A report released earlier this month by the NAACP found that Florida is among the states with the “most restrictive” felon disenfranchisement “laws in the country” — one of many aspects of the state’s voting practices that will limit voter participation among minorities, according to the group.

The subject of voting rights in the U.S. has received renewed attention since sweeping changes to voting laws were passed in states across the country. Voting rights advocates in Florida have largely focused on new limitations on third-party voter registration, early voting days and ballot measure signatures. Little scrutiny, however, has been given to a rollback of voting rights for ex-offenders, also referred to as returning citizens.

According to the NAACP report (PDF), Florida is one of only four states in the country that “denies the right to vote permanently to all individuals convicted of any felony offense.”

The NAACP reports:

Florida imposed a mandatory five-year waiting period and petition process for the restoration of rights for individuals who have completed their sentences. In March 2011, Florida, which already had the largest disfranchised population of any state in the country (approximately 1 million), rolled back state rules enacted four years ago that eliminated the post-sentence waiting period and provided for automatic approval of reinstatement of rights for individuals convicted of non-violent felony offenses.

The previous rule was put into effect in 2007, allowing the restoration of rights to more than 154,000 people who had completed their sentences.

Under Florida’s new rules, all individuals who have completed their sentences, even those for non-violent offenses, must wait at least five years before they may petition the Clemency Board for the restoration of their civil rights, including the right to register to vote. Some offenders even have a mandatory seven-year period before they may petition.

Even worse, the five–year waiting period for individuals convicted of a non-violent offense to apply for restoration of voting rights resets if a person is simply arrested for a criminal offense—even if charges are eventually dropped or the person is acquitted of all allegations.

By most accounts, these new clemency rules make Florida’s the most restrictive felon disfranchisement approach in the country.

Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and a self-described “formerly convicted individual,” says that blame for the state’s poor voting rights for returning citizens goes “beyond political reasons.”

“This is more than just politically motivated,” Meade tells The Florida Independent. “These policies have been pushed by the prison industrial complex.”

According to Meade, private prison companies are “big campaign donors” that benefit from policies that limit former inmates’ rights.

“That’s how they make their money,” Meade says. According to Meade, keeping ex-offenders from having a say in political affairs limits proper accountability for legislators and institutions such as prisons — whether they are public or private. He also says that private prison companies have long lobbied for restricted rights of former inmates. As their influence grows, Meade argues, the rights of returning citizens shrink.

The power of private prisons in Florida has become increasingly visible in the past few years. According to reporting by The American Independent’s Yana Kunichoff:

GEO Group, the second-largest private prison operator in the country, is headquartered in Florida, and is already running the state’s largest private prison, the Blackwater River Correctional Facility in Milton. When the Corrections Corporation of America builds the largest private immigration center in the country, as it agreed with the town of Southwest Ranches and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to do earlier this year, Florida will become ground zero for private prisons.

The situation in Florida isn’t unique, but advocates say the scale of Florida’s plan is remarkable.

“It’s precedent-setting,” says Ken Kopczynski, executive director of the Private Corrections Working Group, a website that collects news and resources on the growing influence of the private prison industry.

Kopczynski says the proposed budget amendment and the planned ICE-contracted center “is the largest privatization effort in the U.S., if not in the world.”

The industry, Kunichoff wrote, has relied “on the goodwill of legislators” and groups such as the GEO Group have given hundreds of thousands in campaign donations to the Republican Party of Florida.

Meade says state policy-makers have favored prison companies, while simultaneously disregarding the rights of offenders and former offenders.

“We definitely feel that they are implementing their policies just to show they are being ‘tough on crime,’” Meade says, something he says this is done at the expense of actually “reducing and preventing crime.”

“This is all contrary to public safety,” Meade says. “There is no evidence that giving voting rights to returning citizens will negatively effect a community.”

He describes the rollback as an effort to block “people’s access to the polls.”

