The long road to voters' rights
BY BRETT BURSEY
South Carolina fired the latest volley in the war for state's rights
on Jan. 24, 1995, the date Gov. David Beasley sued the federal government
to block implementation of the national Voter's Rights Act.
Like some obligatory old South rite of passage, Beasley and Atty. Gen.
Charles Condon dusted off the arguments for this state's opposition to
every federal voting mandate since the Civil War.
While the governor's arguments against the Voter's Rights Act are the
same as the state's arguments against other voting acts and legal rulings
during times of strict racial segregation, Gov. Beasley has offered
assurances that the state's position 
this time isn't racist.
But since state demographics , including voter registration, are
severely tilted against black citizens, it is unclear what criterion the
governor uses to make this distinction.
The national Voter's Rights Act, known as Motor Voter because it
requires states to allow people to register to vote when they get a
driver's license, was signed into law in 1993.
The act was designed to boost participation in elections by
registering voters when they pass through state highway departments and
social service agencies.
The South Carolina congressional delegation split on party lines.
Democrats supported it; Republicans opposed it.
South Carolina passed the necessary legislation to implement Motor
Voter in 1994, and the State Election Commission said it was ready to
comply with the necessary changes without additional funding.
Last January, on one of his last days in office, Gov. Carroll Campbell
vetoed the state motor voter legislation, claiming it was too costly to
implement.
Beasley called the Voter's Rights Act "an unfunded and
unconstitutional federal mandate" which "impinges on the State's sovereign
rights." He warned that South Carolina would "take a hard stand" against
it.
Condon announced the suit with bravado. "We will not wait and see
whether General Reno decides to sue us. We are suing her."
Condon quoted South Carolinian William Travis at the Alamo: "We have
responded to their call for our surrender with a cannon shot."
Condon failed to mention that the war between Texas and Mexico was, in
part, fought over Texas' refusal to go along with Mexico's ban on slavery.
The act was a result of a Congressional study that tracked the
percentage of Americans who vote. The United States ranks last among
industrialized democracies in voter participation.
One explanation for the statistics is that, unlike the United States,
other countries insure their citizens' right to vote without requiring
them to go through a voter registration process.
An international comparison of the voting statistics between eligible
voters and registered voters shows that the United States is the only
country where "eligible voters" are not allowed to vote unless they are
"registered." In every other country, voting is an inherent right of
citizenship.
Only slightly more than half of eligible voters in the United States
voted in the last presidential election. South Carolina ranked 49th up
from 50th two years ago among states for citizen participation in the last
presidential election, with only 45 percent of eligible citizens voting.
Beasley was elected governor with only 17 percent of the state's
voters. While 46 percent of South Carolinians are not registered, 66
percent of the voting age population of our state chose not to vote in the
1994 gubernatorial election.
With such obvious flaws in the fabric of the state's and nation's
democratic process, why would anybody oppose a congressional mandate to
open the voting process?
Rusty DePass, Republican chairman of the State Election Commission,
admitted in May 1993 why his party opposes the Voter's Rights Act, which
would allow for voter registration at social service offices.
"We all know who's on welfare," DePass said. "We all know who those
people vote for."
While it is Republicans who are fighting today's Voter's Rights Act,
for most of this century opposition to widening access to the polls came
from Southern Democrats. Apparently, whoever is in power got there because
they had enough votes to win, and naturally view any change in the status
quo as a threat.
Washington Sec. of State Ralph Munro testified before the House
Subcommittee on Elections, which considered the Motor Voter Act in 1993.
Washington has had a Motor Voter law since 1992.
"I am here today as a Republican Secretary of State to tell you that
Motor Voter works," Munro said. "It is bringing citizens back to the
voting booth in dramatic numbers.
"On average, Motor Voter registered 875 people every working day of
1992. In just nine months of operation, Motor Voter accounted for 58
percent of the total net increase in registrations from 1988 to 1992."
Recent elections in states with Motor Vote discount the notion that
easing registration procedures means an increase in Democrat voters.
Republicans have experienced increased electoral support in Georgia in the
year that Motor Voter has been in place.
The states that don't have advance registration requirements have the
highest percentage of voters. Minnesota, Wisconsin and Maine have allowed
same-day registration for nearly 30 years. There, a citizen needs only
show up at the polling place on election day and show identification to
register and vote.
