of that appearance,” he added.

News21 is a program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that is helping to change the way journalism is taught in the U.S. and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry. It is headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Since 2006, nearly 500 top journalism students in the U.S. have participated in the landmark national initiative.

But Gessler says his outspokenness is respectful to voters.

“When I say I’m a Republican and this is what I stand for, I think I’m giving people an honest choice,” Gessler said. “When people hide their party affiliation, or when people pretend there is no policy divide, pretend there is no choice here, what they’re really doing is masking what those choices are.”

Alexander Keyssar, professor of history and social policy at the Kennedy School, said the office should be nonpartisan.

“One of our many problems in the world of elections is that our election administration is generally partisan. They’re elected as members of a party. That’s how Katherine Harris could be secretary of state and state chair of Bush’s campaign simultaneously,” he said.

While serving as Florida’s Secretary of State under then-Gov. Jeb Bush, Harris was accused of partisan bias as she declared George W. Bush the winner of Florida’s electoral votes in the 2000 presidential election, a decision ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Unlike Kobach or Gessler, Harris didn’t tackle controversial public policy issues such as immigration and voter ID.

Kobach was elected as Kansas secretary of state in 2010 after a two-year stint as Republican Party chairman. He co-wrote the state’s Secure and Fair Elections Act, requiring photo ID to vote and, effective next year, proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Kobach argues he can fairly govern his state’s elections and also take strong partisan stances. While campaigning, Kobach told voters he would work on voter ID and anti-immigration legislation.

“My opponents tried to use that against me,” he said. He beat his Democratic opponent by more than 21 points.

Kobach says “a person can be a strong Republican or a strong Democrat and still approach the administration of elections with a nonpartisan, evenhanded attitude.”

Similarly, when Gessler took office in January 2011, the Denver Post reported his intention to continue practicing law at Hackstaff Gessler LLC. His Denver firm “specializes in campaign and elections law and has represented a number of Republican-aligned clients,” according to the newspaper.

Colorado Common Cause and Colorado Ethics Watch, two groups that aim to hold government accountable, called this a conflict of interest.

Gessler consulted with Colorado’s Republican attorney general and then decided to leave the firm, even though he said he would have only worked on real estate cases.

“At the end of the day, it caused a lot of controversy and it really become untenable,” Gessler said.

He’s since spent significant time in the courtroom, dealing with at least 10 lawsuits. These involve handling of ballots for inactive voters, attempting to reform campaign finance in Colorado, and addressing public access to ballots.

The partisanship of secretaries of state in the role of chief election official “is an obvious conflict of interest between the essential obligation to serve all voters and their attachment to one of the major political parties,” said Daniel Tokaji, an election law professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

Currently, more Republicans than Democrats have made their secretary of state offices partisan, Grayson said. Of the 36 secretaries of state who are chief election officers, 23 are Republican and 13 are Democratic.

One outspoken, partisan Democratic secretary of state is Minnesota’s Mark Ritchie.

He grabbed the national spotlight through election recounts. Conservatives questioned Ritchie for calling Al Franken the winner of a 2008 Senate race, and two years later Mark Dayton the winner of a gubernatorial recount.

Both winning candidates are also Democrats.

Ritchie is outspoken on voting rights issues. Unlike the Republican secretaries of state, he opposes a voter ID requirement in Minnesota, saying it will disenfranchise voters and cost millions in unnecessary expenses.

Minnesota has 4,000 polling places with 30,000 election judges, Ritchie said. He downplays the influence a secretary of state has as chief election officer.

“It’s the towns that run the elections. The counties are the chief election officers and they own and control their voter list completely,” Ritchie said. “We don’t own the elections. This is why a lot of this conversation about secretaries is kind of meaningless in a way.”

Minnesota Republicans say Ritchie is trying to influence voters by renaming two proposed constitutional amendments – one requiring voters to show photo ID and the other banning same-sex marriage – on the November ballot.

The GOP legislature called the voter ID amendment “Photo Identification Required for Voting” and Ritchie retitled it, “Changes to in-person and absentee voting and voter registration; provisional ballots.”

Ritchie changed the language of the same-sex amendment from “Recognition of Marriage Solely Between One Man and One Woman,” to “Limiting the Status of Marriage to Opposite Sex Couples.”