According to Meade, the new House Bill 4129 — which was introduced by state Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Shalimar, last month — would “create yet another obstacle.” According to a summary of the bill, 4129 would repeal a “provision that prohibits clerk or inspector from asking elector to provide additional information or recite elector’s home address after presenting picture identification that matches elector’s address in supervisor of elections’ records.”

“That is crazy,” Meade says. “I guess volunteers will decide who votes now.”

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Smithers7)

Due to decreased population growth over the last decade, Ohio must lose two congressional districts.

In legislative sessions that range from plaintive to snarling (and including some mild profanity), Democrats in Ohio’s General Assembly have locked horns with the Republican majority over a map they call “ridiculous.”

The redistricting plan has even caused two Democratic legislators to move, in an effort to stay in office.

The map, signed into law as House Bill 319, provides Republicans with 12 strongly-conservative districts and Democrats only four, in a state with nearly equal numbers of both parties and a reputation for swinging between the two. It gerrymanders for the GOP into downtown business districts, and creates the new, snake-like 9^th District, a narrow band that nearly spans Lake Erie’s Ohio shore, from Toledo to Akron, prompting Cleveland-area comedian Mike Polk to joke that its only residents are people who either “live in a rest stop along I-90 or in a f***ing lighthouse.”

Republicans, who have enjoyed an overwhelming majority since the 2010 election, have found their most ambitious legislative achievements blocked by a provision in Ohio’s constitution that allows Ohioans to veto unpopular laws with ballot referendums, such was the case last week with Issue 2, a referendum on the anti-collective-bargaining law Senate Bill 5, and House Bill 194, which opponents called the “voter suppression bill” and won’t go into effect pending the result of the 2012 referendum.

Now, in a bizarre twist of Ohio jurisprudence, the same thing could happen with the redistricting bill –- in spite of Republican efforts to thwart exactly that possibility. Written in with a referendum-proof appropriations clause, Republican strategists thought they had insulated their map from citizen veto. Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted followed suit, rejecting the initial petition gathered by Democratic activists.

“House Bill 319, as passed by the Ohio General Assembly and signed by the Governor, contained an appropriation and took effect immediately,” he wrote in a statement released October 12. “It is therefore not subject to referendum.”

But the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that, while the appropriations element of the bill was safe, the map was indeed subject to referendum, and signatures may be gathered to achieve that.

Democrats offered a map of their own that included six staunchly Republican districts and four likely to remain Democratic, with another six districts that skew Republican but could generate competitive races; that proposal was thrown out by Ohio Speaker of the House William Batchelder (R-Medina) in favor of beginning debate on new bill, as he said the old bill had run out of time.

No deal could mean non-legislative compromise. While legislators are making medicine behind closed doors, a failure could have consequences both parties would consider undesirable.

“Most likely this would go to the courts, probably a federal district court that would have to make a decision regarding how we elect representatives,” said Herb Asher, Ph. D and professor emeritus with The Ohio State University’s political science department. He said the courts could appoint a “master,” someone with expertise in drawing up congressional districts.

“My guess is both political parties would not like that system, because the master would not be focused on protecting incumbents,” said Asher. “These could be districts that Democratic and Republican incumbents would not like.”

The duration of such court-drawn districts is also uncertain.

“It’s a little premature to say whether it would be a remedy the courts would order for only one election or for the next decade; you know, the next five elections,” said Donald McTigue, a Columbus lawyer who specializes in election and campaign-finance law, in an interview.  “I could see the courts choosing to wait, given that the people will already have a chance to make that decision next November, if the referendum goes through.”

However, it seems as though Democrats would rather work out a deal.

“We continue to welcome Statehouse Republicans to engage in a compromise. If a map is adopted that is fair, that is competitive, that keeps together like communities and that protects minority representation, we will end our petition drive,” said Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, in a release.  “After all, our volunteers deserve the break – and all Ohioans deserve fair representation in Congress.”

Seth Bringman, communications director for the Ohio Democratic Party, agreed with his boss: He said a deal was preferable to seeing the bill’s fate decided in a November duel.

