Constitutional Issues: Voting Rights

Name ______Per ___ Constitutional Issues: Voting Rights

Knowledge of Topic, Use of Evidence (Common Core Social Studies 1, 7) Exceeding Meeting Approaching Beginning Cites specific, diverse, and Cites very few specific pieces of multiple pieces of evidence to Cites specific and multiple Cites few specific pieces of evidence to support a very support a solid and rich pieces of evidence to support a evidence to support a vague or vague or limited analysis of the analysis of the sources and solid analysis of the sources limited analysis of the sources sources and topic, very topic, connecting insight and topic, connecting insight and topic, limitedly connecting limitedly connecting specific gained from specific evidence gained from specific evidence specific evidence to a shaky or evidence to a very shaky or to a coherent, solid to a solid understanding in limited understanding in order limited understanding in order understanding in order to order to address the question. to address the question. to address the question. address the question.

Craft of Argument (Common Core Writing 1) Exceeding Meeting Approaching Beginning Introduces a precise, Introduces a very basic thesis; knowledgeable thesis; uses Introduces a knowledgeable Introduces a basic thesis; uses uses very limited transitions ample transitions specific to thesis; uses transitions specific limited transitions specific to specific to the targeted skill to the targeted skill to link to the targeted skill to link the targeted skill to link link sections; maintains a very sections; maintains a formal sections; maintains a formal sections; maintains a limitedly limitedly formal style; provides style; provides a thoughtful style; provides a concluding formal style; provides a generic a very generic concluding concluding statement statement appropriate to the concluding statement for the statement for the argument appropriate to the argument argument made. argument made. made. made.

Evaluation of Sources (Common Core Writing 7, 8) Exceeding Meeting Approaching Beginning Limitedly evaluates the Very limitedly evaluates the Evaluates richly the strengths Evaluates the strengths and strengths and limitations of strengths and limitations of and limitations of multiple limitations of multiple sources multiple sources in terms of multiple sources in terms of sources in terms of type, in terms of type, purpose, and type, purpose, and audience; type, purpose, and audience; purpose, and audience; solidly audience; addresses reliably of limitedly addresses reliably of very limitedly addresses addresses reliably of evidence evidence in claim and evidence in claim and reliably of evidence in claim in claim and counterclaim; counterclaim; includes a counterclaim; includes a and counterclaim; includes a includes a wide variety of variety of sources to show an limited variety of sources to very limited variety of sources sources to show deep understanding of topic and the show a limited understanding to show a very limited understanding of topic and the debate involved. of topic and the debate understanding of topic and the debate involved. involved. debate involved.

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Constitutional Issues: Voting Rights

How should voter registration work? How should ballot casting, elections work? How much should the government encourage voter registration and turnout? What are the biggest reasons people don’t vote? Can those be addressed? If a specific demographic group has low voter turnout, should something be done? By who? How much?

Should the explicit right to vote be added as a US Constitutional amendment?

Does in-person voting produce an undue burden on American citizens?

Step 1: Decide on Question and Initial Knowledge  Of the two questions, decide which one you want research and address in your paper  Brainstorm on what you already know related to the topic

Step 2: Read, Annotate, and Analyze Provided Source  Closely annotate sources and organize information on chart  Ask yourself what information is still missing

Step 3: Locate Quality Sources  Locate a rich variety of sources and organize information on chart o News articles o Charts, tables, maps of data o Editorials  Ensure each source credible by answering Analyzing Media Sources questions (Tools Packet)  Create or copy, and paste source citations in a Word document; write source annotation using example

Step 4: Decide Supported Position, Draft Thesis Create Outline  Write draft thesis using template  Sort evidence into outline  Continue researching if you have missing information

Step 5: Write your Paper & Annotated Works Cited  Format paper into MLA style, using the example  Using your outline, write your paper  Include explicit reference and credibility evaluation for all 8 sources in the text of your paper  Create proper MLA citations for the minimum of 8 sources you used o Easybib (www.easybib.com) Bibme (www.bibme.org)  Write a two-part annotation for each source o Summarize the source, including type, topic, angle on topic o Elaborate on your evaluation of its credibility by providing two distinct examples

Step 7: Submit Your Final Draft  Turn in the following in the proper order o Rubric sheet with name o Final draft of essay (4 to 6 pages) o Annotated works cited Pre-Research: Understanding the Constitution To discuss the constitutionality of a topic, you first need to know what the Constitution says about the topic and think about how these ideas are related to the topic.