Amendment proponents say Ritchie has changed the titles to confuse voters and help defeat the measures to benefit Minnesota Democrats.

In a country so divided along party lines, secretaries should be wary of partisan politics, said Doug Chapin, a University of Minnesota researcher and director of the Program for Excellence in Election Administration.

Jocelyn Benson, a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, who was the Michigan Democratic nominee for secretary of state in 2010, said the officeholder should be an advocate for voters.

 “So the question is are they making decisions that are in the best interest of the voters or are they simply advancing what their party’s agenda is?” said Benson, who wrote “Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process.”

To some degree, she added, the public should expect secretaries to advance their party’s political agenda. However, balance is needed in Republicans’ desire for integrity in elections and Democrats’ expectations for access to voting, said Benson.

“The challenge is to do both and to essentially make it easier to vote and harder to cheat,” she said.

In Louisiana, state law keeps some partisan politics out of the secretary’s office. Secretary of State Tom Schedler can’t endorse candidates, serve on campaign committees of candidates or make campaign contributions.

In New Mexico, Secretary of State Dianna Duran has not endorsed candidates. Her office says it would conflict with the New Mexico Governmental Conduct Act.

Other states’ secretaries don’t endorse candidates out of personal belief. Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin, a Democrat, hasn’t endorsed a candidate since he took office in 1995.

South Dakota’s two previous secretaries of state, Chris Nelson and Joyce Hazeltine, served for a combined 24 years. Like Galvin, they personally choose to never endorse a candidate.

But in June, South Dakota Secretary of State Jason Gant, a Republican, endorsed then-Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum and South Dakota Republican state senate candidate Val Rausch.

“The operation of elections has a vast amount of laws,” Gant said. “Whether people endorse or not or do different political maneuvers, the laws we have in our state are very strong.”

Other states stay clear of partisan politics by using election boards and commissions. State election boards or commissions administer elections in 11 states and Washington D.C.

The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, for example, consists of six former judges as a nonpartisan staff. Together, they oversee the state’s elections, campaign finance, ethics and lobbying laws.

“The benefit of having a board like ours is that all of our judges are trained decision makers. They know how to weigh the evidence, how to look at the law and how to apply it,” said Reid Magney, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board public information officer.

With a partisan secretary of state, Magney said, opponents will say, “it’s because you’re a Democrat or it’s because you’re a Republican” that a decision was made.

Kobach and Gessler disagree.

They say a secretary of state who is also the chief election official means greater accountability.

“They’re not as politically accountable as a single elected official,” said Kobach of election boards.

Secretaries of state who also are the chief election officer “subject themselves to the scrutiny of voters … so you have public accountability built in,” Gessler said.

Including Kobach and Gessler, 32 secretaries serving as chief election officials are elected. Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas secretaries of state are appointed by their governors. New Hampshire’s legislature names its secretary of state.

Delaware Election Commissioner Elaine Manlove, who was appointed by a Democratic governor to a four-year term, says elected secretaries, who must campaign, should not alienate other parties.

“I just don’t know how you split yourself down the middle like that,” she said.

Though Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, a 12-year veteran, has made political endorsements, he’s been praised for running elections fairly, most notably in 2004 when he oversaw the closest gubernatorial election recount in U.S. history.

Reed, a Republican, introduced two popular changes: the nation’s first top-two primary system and an all-vote-by-mail system.

“When you’re there to talk about elections, you’re there just to make the system work better, not with some partisan ax to grind, or get back at someone for something they have done before,” Reed said.

New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner runs his election system similarly. The Democrat first took office in 1976 and has since been re-elected by both Republican and Democratic legislatures.

With Reed and Gardner as possible exceptions, Tokaji calls addressing partisan election administrations the great-unfinished business of election reform.

“The past decade we have seen a lot of changes, many of them positive, but we really haven’t addressed this problem when it comes to how our elections are run,” Tokaji said.

Joe Henke was a Hearst Foundations Fellow this summer for News21.

Discuss this series of stories on the Facebook page for Open Channel, the NBC News investigative blog.

Or send feedback to News21.

From a continuing  series of articles, Who Can Vote?, a News21 investigation of voting rights in America. Read the previous article, Disabled and elderly voters face a new Voter ID hurdle at the polls.