“We would like to see a legislative compromise so it doesn’t get to that point,” he said* in an interview with The American Independent.  “We would like to see the Republicans support one that that keeps ‘like’ communities together and protects minority representation, and if Republicans can support such a map, than the legislative and legal process can end and Ohio can have fair representation – but if that outcome is not achieved, then the Ohio Democratic Party will continue to collect signatures to qualify for a referendum.”

Bringman complained the process was opaque from square one.

“These unfair maps were rushed through in just 48 hours, not shown to the public, not shown to Democrats, and that process was very unfair,” he said.  “And because we as Democrats pursued our options to take this map to a referendum, we are actually having a debate, and bipartisan discussion as to what a fair map should look like.  So our ultimate goal is that fair map, that’s competitive and keeps together like communities and protects minority representation.  We think having that debate and achieving a map that fairly represents [the state], is a positive route to take, for the voters of Ohio.”

Bringman also said that the referendum strategy had not been discussed until the GOP revealed its map.

“It was upon seeing this ridiculous gerrymandered map that discussion of a referendum first began,” he said. “If Democrats and the general public had been included in the redistricting process, you would have seen compromise, and we would have today a much fairer map and Democrats would not be pursuing a referendum, but as was the case with SB5 and as was the case with the voter suppression bill, we believe that this map defied the will of the people of Ohio, and that the people should have a voice in the process.”

Too close to the edge?

“One way or another, we will elect members of the U.S. House,” said Asher, on whether playing too close to the edge could result in districts not being prepared in time. “The real question is who’s going to end up drawing the districts. I think there is maybe a little brinkmanship going on here; I think the Republicans are waiting to see how successful the drive to gather signatures for the referendum is going.”

According to State Senator William Seitz (R-Cincinnati), that is definitely part of it.

“We’ll see if they are able to pull that off or not,” he told The American Independent in an interview. “The problem is very simple: we went from 18 seats to 16 seats, so it’s like musical chairs.”

Seitz said he voted for the first map because it satisfied all the requirements of a constitutional legal reapportionment: the number of districts was reduced, the map met the Voting Rights Act standards for minority representation and the number of people in each district was equal –- all required by law.

“So I favored the first map, because it hit all three of those bogies together,” he said, adding, “It pit two incumbent Republicans [against each other] and two incumbent Democrats against each other, which also seemed fair.  That’s why I voted for it.”

Seitz said he would be in favor of another improved map as well, and hoped for a compromise, calling a map drawn by the courts “the worst case scenario.”

“Failing [a compromise], I think we are in for a very long climate of uncertainty as to what our congressional lines will be, and whether you are a Republican or Democrat, that can’t be in the best interest of the people of Ohio,” said Seitz, who also believes too many referendums would undermine voters’ confidence in lawmakers.

“To my friends on the other side of the aisle, I would caution them: you can’t take everything to referendum without causing appreciable damage to the state,” he said.  “These things are expensive, time-consuming, and make it seems as thoughOhio is unable to govern through the legislative process. As much fun as it may be to take significant legislation to referendum, you’ve got to think of the countervailing damage this causes to people’s confidence in the legislative process.

“Let’s just look at SB5: by the time it’s all said and done, I’d bet you a Krispy Kreme that this thing cost $50 million, and the ad men and pollsters got rich while the rest of us still languish in the throes of a deep recession.”

Drastic times

Regardless of fault, the clock is ticking for both parties to strike a deal to avoid having the task of redistricting taken from their hands, which could make Ohio politically unpredictable.

“The other thing we are trying to avoid is having two separate primaries, a $15 million expense, which folks would just as soon avoid, if possible,” said Seitz.  “I’m told that, if something doesn’t happen this week, due to the various timelines extant, than we are almost obligated to have a two-date primary, or to push it back. I think both for political reasons and the expense we wouldn’t want to do that.

“If the primary is moved back to June, we wouldn’t have the same effect on the presidential elections.”

National influence aside, Ohioans will elect members of Congress, but that could take on a strange shape, especially for incumbents up for re-election in 2012.