Amendment V (5th) No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. Translation 

Amendment XIV (14th) All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Translation 

How are these two amendments related to the question of “Does in-person voting produce an undue burden on American citizens?”

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Amendment XV (15th) The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Translation 

Amendment XIX (19th) The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Translation 

Amendment XXVI (26th) The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age. Translation 

How are these three amendments related to the question of “Should the explicit right to vote be added as a US Constitutional amendment?” Pre-Research: Brainstorming What You Already Know Before diving into researching your topic, you first need to brainstorm what you already know or can guess is probably true about current-day America by asking a few initial questions.

Then you first need to ask: “How highly do we value the idea of voting in America?”

If you want to research and argue a position on the question “Should the explicit right to vote  be added as a US Constitutional amendment? “Are there currently any problems/barriers Americans face when trying to vote?”

Then you first need to ask: “Do Americans have difficulties in getting to polling stations on Election Day in order to vote?” If you want to argue a position on the question “Does in-person voting produce an undue burden on American citizens?” 

“Has technology evolved enough that in-person voting isn’t needed anymore?”

Using what you already know, in order to find the answers you are looking for, what words/phrases will you want to search?

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Missing Evidence Hook In all of your research, what is the one statistic, fact, or expert quote that stood out to you the most? Was it because it was so surprising? So sad? So promising? This piece of empirical evidence will make a great introductory sentence, or hook, for your essay.

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Position, Thesis

Should the explicit right to vote be added as a US Constitutional amendment?

Does in-person voting produce an undue burden on American citizens?

Absolutely Somewhat Not really Hardly Definitely Not

Problem/Solution- How bad is the problem? What solutions are the best at addressing the problem?

More so a Problem to Solve Less so a Problem to Solve Even though ______had been tried as a Even though there are concerns about ______solution to…. (X), ______(A) and (X), because ______(A) and ______(B) are much better solutions in ______(B) the issue …….. (Y). addressing …….. (Y).

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Betsy Brave Ms. Thorne American Government, period 1 February 1 2016 Title: Which Clearly References Which Question I Chose And Argued This is the beginning of my essay……

************** Sources Page **************

Works Cited Bates, Daisy. The Long Shadow of Little Rock. 1st ed. New York: David McKay Co. Inc., 1962.

Daisy Bates was the president of the Arkansas NAACP and the one who met and listened to the

students each day during the Civil Rights Movement. This first-hand account memoir she wrote about

her experiences was very important to my paper because it made me more aware of the feelings of

the people involved, especially how scared so many of the seemingly brave activists were.

************** General Formatting ************** Every part of your research paper needs to be:

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 Double-spaced The Big Problem with a Right-to-Vote Constitutional Amendment Opinion by Scott Lemieux, The Week, November 4, 2014