Maine had 72 percent of its citizens cast ballots in 1992; Minnesota
71.6 percent; and Wisconsin 69 percent. South Carolina had 45 percent.
Voter registration is a uniquely American tradition started after the
Civil War. Since then, voter registration procedures have been used to
restrict citizens access to voting.
When the 15th Amendment granted blacks the right to vote in 1870,
federal troops had occupied South Carolina for five years.
The "reconstruction" forces opened the political process to blacks, 60
percent of the population. As a result, blacks were elected to a majority
of the seats in the House of Representatives in 1868 and 1972.
When federal troops pulled out of South Carolina in 1876, black voting
access began to shrink. Due to stringent and racist voter registration
requirements, by 1902 the state legislature was once again all-white.
In 1895, under the leadership of Gov. "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, a new
state constitution was crafted to disenfranchise the majority black
population.
New voter registration laws required a voter to pay taxes on property
and pass a literacy test, administered at the discretion of the local
registrar and used to prevent blacks from registering. While the
requirements were designed to disenfranchise black citizens, poor whites
also were shut out.
In 1880, nearly 84 percent of eligible voters of South Carolina cast
ballots. By 1900, the number had fallen to 18 percent.
Not content with restricting black access to the polls, Tillman forces
created white-only Democratic primaries. Since Democrats were the only
party, their primaries actually elected the winner. Since the 15th
Amendment only regulated federal elections, the segregationist rationale
was that party primaries need not include blacks.
When the Supreme Court ruled against white-only primaries in the
mid-1940s, South Carolina politicians unleashed the same state's rights
arguments that Beasley and Condon now espouse.
Sen. Burnet Maybank of Charleston said, "Regardless of the Supreme
Court decision and any laws that may be passed by Congress, we in South
Carolina are going to do whatever we can to protect our white primaries."
Rep. John D. Long from Union said, "As for the Negro voting in my
primary, we'll fight him at the precinct meeting, we'll fight him at the
county convention, we'll fight him at the enrollment books and, by God,
we'll fight him at the polls if I have to bite the dust as did my
ancestors!"
When white-only primaries were forced open, Democrats responded by
requiring a loyalty oath to white supremacy and racial segregation as a
condition to voting in the Democratic primary. When that practice was
struck down, Gov. Olin Johnson called a special session of the legislature
to wipe all laws regulating parties off the books, and declared the
Democratic Party a private club.
"I was working for Attorney General Dan McCloud when the Voting Rights
Act passed in 1967," recalls Jim Ellisor, director of the State Election
Commission from 1965 until he retired in 1992. "We still had literacy
tests and a long list of things that could prohibit voting when McCloud
sued to block the Act."
Noting the similarities in McCloud's arguments against the Voting
Rights Act in 1967 and Condon's current arguments against the Voter's
Rights Act, Ellisor said, "Unfortunately, we're back in 1860 with our
mentality. Our state seems destined to fight the same losing battle again
and again."
Until 1981, there was a list of crimes that prohibited a citizen from
registering to vote. They included: adultery, bigamy, wife beating,
sodomy, fornication as well as murder, rape and robbery.
When South Carolina's case to block Motor Voter made it to federal
court last November, the judge hearing the case was Matthew Perry, South
Carolina's only black federal judge. Perry cut his legal teeth fighting
voting rights battles in the early 1960s as a lawyer for the NAACP.
In a blunt ruling on Dec. 12, Perry ordered the state to implement the
Voter's Rights Act. Perry picked apart the State's argument that
implementing the act was a costly and unfunded mandate, concluding that
the state's evidence "served to buttress Congressional findings and
purposes underlying the National Voting Rights Act rather than supporting
South Carolina's contentions."
Perry wrote, "It is apparent that each agency assumed that it would
register (and thus bear the cost of registering) every unregistered voter
in South Carolina, seemingly not once but on a recurring basis."
Judge Perry noted that all of the state's financial projections for
Motor Voter implementation were grossly exaggerated and depended on what
Jim Hendrix, director of the State Election Commission, called the "worst
possible scenario" of total registration.
"Surely a curious term to use in referring to increased voter
participation," Perry remarked in a footnote.