“There is that threat out there, that if the Legislature doesn’t resolve it, someone else will have to resolve it,” said Asher, noting that, without a compromise, even more drastic plans could be implemented.

“Could you conceivably elect people ‘at-large’?” he asked.  “Yes, I suppose you could. Basically, the entire state of Ohio is one large congressional district, and you could have people voting from all over the state on representatives.

“Then you could really get into it,” he said.

*Update: Quotes from Mr. Bringman were clarified and amended in this story. We apologize for any confusion.

Photo: Flickr/samantha celera

The beautiful weather in Ohio Tuesday may seal the fate of Senate Bill 5, the state’s new anti-collective-bargaining law that was placed on the ballot via the state referendum Issue 2. Poll workers in Central Ohio are reporting much higher turnout than is usual for an off-year election, especially for a ballot with three state issues and only local candidates.

Poll workers are also expressing confidence in their training and readiness to handle last-minute surprises, said Jarvis Carr, a election worker in Columbus.

“In fact, the training emphasizes problems and challenges, but 95-percent of voters are ready to vote,” noted Carr.  “They have their IDs, they’re at the right polling location and they are ready to go.”

A casual look at the lists of voters that had already cast ballots, required to be posted in a public place at all precincts, showed that even before noon, the columns were filling up with ‘X’s, indicating that many in the precinct had found time to make it to the polls.

Alesia Richardson, polling precinct manager of a polling station in the relatively affluent Victorian Village neighborhood of Columbus (The American Independent is headed out to more polling locations as the day goes on), said she found herself working harder than usual this year.

“We’ve been very busy, unusually so,” she said. “It must be the issues that’s bringing them in.”

Ohio voters are deciding on SB5 through Issue 2, which has placed a spotlight on the Midwestern state as labor’s last stand. Laws that severely curb public employee unions’ rights to negotiate have passed in Wisconsin and New Jersey, states that don’t have Ohio’s constitutional ability for citizens to reject unpopular laws in referendum.

Other issues on the ballot include an increase in the age limit for new judges and Issue 3, a tea party-led initiative to prevent the individual mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act through an amendment to the state’s constitution. Recent polls show Issue 3 is headed for defeat, although there’s some indication of voter confusion about the language, as Republicans polled more negatively towards the issue than they had polled positively for “Obamacare,” the tea party’s derisive nickname for the law, while Democrats polled more favorably towards passing the issue than they had ever polled negatively toward the act.http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/11/senate-bill-5-headed-for-resounding-defeat-tuesday.html#more

Unlike Wisconsin, where tens of thousands appeared to protest the law, Ohio’s SB5 provided no exemption for public-safety workers, which helped to galvanize public opinion against the law. Recent polling suggests Ohioans are opposed to SB5 59 percent to 36 percent, a margin of 23 points. The favorable weather has a positive effect on liberal candidates and issues, as urban areas are both more likely to vote left and have more obstacles to overcome when they try, such as lower vehicle ownership and long lines at the polls.

“We’ve had a steady stream, with a line first thing this morning,” said Richardson in Columbus.

In spite of the line, she estimated no voter had waited more than three to five minutes to vote.

“We’re moving them through pretty quickly,” she said.

Early and absentee voters, on the other hand, were less enticed this year than any election in the last five, as new directives from the Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, restricted county boards of elections from mailing out unsolicited applications for absentee ballots, and shut down early voting over the weekend.  Both were part of the elections reforms former Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner put in place as a result of the 2000 and 2004 elections debacles.

This year, poll workers indicated that while some voters had been confused by the new rules, they had been able to vote provisionally anyway.

“A couple people said they just got their absentee ballots yesterday, so they weren’t able to mail them in on time,” said Carr, a poll worker in the Victorian Village precinct, adding that they were, however, eventually able to cast absentee ballots successfully.

Update, 7:10 p.m. EST: In Columbus’s Milo-Grogan neighborhood, voters are still turning out in unexpectedly high numbers, even in spite of some confusion as to the location of the polling station.