In what will probably come as a surprise to many Americans, the U.S. Constitution doesn't explicitly guarantee a right to vote. That lamentable absence has sparked a movement of sorts, with commentators calling for the adoption of such an amendment to combat a wave of vote-suppression tactics that have been implemented by conservative state legislatures across the country. But while a right-to-vote amendment would certainly be welcome, it probably won't do all that much to protect the vote. Vox's Matt Yglesias, for one, makes a compelling case for a right-to-vote amendment, taking into account not only the anti- democratic laws being passed at the state level, but also the Supreme Court's refusal to do anything about them. This is despite the fact that the Constitution does contain various provisions preventing the franchise from being restricted, such as the Fifteenth Amendment, which mandates that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Even in its worst periods, the Supreme Court did not uphold state laws that explicitly excluded African-Americans from the franchise (whether directly or through "grandfather clauses" that barred African-Americans from voting). But the court did uphold state restrictions, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, that were written in race-neutral language — even though they had the same effect and intent as outright disenfranchisement. To deal with these kinds of evasions, Yglesias endorses the constitutional amendment proposed by Reps. Keith Ellison (D- Minn.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), which would codify the principle that "every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides." However, while this is a laudable amendment, it's worth considering some of the limitations of this strategy. As Yglesias acknowledges, the first issue is that Article V makes amending the Constitution enormously difficult. The Constitution has been amended only 17 times since 1789, and many of these have been minor. Granted, outside the unusual Civil War amendments, access to the ballot is the one substantive right that has been added post–Bill of Rights through formal amendment. In addition to the Fifteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth (extending the franchise to women), the Twenty-Third (giving electoral votes to the District of Columbia), the Twenty-Fourth (banning poll taxes), and the Twenty-Sixth (giving the right to vote to 18-year-olds) Amendments all enfranchised voters through the amendment process. Still, in the current political climate it's impossible to see the Ellison/Pocan amendment winning supermajorities in Congress or the support of three-fourths of the states. Most Republican legislators would understand perfectly well that the proposed amendment is squarely pointed at the vote-suppression tactics that have become increasingly crucial to the dwindling GOP coalition. And even if an amendment did pass, it's not at all clear that the problem would be solved. The limitations of using the Constitution to protect the right to vote can be summed up in two words: Shelby County. Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment explicitly empowers Congress "to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Nonetheless, in 2013 the Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, even though Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion was not backed by any constitutional provision suggesting a restriction on Congress' Fifteenth Amendment powers, nor any precedent not authored by Roberts himself. As Judge Richard Posner observed in Slate, "The opinion rests on air." The framers of the Reconstruction amendments would not have been surprised by Shelby County. As the University of Maryland's Mark Graber demonstrated in an extraordinary new paper, with the exception of Rep. John Bingham, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment paid relatively little attention to the precise wording of the substantive rights in Section 1. Their skepticism about what James Madison called "parchment rights" was strongly influenced by the Supreme Court's infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, which ruled that Congress had no power to ban slavery in federal territories — despite explicit textual language giving Congress the power to "make all needful Rules and Regulations" concerning the territories. (As it happens, both Dred Scott and Shelby County relied on the dubious theory that the explicit powers of Congress should be limited by a "equal sovereignty of the states" principle, a principle wholly created by the judiciary.) For this reason, they were more concerned about preserving the ability of Republicans to control the federal judiciary than with exactly what words the Constitution should use to protect the rights of freed slaves. In other words, they thought that bad judges were a much bigger problem than textual lacunae, and there's a great deal of truth in this. It's very likely that the Roberts Court would uphold most contemporary vote-suppression laws even if a right- to-vote amendment was passed. Moreover, in all likelihood these vote-suppression techniques already violate the existing text of the Constitution. A federal district judge, for example, found that Texas' draconian voter ID law was racially discriminatory in both effect and purpose, and also functions as a poll tax. If these findings are accurate, the Texas law already violates the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Twenty-Fourth Amendments. None of this is to deny that changes in textual language could matter at the margin. I can imagine certain judges, particularly moderate Democratic nominees, who would uphold voter ID requirements under the current constitution, but not under an amended one. However, the track record of textual protections for the right to vote is generally poor. The courts, in other words, are unlikely to protect the right to vote unless the principle has substantial political support. And that, in the end, may be the best reason to mobilize a constitutional right to vote, despite its limitations. A new amendment may not do much in theory — but if a movement can increase popular support for the right to vote, it's worth it in itself.