By Ethan Magoc
News21

A growing number of conservative Republican state legislators worked fervently during the past two years to enact laws requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls.

Lawmakers proposed 62 photo ID bills in 37 states in the 2011 and 2012 sessions, with multiple bills introduced in some states. Ten states have passed strict photo ID laws since 2008, though several may not be in effect in November because of legal challenges.

A News21 analysis found that more than half of the 62 bills were sponsored by members or conference attendees of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Washington, D.C., tax-exempt organization.

ALEC has nearly 2,000 state legislator members who pay $100 in dues every two years. Most of ALEC’s money comes from nonprofits and corporations — from AT&T to Bank of America to Chevron to eBay — which pay thousands of dollars in dues each year.

“I very rarely see a single issue taken up by as many states in such a short period of time as with voter ID,” said Jennie Bowser, senior election policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan organization that compiles information about state laws. “It’s been a pretty remarkable spread.”

A strict photo ID law, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, requires voters to show photo ID or cast a provisional ballot, which is not counted unless the voter returns with an ID to the elections office within a few days. Less-strict laws allow voters without ID to sign an affidavit or have a poll worker vouch for their identity — no provisional ballot necessary.

The flurry of bills introduced the last two years followed the 2010 midterm election when Republicans took control of state legislatures in Alabama, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina and Wisconsin. The same shift occurred in the 2004 election in Indiana and Georgia before those states became the first to pass strict voter ID laws.

ALEC members drafted a voter ID bill in 2009, a year when the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization had $5.3 million in undisclosed corporate  and nonprofit contributions, according to Internal Revenue Service documents.

At ALEC’s annual conferences, legislators, nonprofits and corporations work together without direct public input to develop bills that promote smaller government.

The group’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force at the 2009 Atlanta meeting approved the “Voter ID Act,” a photo ID bill modeled on Indiana and Georgia laws.

News21 is a program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that is helping to change the way journalism is taught in the U.S. and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry. It is headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Since 2006, nearly 500 top journalism students in the U.S. have participated in the landmark national initiative.

The task force convened in committees at the downtown Hyatt Regency Atlanta that July. Arkansas state Rep. Dan Greenberg, Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce and Indiana state Rep. Bill Ruppel (three Republicans now out of office) led drafting and discussion of the Voter ID Act.

Critics of photo voter ID laws, such as the Advancement Project, a Washington D.C., civil rights group, say voters without a driver’s license or the means (a birth certificate or Social Security card) to obtain free ID cards at a state motor vehicles office could be disenfranchised.

They claim that ALEC pushed for photo ID laws because poor Americans without ID are likely to vote against conservative interests – a claim that authors of the Voter ID bills deny.

“By no means do I want to disenfranchise anyone,” said Colorado Republican state Rep. Libby Szabo whose ID bills have failed the last two years in the state’s Democratic senate.

“I can’t speak for each individual person,” Szabo said, “but it seems to me in today’s mobile society people have been able to manage transportation options for other necessary services.”

Szabo, an ALEC member, said she did not know ALEC had a model photo ID bill prior to submitting her legislation.

The late Paul Weyrich, a political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, helped start ALEC in 1973. For many years, it steadily increased in state-level legislative members, developed annual conferences and had a relatively low national profile.

As ALEC grew, it began drafting and disseminating “model bills” that advocated free market economic ideas, such as eliminating capital gains taxes and weakening labor and consumer laws. Its website states, “Each year, close to 1,000 bills, based at least in part on ALEC Model Legislation, are introduced in the states. Of these, an average of 20 percent become law.”

This statement was difficult to substantiate until 2011 because ALEC’s model bills and membership lists were secret. After Ohio community organizer Aliyah Rahman helped start a spring 2011 protest against ALEC in Cincinnati, someone offered her 800 ALEC documents.

Rahman, who said she never learned the leaker’s identity, turned the documents over to the Center for Media and Democracy, a Wisconsin investigative reporting group focused on “exposing corporate spin and government propaganda,” according to its website. The group launched a website called ALEC Exposed in July 2011.

While that site drew attention to ALEC, activist and media scrutiny exploded because of the council’s support for model bills unrelated to economic issues.