Milo-Grogan, a largely blighted area on the city’s east side, saw an estimated 200 voters by 5 p.m., which the precinct’s presiding judge called “almost twice as many as last year’s election,” when John Kasich was elected governor.

“I think it’s from Issue 2,” said Alison Thornton in a confiding whisper. “It’s from the push. Firefighters and police and teachers — there was just a huge push for Issue 2.”

Thornton added that churches and other organizations had been busing voters to the polls all day.

Polls close at 7:30 p.m. in Ohio.

Under the current rules a voter can only get an absentee ballot if they certify that they are 60 or older, expect to be away while polls are open, are physically unable to get to the polls, in jail awaiting arraignment or trial, can’t attend for religious reasons, or will be working as a election official in another precinct.

People who vote absentee for these reasons can order their ballots by mail or online.

About a quarter of all votes in the last two general elections were cast on absentee ballots, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

Democrats, voting rights advocates and local election officials have long pushed for no-reason absentee voting as a way to make it easier for more people to participate in elections.

Under laws proposed by Sen. David Robertson (R-Grand Blanc Township) and Rep. Cindy Denby (R-Handy Township) last week all voters would qualify to vote absentee but if they don’t claim one of the already-permitted reasons they would have to pick it up the ballot in person and show photo ID at their local clerk’s office.

Jan BenDor, former Pittsfield township deputy clerk and spokesperson for the Michigan Election Reform Alliance, questions why certain groups of absentee voters should be treated differently.

“Is there a problem with voters who request absent voter ballots doing so fraudulently?” she asks. “What evidence is there? Why would ‘no-reason’ AVs present a new problem of fraud?”

She continued.

In Michigan, your identity for elections purposes has always been your signature, signed in the presence of a sworn election official. This is a very secure system, and it is very hard to put a forged signature past election administrators. Most of them are experts in handwriting identification. My staff could tell the difference between signatures of father and son, with the same name, when they accidentally switched the return envelopes for their AV ballots.

The signature as basic ID, by the way, is the reason you cannot register by mail and immediately apply for an absentee ballot or sign any petitions. You must first vote in person at an election, where you sign your name before a sworn official.

Since the courts overruled the opinion of former AG Kelley that a photo ID requirement was unconstitutional, Michigan has required photo ID at the polls. However, replacing the signature match with a photo match is a poor exchange. It is relatively easy to get a fake photo ID (ask any teenager) and most election workers have a tough time figuring out if that low quality DL photo is really you. (I had a photo that was completely orange.)

Johnson’s proposal would seem to create a double identification requirement for absent voters who wish to skip the reason check box — they would have to match signature AND photo. Why is this useful, when all they have to do now is mail in the application with a signature, and check a box.

Jocelyn Benson teaches election law at Wayne State University and advocated for no-reason absentee voting as the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State in 2010.

“This law sets up a system of preferential treatment for voters who are able to jump through additional hoops to receive their absentee ballot, and may lead to unfounded and unwarranted suspicion of voters who are unable to jump through these hoops,” she said. Benson says we should be “making it easier for all Michigan voters to ensure their voice is heard on Election Day, not just a select few.”

Most states already have no-reason absentee voting and most, if not all, allow people to request their ballots by mail, said Daniel Tokaji, senior fellow of election law at The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.

Requiring some people to pick up their ballots in person “significantly limits the utility of no reason absentee ballots,” he said.

Tokaji said that it is “not entirely irrational” for the state to attempt to impose some safeguards to prevent absentee voting fraud.

“I don’t want to present the misleading idea that voting fraud is common,” he said. “It’s not, but in those instances where voter fraud has been demonstrated it almost always involves absentee ballots.”

Tokaji said that he’s been worried about expanding absentee voting because people tend to make a lot of mistakes when they vote absentee.

“I think in person early voting is a better solution because election officials are there to help you,” he said, “but election officials don’t really like it because it is more work for them, they’ve got to keep a polling place open for several days. Election officials like no reason absentee voting because it takes the pressure off without a lot of new costs.”