Why Can’t Americans Vote Onlione? By Doug Gross, CNN, November 8, 2011

Tuesday is Election Day in the United States, and although the mostly state and local races won't stir the same passions as next year's presidential contest, millions of people will cast ballots. They'll do it in much the same way that Americans have for centuries: by showing up at a polling place and ticking off boxes for their candidates of choice. All of which raises the question: In an era when virtually every daily task can be done on the Internet, why can't we vote online, too? The answer depends on whom you ask. Advocates say the time is right to seriously consider letting voters cast a ballot from the comfort of their homes or even on the screens of their mobile phones. "We've voted the way we have for the past 200 years because we couldn't do any better than that," said Rob Weber, a former IT professional at IBM who runs the blog Cyber the Vote. "Now, we have this technology that has revolutionized the rest of our lives ... (and) can revolutionize our voting system and could revolutionize our political system." A recipe for chaos? But critics, many of them in the cybersecurity world, argue that letting people cast votes from their home computers is a recipe for chaos. "My position hasn't changed over the years," said Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in computer security. "Which is that online voting is a very unsafe idea and a very bad idea and something I think no technological breakthrough I can foresee can ever change." Rubin said that, in addition to politically motivated reasons for attempting to corrupt online votes, many hackers with no real political agenda could still see the challenge of tinkering with an election too attractive to pass up. "People's computers are not getting more secure," Rubin said. "They're getting more infected with viruses. They're getting more under the control of malware." Canada and Estonia Other countries, though, have gone further down the road toward online voting than U.S. election officials have. Canada has been near the forefront. In all, 80 Canadian cities and towns have experimented with Internet voting in municipal elections. The town of Markham, in Ontario, has offered online ballots in local elections since 2003. An independent report by digital-strategy firm Delvinia showed that early voting increased 300% the first year Internet voting was allowed. Twenty-five percent of the people who voted online in 2003 said they didn't vote in the prior local election, and overall turnout rose nearly 10% from 2006 to 2010, according to the report. "Not only is Markham a perfect example of how internet voting is being successfully implemented in a binding election; with other municipalities following suit, Canada is becoming a global leader in the implementation of Internet voting," the report read. Sweden, Latvia and Switzerland are among the countries that have tested Internet voting. But when it comes to national elections, Estonia is the clear leader. The tiny Baltic nation (its population of 1.3 million is roughly the size of San Diego) has allowed online voting for all of its citizens since 2007. In this year's election, nearly one in four votes was cast online, according to its elections commission. Risks and rewards Priit Vinkel, an adviser to Estonia's National Electoral Committee, said security is of the utmost concern. "Internet voting relies basically on a single factor: trust," Vinkel said. "Building and stabilizing this trust is the most important but also the most difficult task of the state." In Estonia, that security includes a national ID card that can be used remotely and a voting system built to recognize unusual activity, Vrinkel said. He said security officials have detected no serious attempts to tamper with the votes. But, in Rubin's mind, that's not enough. He says the Internet's known security risks alone could be enough to call an election's results into question. "In any election, it's important that the public perceive that the election is held fairly," Rubin said. "If you allow online voting and you're unable to detect any fraud, but it turns out later that many computers were compromised ... there's no way to audit or backtrack or recount or do anything to figure out what actually happened. "The real question is whether you're interested in providing more questions about the outcome of an election or less." Weber, who writes his blog from New York, acknowledges the difficulties but says they shouldn't be enough to stop progress on Internet voting -- which he and others believe will increase participation, particularly among younger voters. "If there are concerns about any of this, the answer is to further work on those concerns, not declare that the Internet is entirely dangerous and will always be entirely dangerous, and you can never trust it," he said. He notes that trillions of dollars have been moved around via online banking and that functions as sensitive as air-traffic control take place on the Internet. He also said that for critics to hold up the current U.S. voting system as a model of safety is laughable. "Machines, memory cards, even things on paper" can be manipulated, he said. "How many times in our history have we found a box of ballots in someone's garage a couple of weeks after an election?" Experimental efforts Experts don't expect widespread voting by Internet to take hold in the U.S. anytime soon. But there have been some fledgling efforts at testing it. In the early 2000s, the U.S. military began testing the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, which would have let service members stationed overseas vote online. But it was scrapped by the Pentagon after its studies suggested security risks. As recently as last year, West Virginia experimented with allowing a small number of military members from five counties to vote online, although that pilot program was criticized by some security experts. West Virginia's Secretary of State Natalie Tennant has appeared to back away from pushing to make it statewide. Voting only by mail can decrease turnout. Or increase it. Wait, what?

By Elizabeth Bergman December 21, 2015

Voters in Denver, Colo., cast their ballots at the Denver Elections Division Building on Nov. 4, 2014. (Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)

Voting by mail — and only by mail — has become an option in the United States. Will it spread?

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, all states will mail an absentee ballot to voters who request one. While 20 states require a reason, 27 states permit “no-excuse” absentee voting.

And three states now use mail-only voting.

Oregon’s Ballot Measure 60 kicked off in 1998, making Oregon the first state to conduct its elections exclusively by mail. In 2011, Washington’s legislature moved the state to an entirely vote-by-mail system. Colorado joined in during the 2014 general election. In 2015, California launched a limited all-mail pilot as a test run. Lawmakers will use that pilot to learn how such an election would work in California.

Supporters hope that voting by mail means more citizens will vote. Is it so?

Generally, the answer is both “no” and “yes,” but with important qualifications.

The recent research on how all-mail voting affects turnout

Here’s how voting by mail works. For these elections, all registered voters automatically receive a ballot in the mail. The voter marks the ballot, puts it into a separate mailing envelope, signs an affidavit on the exterior of the mailing envelope and returns the package via mail. Ballots are mailed out well ahead of Election Day, typically about a month in advance. Ballots must be postmarked or returned on Election Day.