Perry took the director of the Department of Revenue, Burnet Maybank,
to task for his cost estimate of $1 million annually for the Department of
Motor Vehicles to register people to vote.
"This estimate," Perry said, "was based on DMV alone registering
700,000 people more than the entire unregistered population of the State
of South Carolina and taking twice as much time as the DSS personnel to
register each of those voters."
Under cross examination, Maybank admitted that his agency's cost
estimates were based on "a good deal of discretion" and "can be"
political.
Perry also skewered DSS economist Gwen Kuhns for admitting that her
estimation of a $350,000 annual cost to register voters was based on the
assumption that all 600,000 people the agency sees annually would require
registration every year.
Perry pointed to the state's own exhibits to show that the federal
government provides half of DSS' administrative costs and that the federal
government's half-billion dollar contribution to the DSS budget in 1994
was four times greater than South Carolina's.
Last month, Condon appealed to the U.S. Supreme CourtJudge Perry's
order to implement the Motor Voter Act . On Jan. 22, the Supreme Court
rejected a similar appeal by the state of California's Republican
governor, leading South Carolina to admit defeat.
Following the California ruling, attorneys for the Justice Department
and citizens groups met with state representatives and agreed to a plan to
implement the Voter's Rights Act in South Carolina.
Armand Durfner, a Charleston civil rights attorney for 25 years,
worked with the ACLU to represent two grassroots organizations, South
Carolina United Action and the Natural Guard in the case.
"Our governor and attorney general are supposed to be public
servants," Durfner said. "You would think they would want people voting,
but they have chosen to go on with the long tradition of preventing people
from voting."
The governor's opposition to Motor Voter comes from "both partisanship
and racism," said Columbia NAACP attorney John Harper.
"Parties have historically been built in this state on racism." he
said. "The dynamics of South Carolina politics haven't changed; just the
labels."
Judge Perry gave the state 90 days, beginning Jan. 29, to have the
mechanisms for the Voter's Rights Act in place. By April 28, South
Carolinians will be asked if they want to register to vote when they get
a drivers license or receive social services.
While there is no doubt that Motor Voter will increase the number of
registered voters, there is no guarantee that voting will increase
proportionately.
Since 1975, Michigan has been registering voters when they get their
driver's licenses, yet only 61 percent of voters turned out in 1992. That
rated Michigan sixth in the nation, but still well below the average for
other democracies.
Frances Piven and Richard Cloward are social scientists and the
leading authorities on voter registration reform since shortly after
Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1984.
They started the Human Service Employees Voter Registration and
Education (SERVE) organization to register poor people through nonprofit
human service organizations.
Cloward and Piven saw in mass registration of the poor, "the capacity
to set forces in motion leading to a class-based political realignment."
They quickly discovered that the poor could not be registered in
sufficient numbers to make a difference without totally transforming the
country's archaic voter registration apparatus.
Human SERVE set out on a decade-long effort to establish a federal
mandate for state human service organizations to register voters.
The broad coalition they assembled was responsible for getting the
Voters' Rights Act passed through Congress.
The forces that Piven and Cloward hoped to set in motion by massive
voter registration have been unleashed. They are, however, only an initial
step leading to the political realignment they hoped for.
Piven and Cloward predicted South Carolina's current situation a
decade ago when they warned, "If the elites clamp down on the exercise of
political rights in reaction to a registration movement, they will reveal
that the interests of business and industry depend on excluding the poor
and minorities from the political system."
The notion of a class-based political realignment has some roots in
reality with the passage of the Voter's Rights Act. There are enough
unregistered South Carolinians who make less than $20,000 a year to win
any election they voted in.
The victory isn't in getting the right to vote; it is in winning a
vote that reflects true interests.
The South Carolina Progressive Network is a statewide coalition
working to reach the majority of South Carolinians who don't vote. To help
improve democracy in South Carolina, call the Network at 254-9398 or
1-800-849-1803.
"Unfortunately, we're back in 1860 with our mentality. Our state seems destined to fight the same losing battle again and again."
Jim Ellisor, Election Commission director, 1965-1992
"Our governor and attorney general are supposed to be public servants. You would think they would want people voting, but they have chosen to go on with the long tradition of preventing people from voting."
Armand Durfner, attorney