The sponsors of the bills to create a new no-reason absentee voting system — Sen. David Robertson (R-Grand Blanc Township)and “Rep. Cindy Denby (R-Handy Township) — did not respond to requests to talk about the measures.

These new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities. This wave of changes may sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 election. Based on the Brennan Center’s analysis of the 19 laws and two executive actions that passed in 14 states, it is clear that:

• These new laws could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.
• The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
• Of the 12 likely battleground states, as assessed by an August Los Angeles Times analysis of Gallup polling, five have already cut back on voting rights (and may pass additional restrictive legislation), and two more are currently considering new restrictions.

States have changed their laws so rapidly that no single analysis has assessed the overall impact of such moves. Although it is too early to quantify how the changes will impact voter turnout, they will be a hindrance to many voters at a time when the United States continues to turn out less than two thirds of its eligible citizens in presidential elections and less than half in midterm elections.

There are no such bills either passed or pending in Michigan right now, but voting rights groups say the state is violating federal law by not adequately enforcing current law that requires voter registration services be made available at all public assistance offices.

* Include a voter registration form “unless the applicant, in writing, declines to register to vote.”
* Inform the applicant in writing that, “Applying to register or declining to register to vote will not affect the amount of assistance that you will be provided by this agency.”
* Provide assistance in filling out the forms, if necessary.

Nicole Zeitler, an attorney with Project Vote, told the Michigan Messenger that the state is not following the law.

“The NVRA requires the state to do more than simply make voter registration ‘available’ at public assistance agencies,” she said. “Agencies must affirmatively offer a voter registration application form with EVERY application for benefits, recertification, and change of address form, whether or not the client asks for one. Michigan DHS policy, on the other hand—in violation of the NVRA—is to ONLY offer a form IF someone specifically requests one. Furthermore, our field investigations found that only 1 in 4 clients who did request a form received one.”

The letter sent to Johnson’s office refers to interviews done with applicants at public assistance offices around the state and notes:

• More than half of interviewees (75 out of 149) did not notice the voter registration question within the forms they were provided by DHS – regardless of the type of transaction, program, or location/county of the transaction. Of these 75, only six were orally asked by any DHS employee about voter registration. Only three of the 75 received a voter registration application.
• Notwithstanding DHS policy that voter registration application forms are to be provided to clients who check “yes” in response to the voter registration question, fewer than 25% of people who checked “yes” received a voter registration
application.
• No one who was at a DHS office to make an address change saw any voter registration question within their benefits forms, was asked orally if they wanted to register, or was provided with a voter registration application.

Zeitler said several recent court decisions reinforce the group’s interpretation of the NVRA. She also noted that when the NVRA requirements are fully implemented, the result is a sizable increase in new voter registrations.

“The success of this program, when implemented as the law requires, is staggering,” she said. “In the year following the court order in Missouri, for example, applications from public agencies went from fewer than 8,000 a year to between 8,000–18,000 per month.”

Ultimately, Zeitler said, this is about making the right to vote as widely available to those with the least amount of political power.

“Congress included the public assistance requirements in the NVRA in order to reach the very people who are less likely to register to vote through other means, including low-income residents, minorities, the elderly, and the disabled,” she argued. “In neglecting this important law, Michigan is denying tens of thousands of Michigan residents their federally mandated opportunity to register to vote.”

A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office declined comment, saying that the department has not yet had time to review the letter.

Vote Kids, a nonprofit created in 2002, wants voters to tell those running for or considering running for president in 2012 to invest in and not cut programs that benefit children and families.

Watch the 30-second spot, “A or B,” that is appearing in Iowa this week:

“We want to bring attention to how children will be harmed as a result of federal budget proposals which already passed the House of Representatives,” said Michael Petite, president of Vote Kids.

“The so-called Ryan budget slashes programs vital to children and families, including Head Start, child care, public safety, child nutrition, education, Pell Grants, Community and Development Block Grants and jobs programs. These are shortsighted actions that would weaken America’s global economic competitiveness, which is why we want kids’ issues to be a prominent part of the debate in the forthcoming presidential campaign.”