Some early research in Oregon claimed that voting by mail increased turnout by 10 percentage points. However, since then, scholars have been unable to reproduce those results. Apparently that boost to Oregon’s turnout grew from a “novelty effect” and recurred only in special elections.

In Washington, researchers found that switching to all-mail elections increased overall participation by about three percentage points in presidential and midterm elections. In the California pilot, after the Nov. 3 elections, the San Mateo County elections office received 105,325 ballots out of the approximately 353,000 that were mailed. That’s 29.5 percent voter turnout, or 4.1 percent more than a similar off-year polling place election in 2013, when 25.4 percent of registered voters cast their ballots.

That pilot is a big deal. Just two counties out of California’s 58 were allowed to test this approach. If it’s successful, it could be rolled out to the most populous state in the union, with 15 million registered voters.

The media was quick to attribute the “eye-popping” increase in voter turnout to simply switching to vote-by-mail. But it’s not that simple.

Mail-only balloting actually decreases voting

My research found that when you can only vote by mail, voter turnout actually drops by about 13 percent. I examined what happens to turnout if voting by mail is compulsory. I studied more than 90,000 voters who could vote only by mail across four elections from 2006 through 2008 in five of the most populous urban counties in California. (In that state, if a precinct has fewer than 250 voters, elections officials are allowed to forego a polling place and accept ballots only by mail.)

That decline may seem counterintuitive. Presumably voting by mail is easier and more convenient than going to the polls. So why doesn’t turnout go up? According to a 50-state study that examined elections over a 30-year period, voter turnout is less about convenience than academics once thought. Most voting reforms, like all-mail balloting, do not attract new voters.

What’s more, alternative voting methods are most likely to be launched in states that already have high voter turnout.

Why does voting by mail decrease turnout? Because mail voters have a longer voting “window,” they receive less stimulus to vote. Scholars have found that reductions in stimulation to vote are greater than the modest positive benefits of additional convenience from mail voting.

But reminders make a difference

Reminders are critical. My research found that when the elections office communicates more often with voters, more of them vote. In particular, four official communications can wipe out the 13 percent decrease in turnout that I found. ‘‘Official communications’’ include such documents as a Sample Ballot, a Voter Guide, letters on county letterhead and postcards from the Registrar of Voters. Each additional communication improved the odds of voting by 4 percent. And a voter who received five communications was 4 percent more likely to vote than a voter who received no mailings.

That’s what happened during the pilot in San Mateo in California. County officials sent out plenty of notices about the changed rules for November’s election, letting people know they would be getting a ballot in the mail whether they liked it or not. According to Mark Church, the county’s chief elections officer, that sealed their success.

That response varied by demographics. Asians and Latinos saw the largest gains from the switch to all-mail voting in San Mateo. Again, Church commented on the county’s efforts related to boost voting in all quarters of the population:

San Mateo County made a big push to reach voters who prefer languages other than English, particularly Spanish and Chinese. There were radio and TV ads, social media campaigns and billboards. Bilingual staff members were sent to community events to encourage people to register and participate.

Switching to mail-only balloting could have reduced Asian turnout by about 30 percent and Hispanic turnout by about 27 percent, according to my findings. Obviously, what San Mateo’s election officials did mattered to Asian and Latino voters in the county.

A significant proportion of the San Mateo pilot voters decided that they preferred voting by mail. A third of those who’d been voting at a polling place switched their registration status and became mail-in voters permanently; 42 percent of voters between 18 and 24 did so. To the surprise of some, few disgruntled voters complained about getting ballots in their mailboxes. Actually having the experience of voting by mail made an enormous difference in how a voter felt about that method. When I first asked, more than half of all polling place voters disapproved of expanding mail balloting in California. That was significantly more disapproval than I found among those who were mail voters — a gap of 25 percent between polling place and mail voters.

However, once polling place voters have actually tried voting by mail, 63.8 percent of them support mail-only elections — the same percentage I found among people who had already voted by mail. And of those who’d previously voted in a polling place exclusively, but who tried out voting by mail, 77.7 percent of voters said they planned to vote by mail in the next election.

Three states – Oregon, Washington and Colorado — have made the move to all-mail elections; 19 states are the likely next adopters as they permit all-mail elections in certain circumstances. For these states and their voters, my research suggests that compulsory vote-by-mail is not an unalloyed good. It can boost turnout, but only when officials work toward that end.

Elizabeth Bergman is associate professor of political science at California State University, East Bay.