In December 2011, ColorOfChange.org, a civil rights advocacy group founded after Hurricane Katrina, began asking corporations to stop funding ALEC because of the group’s role in pushing photo ID bills.

The seeds of a more serious challenge to ALEC’s funding were planted seven years ago. Florida Republican Rep. Dennis Baxley, who in 2011 would sponsor the state’s controversial early voting and registration changes, sponsored a “stand your ground” law in 2005 that gave “immunity from criminal prosecution or civil action for using deadly force,” according to the bill’s summary.

It later became a National Rifle Association-supported ALEC model bill, and 24 other states now have similar laws, according to ProPublica.

The February 2012 killing of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., brought unprecedented attention to the law. Police did not arrest his shooter, George Zimmerman, for nearly two months. That sparked national protests and led to the dismissal of the city’s police chief. Zimmerman eventually was charged with second-degree murder in April and is free on $1 million bond.

In March, ColorOfChange.org began asking ALEC corporate funders why they gave money to a group that supported “stand your ground” and voter ID laws, two controversial non-economic issues.

More than 25 corporations, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Wal-Mart and Amazon, have announced they would stop funding ALEC.

“In a lot of cases, companies didn’t know the full range of what they were funding" through ALEC, said Gabriel Rey-Goodlatte, ColorOfChange.org’s director of strategy. “With voter ID, it’s possible some companies believe it’s in their business interest to tilt the political playing field in one direction, but that would be a very cynical business strategy.

“It’s one that only works if it’s done in the darkness,” he said.

Both the Center for Media and Democracy and the open government advocacy group, Common Cause, have published internal ALEC documents, including model bills, membership lists and correspondence with elected officials.

Common Cause is challenging ALEC’s status as a tax-exempt nonprofit, claiming it lobbies legislators — specifically through “issue alerts.” Common Cause claims these emails from ALEC headquarters to state legislators “constitute direct evidence of ALEC’s lobbying because they are communications that are clearly targeted to influence legislation and disclose ALEC’s view on the legislation.”

Marcus Owens, a retired director of the IRS Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division, represents a progressive church group in Ohio called Clergy Voices Oppose Illegal Church Entanglement, or Clergy VOICE. In June, Owens sent a 30-page letter to the IRS alleging that ALEC has engaged in lobbying and violated federal tax law.

But Baxley called it “a healthy thing for legislators to come together and have dialogue about bills.” He said that ALEC’s operations are similar to, though more conservative than, the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. “If they share ideas, I don’t start yelling conspiracy. It’s very inappropriate,” Baxley said.

Meagan Dorsch, public affairs director for the National Conference of State Legislatures, disputed Baxley’s characterization. “I’m not sure why we’re being compared — probably because we’re two of the larger legislative organizations,” Dorsch said. “The only people who vote on our policies are legislators. No corporate members are involved.”

Common Cause staff counsel Nick Surgey said the documents his group sent to the IRS provide “a snapshot of what ALEC’s been doing” from 2010 to 2012, but the group has not come across any ALEC issue alerts related to the Voter ID Act.

ALEC, whose staff declined to discuss the group’s role in advocating for voter ID bills throughout a seven-month News21 investigation, will not disclose which corporations voted for the model voter ID bill nor whether issue alerts were sent to states considering such legislation.

“It is vitally important to protect the integrity of our voting system in the United States and such protection must come from the state level,” a July 2009 ALEC newsletter said. “That is why ALEC members are actively working on these issues.

“Election reform is both critical and complex, with multiple possible solutions for different states. Therefore, ALEC is uniquely positioned to raise awareness and provide effective solutions to ensure a legal, fair and open election system,” the newsletter continued.

Andy Jones (a former intern) and Jonathan Moody (still an ALEC staff member) wrote that article. Jones declined to comment and Moody did not respond to an interview request.

Sean Parnell worked with state legislators Greenberg, Pearce and Ruppel when they drafted the ALEC model voter ID bill (Pearce did not respond to multiple interview requests). Parnell was then the president of the Center for Competitive Politics, an Alexandria, Va., organization that opposes campaign contribution limits.