According to the organization, the budget authored by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and approved by the U.S. House would convert Medicaid into block grants and result in $1.4 trillion in cuts, while doing nothing to reduce health care costs. These cuts would affect the 30 million children nationwide served by Medicaid, including some 224,616 children served in Iowa.

The House plan also calls for cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program by $127 billion, or 20 percent, over the next ten years. Millions of families would be affected, Petit said, leading to increased hunger and poverty. In Iowa, 111,610 children rely on food stamps, 147,839 receive free and reduced price lunches at school, and almost 9,000 are in the Summer Food Service Program.

While cutting health care and nutrition programs for working families and children, the Ryan Budget gives those Americans earning more than $1 million an additional $125,000 yearly tax break.

The Vote Kids’ ad asks viewers what choices they would make if they were in charge of America’s budget and to urge the presidential candidates streaming through Iowa in the months ahead to support smart policies for kids:

Although this isn’t Vote Kids’ first foray into national politics, the organization does appear to be the first to begin a campaign in the first contest states in hopes of driving a national conversation.

In 2006, the organization ran two campaigns spotlighting the records of former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) and U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.). During an after-poll in Arizona, the organization’s ads were remembered by voters and, more importantly, most voters reported caring about and acting upon the very issues raised in the Vote Kids campaign.

The organization also maintains an Iowa scorecard on issues important to children and families.

I wrote a story about the Portland effort last month, and supporters told me the initiative was based on making elections fairer to legal residents. It takes at least five years for immigrants legally in the country to become citizens, and can be much longer because of the difficulty of the citizenship test and steep naturalization fees. In the meantime, non-citizens pay taxes and use city services, and immigrant rights groups argued they should be allowed to impact the elections.

Opponents of the law, on the other hand, said voting should be limited to citizens; otherwise, legal residents would have little incentive to complete the naturalization process.

In San Francisco, a ballot provision to allow parents of public school students — including illegal immigrants — to vote in school board elections also failed, 54 percent to 46 percent. If it had passed, San Francisco would have joined Chicago as one of the few cities that allows undocumented immigrants to vote in school elections if their children attend school. Non-citizens are banned from voting in most of the country, except in a few Maryland cities. Early in the country’s history, non-citizens often voted.

Legal immigrants will be allowed to vote in city elections in Portland, Maine, if a ballot initiative passes on Nov. 2.

Last Wednesday, a group of progressive volunteers gathered in Monument Square in Portland, Maine, to quiz passersby about citizenship. Could they answer sample civics questions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services test to become an American citizen? (Most couldn’t.) Did they know how much it costs to become a citizen or how long it can take? (Most estimates were too low.) Did they know about Question 4 on the Portland, Maine, city ballot Nov. 2?

[Immigration1] In a city where legal immigrants make up about 15 percent of the population, the progressive groups Maine People’s Alliance and the League of Young Voters are working to encourage voters to extend voting rights to legal immigrants who have not yet become citizens. They argue these residents live, work and pay taxes in the city, but due to the difficulty of obtaining citizenship are unfairly denied the right to determine how the city spends its funds.

“Legal immigrants are active members of the community and shouldn’t be denied a voice because of these major barriers,” said Reva Eiferman, an organizer with Maine People’s Alliance. “There’s a disconnect between the citizenship process within the immigration system and an individual’s right to have their voice heard in their city.”

As cities and states across the country consider legislation aimed at limiting the flow of outsiders to their areas, a few municipalities are moving in the opposite direction, pushing to expand the rights of immigrants living within their borders. In Portland, Question 4 would allow legal immigrants to vote in municipal elections. A ballot proposition in San Francisco aims to take voting one step further, allowing even illegal immigrants to vote in school elections as long as they are the parents of a public school student. In New York, city council members plan to introduce legislation allowing legal residents to vote in city elections within the next few months.

These efforts show that while anti-immigrant sentiment is prevalent, it’s not universal, supporters argue.