Could Pop-up Social Spaces at Polls Increase Voter Turnout?

Placemaking the Vote, one of the finalists in the Knight Cities Challenge, wants people to hang out at their polling places

By Heather Hansman, Smithsonian Magaizen, January 13th, 2016

If you make voting fun, will it encourage people to cast their ballots? And once people are at the polls, can you keep them there, and get them talking about what they want from their local and national politicians? Those were some of the questions that designers at the Long Beach, California-based studio City Fabrick were pondering when they came up with the idea for Placemaking the Vote—their very own “kit for creating temporary pop-up social spaces at voting polls in historically low voter turnout areas.” While the designers are still figuring out exactly what would go into the kit, they'd likely include lights, shelter, chalk and other supplies for building a gathering place and drawing attention to it. City Fabrick would set up the brightly-colored booths outside of the polling places and provide snacks and comfortable places to sit to encourage voters to stick around and talk.

“There’s a lot of emerging efforts around trying to get residents to vote through digital technologies, like Rock the Vote,” says Brian Ulaszewski, City Fabrik’s executive director. “We thought of this idea of creating place around voting stations and events as a way to draw people in and to also celebrate democracy.” The team wanted to focus on the physical aspect of voting because they were concerned that it was being slighted in the efforts to go digital.

Ulaszewski submitted the project to the Knight Cities Challenge, which awards grants to projects in 26 American cities where the Knight Foundation sees the most need. The funding program focuses on three categories for making cities successful: attracting talented people, expanding economic opportunity and creating a culture of civic engagement. This week, 158 finalists, Placemaking the Vote included, were selected from 4,500 entries. Now, the foundation will go through a second round of evaluation to decide which of the these finalists will get a slice of the $5 million of total grant money at stake this spring. The number of grants awarded annually varies; last year, there were 32 winners.

City Fabrick works on urban planning and public interest design projects that target environmental justice, safe streets and affordable housing. The designers focus on creating a sense of community in areas where the residents are typically not civically engaged. Ulaszewski, whose background is in architecture, says they've built parks across freeways in areas without greenspace, remimagined suburban shopping malls as neighborhood centers and worked with local law makers to try to change zoning code around small, affordable houses. With Placemaking the Vote, Ulaszewski says the goal is two- fold: to make polls places where people want to be and to get neighbors to discuss what they want from their community.

According to a 2014 study from the Pew Research Center, up to 60 percent of voting-aged adults don’t vote in mid-term elections. Non-voters tend to be young, racially diverse and less affluent and educated than voters, and it is these demographics in the neighborhoods of Long Beach that Ulaszewski is targeting. City Fabrick wants to show people in these communities that they can move the levers of government. “Expanding the vote is a way of advocating for resources and having more equity,” Ulaszewski says.

Tactical urbanism, a movement where residents make quick, unsanctioned changes to the built environment, is gaining steam in cities across the country. In this mix of people installing pop-up parks, little libraries and homemade signs, Ulaszewski wants to focus on the social aspect of voting. It's rare to find a non-partisan social event around voting, he says, much less one that happens at the polls.

To test the concept, City Fabrick plans to launch three of the pop-ups at different kinds of polling places—a church, a library and a commercial space in Long Beach—for the presidential election in November.

Voter ID law: How big a barrier?

By Mark Barrett, Citizens Times, January 13, 2016

ASHEVILLE – North Carolina's 2013 law requiring voters to present photo identification to cast a ballot goes into effect with this year's March 15 primary amid lingering questions over whether it will dampen turnout. Faced with a federal lawsuit challenging the law based on its expected impact on minority voters, the state General Assembly last year made changes to soften the impact.

People who don't have a photo ID and say they had a "reasonable impediment" to getting one can still vote. That creates a loophole available to many people who don't have a driver's license, ID card, passport, tribal ID card or military or veterans ID.

But as a practical matter, the process is burdensome enough and the initial photo ID law has gotten enough publicity that some fear it will still deter potential voters. Others say it will be no problem.

"People don't want to be embarrassed and confused when they go to vote," said Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy NC, a Durham group that advocates for wide access to the voting booth.

"I don't think it's going to take a whole lot for it to become an issue," he said. “Legislators "have created an intricate, complex set of procedures that are not easy to educate the public about or the poll workers."

The head of a group that favors tightening voting rules to avoid fraud said the law as it stands now probably will not keep many legitimate voters from casting a ballot.