“A number of organizations — on all sides — are a little too paranoid about talking,” said Parnell, who now runs a consulting firm, Impact Policy Management. “But you have to understand, as private entities, they have every right to say, ‘You know what? This is not something for public consumption.’”

“But I can tell you, ALEC private-sector members really didn’t care one way or the other when we discussed voter ID,” he said.

Ruppel said about 50 legislators and private-sector members voted on the bill, with a wide majority voting yes. “The private sector was a little quiet on it, but they were the ones who said people need IDs for everything these days. It’s common sense.”

News21 attempted to contact each of the 115 ALEC Public Safety and Elections Task Force members listed on a 2010 document that Common Cause published. The majority did not return phone calls. Former Michigan state Rep. Kim Meltzer, one of 108 Republicans on the task force, said she didn’t know voter ID was an ALEC initiative.

Georgia legislator Edward Lindsey said ALEC gradually developed “mission creep” and strayed from its economic-centered purpose. ALEC, facing intense media attention and corporate dropouts, disbanded the Public Safety and Elections Task Force in April.

“That should help them focus on core economic policies instead of on the machinations of democracy,” said Keesha Gaskins, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a group that opposes strict photo ID laws.

Legislator interest in voter ID

It is difficult to find exact matches between ALEC’s Voter ID Act and strict photo ID bills that appeared nationwide in the past two years. Much of the minutiae of the bills’ language differs, which Greenberg said is the objective.

“That’s the way ALEC works. We don’t give people an ironclad law to propose,” he said.

And because Greenberg’s bill was modeled on the Indiana and Georgia laws, many legislators interviewed for this story said their proposals were also based on those laws, not ALEC’s model bill.

Still, the Center for Media and Democracy’s Brendan Fischer said his group sees “pretty strong evidence” of the influence of the Voter ID Act: “We identified numerous instances where legislation introduced in state legislatures contained ‘ALEC DNA’ — meaning the state legislation and the ALEC models shared similar or identical language or provisions.”

State bill sponsors, including Republican state Rep. Cathrynn Brown of New Mexico, said their motivation did not come from ALEC, but from reports about the now-defunct liberal voter registration group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

“We had groups like them going around doing registrations and discarding the ones they didn’t like,” Brown said.

ACORN, which endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008, became the target of conservative activist James O’Keefe’s deceptively edited videos that purported to show employees encouraging criminal behavior.

ACORN folded in 2010 after Congress and private donors pulled its funding. New Hampshire state Rep. Jordan Ulery blamed the group for increasing partisan fighting about election fraud.

A News21 survey of the states found that there had been only about 10 cases of voter impersonation fraud in the U.S. in the past decade.

“Are both parties guilty of games? Sadly, yes,” said Ulery, a former member of ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force. Ulery, a Republican, supported his state’s voter ID bills, which have twice been vetoed by New Hampshire's Democratic governor.

“But only one political party in this past decade has actually been widely associated with an entity that was actively engaged in registration scams, trucking of voters and avoiding with the greatest possible energy vote-security measures,” Ulery said about Democrats.

Former ACORN director Bertha Lewis now runs a civil rights group in New York City called the Black Institute. She is still defiant toward  ACORN’s critics.

“Our quality-control program was so good, and we were so strict, we would fire people on the spot,” said Lewis, who estimated that ACORN registered more than a million voters in 2007 and 2008 before Obama’s election. “I only regret that we weren’t as prepared, that we were naive when the critics started spreading lies.”

After ALEC’s 2009 Voter ID Act, ACORN’s 2010 collapse, and the 2010 midterm elections, 62 voter ID bills were introduced in state legislatures.

Legislators who would discuss how they wrote their bills all said they did not use ALEC’s Voter ID Act.

“I have a long history with this,” said state Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer, Minnesota’s former secretary of state and a Republican who wrote Minnesota’s voter ID bill. “For people who say this is just ALEC’s bill is demeaning to me as a woman and a legislator — suggesting that we couldn’t write our own bill for Minnesota.”

Greenberg isn’t surprised lawmakers have dissociated themselves from the ALEC model, given the recent backlash.

“Some of that is legislative vanity that is not confined to the realm of ALEC,” and Greenberg says he “can’t imagine claiming that I don’t copy good ideas when I see them, but I think for some legislators, this would be a scary admission.”

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