“It responds to what’s happening nationwide — the new policies in Arizona included — in a positive way,” Eiferman said.

Non-citizens can already vote in six Maryland municipalities and in Chicago school elections, but the rest of the country gives voting privileges only to citizens. Early in the country’s history, non-citizens were allowed to vote in most states, but as immigration into the United States increased, residents began to restrict voting rights, state by state. (Federal elections have always limited voting to citizens.) By the 1920s, as Europeans moved to the country after World War I, states cut off legal immigrant voting rights entirely, and only a few cities have so far reinstated them.

“It was kind of like the atmosphere now: There was concern about the volume of newcomers and what it means for the nature of America and where it’s headed,” said Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at the City University in New York and a supporter of expanding New York voting rights to non-citizens.

If immigrants can vote, they will never bother to become citizens, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the anti-illegal immigration group Center for Immigration Studies. He said the citizenship process is sufficiently easy for legal immigrants that they should be required to fully commit to the country before getting the right to vote.

“It’s silly not to require that formal step of marrying America instead of just shacking up,” Krikorian said.

But supporters argue that voting would help legal immigrants become more invested in their cities and schools. The San Francisco ballot measure to give parents of public school students the right to vote, Proposition D, could dramatically increase the number of potential voters in school elections: About half of all children in the Bay area have at least one immigrant parent, according to a study by the California Immigration Policy Center.

“I really believe our schools will be better if more parents are involved in every level of school governance,” said Kathy Coll, the mother of two San Francisco Unified School District students and one of three co-chairmen of the campaign for Proposition D.

In New York, the effort to expand voting will go through the city council, not through voters directly. City council member Daniel Dromm, a Democrat, said the council plans to consider legislation to extend voting in city elections to legal immigrants with the next few months. The bill will be called the Resident Voting Rights Act — “They are residents, they’re just not citizens yet,” Dromm said — and would allow any legal resident to vote in municipal elections.

“I feel it’s a basic right: This country was founded on the premise of ‘no taxation without representation,’” Dromm said. “By denying residents the right to vote, we are forcing taxation without representation.”

Advocates for immigrants said that in most cases, those who violated the voting law did so unwittingly.

“It really annoys me that they’re just trying to do their civic duty for no pecuniary gain at all, yet they wind up in removal proceedings,” said Jeffrey N. Brauwerman, a lawyer in Coral Gables, Fla., and a former immigration judge, who has represented four immigrants that the government tried to deport for registering to vote.

Under current policy, only U.S. citizens are able to vote in most of the country. Only six Maryland municipalities allow non-citizens to vote in city elections, while Chicago allows non-citizens to vote in city school elections, a political science professor told the Boston Globe. This was not always the case: Most states allowed originally allowed non-citizens to vote, but began to restrict voting as more people moved to the country. The first states to remove voting rights for legal residents, New York and Massachusetts, did so because they feared French radicals moving to the U.S. after the French revolution.

Despite the laws, some state lawmakers are concerned non-citizens are trying to vote anyway. In Colorado, state Rep. Ted Harvey (R) is pushing for legislation that would require voters to prove citizenship when they register by bringing either a passport or birth certificate. His plan was bolstered last week, when the Denver Post reported that nearly 12,000 registered voters failed to check a box affirming they were U.S. citizens when they registered to vote — which could have been either an error or an admission they were not legally allowed to vote.

“The federal government has proven they are incapable of protecting our borders and we are being flooded by people who should not be here,” Harvey told TWI. “On 9/11, some of the attackers had valid government documentation that they used to get on planes. I want to ensure that our government documents are valid and going to only people who should get them.”

At the other end of the spectrum, a few cities are pushing to allow some legal immigrants to vote. In Portland, Maine, the League of Young Voters gathered votes to put an amendment providing voting rights to legal residents on the ballot in November. The amendment would allow immigrants with green cards to vote in municipal elections so they could have a voice on issues that affect their taxes. A few cities in Massachusetts have passed similar efforts previously, and San Francisco politicians have proposed allowing all parents of public school children — legal or not — to vote in school elections.