Despite requirements that prospective voters without an ID provide other information or documents, the law will only slow down anyone wanting to cheat, says Jay DeLancy, executive director of the Raleigh-based Voter Integrity Project.

"This will make honest people use voter ID. There's enough loopholes built into it if someone were dishonest, they can vote," he said. "It'll take you longer to vote if you don't want to use the photo ID. That is the only difference."

Got ID?

Like those adopted in other states, North Carolina's photo ID law was controversial when the state General Assembly's Republican majority pushed it through in 2013. Its effects are disputed today in the court of public opinion and the court of law.

The bill also reduced the number of days of the early voting period but extended opening hours during those days. It did away with the ability to register to vote and vote on the same day, prevented people who show up at the wrong voting place from casting a ballot and ended state efforts to get 16- and 17-year-olds registered to vote.

However, the courts have prevented some of those provisions from going into effect.

Supporters, mostly from the GOP, say the law will prevent fraud and restore confidence in the voting process.

Critics, mostly Democrats, say there is little evidence that voter fraud occurs on a large scale and it is no coincidence that voters most likely not to have an ID are minorities who tend to vote Democratic.

A lawsuit now before a federal judge in Winston-Salem may sort it all out someday, and could even result in changes to the rules before the March 15 primary. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder is scheduled to hear arguments on the photo ID requirements Jan. 25.

In the meantime, people can still register and vote on the same day during the "one-stop" early voting period before Election Day. And, they can cast a provisional ballot in the wrong precinct that will be counted if their information checks out.

The state has allocated $3 million to efforts to let people know about the photo ID law, and one of the people involved said he expects few problems March 15 or on Election Day Nov. 8. Ted Fitzgerald, lead specialist in voter outreach for the State Board of Elections, is one of three board employees hired to spread the word about the law. The board also hired an attorney to help with the process and answering questions about the law is one of the duties of workers in the board's call center in Raleigh.

The job of getting IDs to those who need one is not straightforward, he said.

People who don't have one of the forms of ID the law says the state will accept are not usually members of the civic groups Fitzgerald's team has been in touch with.

Efforts to identify and contact them by comparing voting registration records and records of people holding driver's licenses or state photo ID cards did not yield large numbers of requests for help getting an ID. But there is uncertainty about just how many people need and want an ID and don't have one.

Many who would need an ID to vote have low incomes or are disabled, Fitzgerald said. Others live in nursing homes, assisted living facilities or group homes, he said. Many have an ID that has expired and have not had a need to get a new one until now.

The common thread is that they would have difficulty getting to a Division of Motor Vehicles office to get an ID without help, he said.

"If somebody doesn't have an ID, there's a reason in this day and age," Fitzgerald said.

The state is taking out advertisements on TV, newspapers and billboards and has a website with details on the new law and how people can get a photo ID, voterid.nc.gov. It is partnering with United Way to get photo ID information to people who call its 211 telephone line for information on various social services and Fitzgerald and his colleagues have been in touch with civic, industry and advocacy groups.

A big part of Fitzgerald's message is to encourage friends, relatives or caretakers of those without ID to help them get one, or to help them vote using the reasonable impediment exception or other provisions of the law.

"Most people may know somebody who could be affected by this. They just need to make sure that everyone knows they can go to the polls this year and vote," he said.

Complicated or wide open?

Last year's change to the law moved quickly through the General Assembly shortly before Schroeder was to hear testimony about several changes to the state's election laws, so last year Schroeder set the photo ID issue aside for the time being.

The law now provides that people who say they faced barriers to getting a photo ID before an election can still vote if they provide their date of birth and the last four digits of their Social Security number. Or, they can provide one of several documents like a utility bill, paycheck or government check set out in federal law.

Their ballot will be a provisional ballot, held in a separate envelope, and elections workers can check out the voter's residency information before counting the vote.

There are also exceptions for people over 70 who have an ID whose date has expired or who vote at their polling place's "curbside" station for voters with mobility problems. And, casting an absentee ballot still does not require photo ID.

Hall said there will be problems, but people should still show up at the polls.

"Our message is you can, in fact you must, vote. You must vote to show resistance to adding all this complexity," he said.

An example of issues that have already arisen, he said, is when college students from elsewhere go to a DMV office and show their home state's driver's license to get a North Carolina ID card allowing them to vote. DMV workers direct them to switch their license and car insurance to North Carolina, Hall said. The student is legally entitled to vote, he said, but the issue arises because of differences between residency requirements for voting and for getting a driver's license.

He said state workers helping get the word out about photo IDs "have worked hard, but they're under-resourced." And, Hall said, officials have given differing answers on just what reasons will qualify someone for the reasonable impediment exception to the law.

DeLancy said impersonating someone else in order to vote "is the perfect crime. There's just no way to catch someone unless you're standing right there."

He said the practice can be organized and occurs often enough to affect the outcome of close elections, although he concedes his assertion "sounds wild-eyed conspiratorial."

Organizations wanting to get people to vote who shouldn't can provide them with fake birthdates and Social Security numbers to take advantage of the exception to the photo ID law, he said. He said he does not have enough assurance that election workers will check out that information to determine whether it is legitimate.

Hall is deeply skeptical that the loophole will result in fraud to any significant degree.

He cited a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who tracks the issue nationally and found only 31 “credible allegations” of voter impersonation in one billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014.

DeLancy responds that voting under a fictitious name is a difficult crime to detect.

Fitzgerald just wants people to give the new law a try.

"We don't want anyone to feel that they can't come to the polls and vote because of voter ID," he said. "I think anybody who is eligible to vote is going to be able to vote."

It's in the cards

If your voter registration information is in order, the easiest way to comply with North Carolina's new voter identification law is to have one of six forms of acceptable photo ID. They are:

--A North Carolina driver's license or an official ID card issued for those who do not drive. Licenses that expired no more than four years before the date of the election are acceptable, as are learner's permits and provisional licenses. Official ID cards are free at Division of Motor Vehicles offices to those who state they getting them to be able to vote.

--An unexpired U.S. passport or an unexpired passport card (used for travel to Mexico and Canada).

--A veterans ID card issued by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The card cannot be past its expiration date, if it has one. All cards without dates will be accepted.

--A U.S. military ID card issued by the U.S. Department of Defense, including those issued to dependents, retired military personnel or civilians. The card cannot be past its expiration date, if it has one. All cards without dates will be accepted.

--A tribal enrollment card issued by a federally recognized Native American tribe. Cards that bear an expiration date must be unexpired. Cards that have no expiration date must have an issuance date printed on the card that is no more than eight years before the election. Cards issued by tribes recognized by the state of North Carolina are acceptable only if they have been approved by the State Board of Elections and they are not past their expiration date.

--A driver's license or non-driver ID card issued by another state. The card will be accepted only if the voter registered to vote within 90 days of the election and the card has not expired.

This won't work Photo ID cards that are not acceptable by themselves for voting include:

--Employment cards

--Student ID cards, even if the card is issued by a state institution

--Warehouse shopping club cards

This will work too

There are several ways someone who does not have a photo ID can still cast a ballot.

--Reasonable impediment. Voters can declare that they could not get a photo ID because of lack of proper documents, family obligations, transportation problems, work schedule, illness or disability or other reasons. They will be asked to sign a declaration describing their impediment. Then they must provide their date of birth and the last four digits of their Social Security number or an acceptable document bearing their name and address like a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or other government-issued document. They will cast a provisional ballot that will be counted only after information on the declaration is verified. That might involve an in-person trip to the elections board for the voter in some cases.

--Absentee ballot. There is no requirement for a photo ID to cast an absentee ballot. Forms to request a ballot are online or available from county elections boards and one-stop voting locations. Request forms must be received by a county board by 5 p.m. on the Tuesday before the election. They must be returned to the board by 5 p.m. on Election Day or postmarked no later Election Day and received by the board no later than 5 p.m. three days after the election.

--Curbside voting. People who travel to a voting place on Election Day or during early voting but cannot enter the polls without physical assistance can vote from a vehicle. They can present either an acceptable photo ID or certain documents showing their name and address, including a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or other government-issued document.

--Natural disaster. People who declare that they are a victim of a natural disaster that occurred within 60 days of the election will not be required to present a photo ID. However, they must live in a county that has been declared a natural disaster area by either the governor or the president.

--Religious objection. People who have a religious objection to being photographed can file a declaration to their county board of elections. If the declaration is filed less than 25 days before the election, they will be able to cast a provisional ballot that will be counted only when they present an acceptable document with their name and address.

--Just forgot it. Voters who have an ID but did not bring it with them to the polls can cast a provisional ballot that will be counted once they present an acceptable photo ID to the county elections board. Or, they can go get it and come back to the polls with it that day.