LET TERS
READY, SET, STOP THE VOTE
Voter ID laws have had their intended affect
B
arack Obama won in 2008 because volunteers registered record
numbers of voters and those voters went to the polls. Since then 31
states have passed restrictive voter ID laws, ostensibly to prevent
voter fraud. Early voting now requires an excuse in Kentucky.
Same-day registration was ended in Maine. Ohio stopped Sunday
voting and prohibited election boards from mailing absentee ballot
requests to voters. Locations to vote have been cut in targeted precincts in
Colorado. I don’t think even God is eligible to vote in Pennsylvania.
When I recently arrived in south Florida, I was trained and certifi ed to
register voters. Among my fi rst prospects was a middle-aged man who voted
in 2008, but whose registration had been purged from the roles this year. There
was a look of defeat in his eyes. More than 20 years ago he served time for
possession of marijuana — a felony back then — and this rejection seemed to
remind him of how hard it is to move past something we now would consider
a minor offense.
He may face a lengthy process to have his rights restored, a predicament
created when Gov. Rick Scott reinstated a lifetime voting restriction on all
felons. The rule had fi rst been revised and then eliminated by his predecessors,
Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist.
In 11 states, including Florida, many of the most restrictive provisions of
the new laws have been overturned or postponed by the courts in the past few
weeks, but the damage has been done. Many people are afraid to vote. Others
are just too bewildered or discouraged to sort through their states’ requirements.
Yet there is a quiet determination among the people I meet. They proudly
show me their voter registration cards, cards that look as though they have lasted
longer than several wallets. People tell me that they have been voting for 20 to
30 years.
And they want to know, “Is everything is OK?”
They are understandably worried.
I am working in one of the fi ve Florida counties still under the jurisdiction of
the 1965 Voting Rights Act for having denied access to the ballot “on account of
race, color or membership in a language minority.”
When I ask people if they have moved, changed their names due to marriage,
changed parties or voted recently enough to avoid a purge for inactive voters,
they willingly fi ll out new forms and then anxiously wait for two to three weeks
for a new card. I am beginning to hear from people I met when I fi rst arrived
three weeks ago who have yet to receive theirs.
These efforts at vote suppression are coordinated and intentionally targeted
toward the young and the old, students, servicemen and women, the poor and
minority voters. Vote suppression is one way to win an election, but it isn’t
democracy.
Some view it as a game between Republicans and Democrats — how many
voters can be disenfranchised through these suppression tactics versus how
many can be newly registered?
This isn’t a game to me. I come from a mixed-race family. On my family
tree are many who were denied the right to vote. My great grandmother, who
walked to Oregon as a child in 1864, made her fi rst and only vote for president
after women were given the right in 1920. She died in 1923. My sister-in-
law spent part of her childhood in a Japanese internment camp during World
War II. When the Exclusion Acts were rescinded between 1942 and 1952, her
American-born parents were fi nally allowed their right to vote. For my Objibwe
father — a World War II veteran — and Native Americans generally, voting
became a universal right for the fi rst time in 1948. The 1965 Voting Rights Act
is presumed to have benefi ted mostly African Americans, who are also on my
family tree, but it secured the right for all of us by making it a federal offense to
deny people of any race, color or language minority access to the polls.
I have observed suppression laws in action from Colorado to Florida and
witnessed the reactions of people that I’ve registered here in Florida. When
newly registered voters sign their names, they take deep breaths and smile. For
some it is a prisoner’s release, an acknowledgement better than a birth certifi cate
or a passport, of freedom. ■
Nancy Webber of Eugene is a longtime Oregon political activist and author of Ground Game, a new book
that chronicles her time in the fi eld offi ces of the 2008 Obama campaign. The book is available at Amazon
Kindle, iBook, Kobo and Inkwater Press.
4
October 11, 2012 • eugeneweekly.com
ILLEGAL DISPOSAL
“We conclude that the Fourth and 14th
Amendments protect homeless persons
from government seizure and summary
destruction of their unabandoned, but
momentarily unattended, personal property.”
In early September, the Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals ruled in Lavan v. City of Los
Angeles that confi scating and destroying the
personal property of the homeless constitutes
unreasonable seizure. This ruling is legally
binding upon the state of Oregon.
Last Tuesday (10/2), James Finn, a
homeless man who sleeps on the river at
Delta Ponds, left his belongings for a short
period of time while attending to other
business. Sometime in the early afternoon, a
Lane County Sheriff’s crew “cleaned up” his
belongings and disposed of them in the county
landfi ll, in violation of his constitutional rights
as set forth in Lavan. Among the possessions
seized were his bicycle, bike cart, tent,
backpack, tarps and tools, and the fl ag that
had been draped over his father’s coffi n at
Arlington National Cemetery.
Finn spoke to several people at Parks
and Open Space, who told him that it was
their policy to confi scate and dispose of
property that they fi nd unattended in city
parks. I learned of this situation Thursday
afternoon, and on Friday I spoke to John
Clark at Parks and Open Space, who told
me that the department seizes and disposes
belongings as current policy, that they
knew nothing of the ruling, and that they
were not told anything by the city and/or
county regarding a change to the policy.
Why hasn’t general counsel for
the city and/or county informed the
Parks Department that this behavior is
unconstitutional? The court ruling made
national news, and many in the activist/
advocacy community are aware of it.
Surely local government can’t be ignorant
of such a signifi cant ruling. The facts and
circumstances here are clear-cut. The Parks
Department (and EPD) have no choice
but to immediately refrain from seizing
people’s possessions. And in the case of
seemingly abandoned possessions, the city
needs to leave notice of seizure, adequately
store the seized possessions and allow the
owners to come forth.
How will the city and county make
amends for the violation of Mr. Finn’s
Fourth Amendment rights? As I see it, ei-
ther the Sheriff’s Department needs to start
digging through the landfi ll, or the city
and/or county need to adequately compen-
sate him for the destruction of his posses-
sions. Ignorance of the law is no excuse for
violating Finn’s constitutional rights.
This situation is completely unacceptable
and needs to be immediately rectifi ed. I look
forward to hearing how local government
plans on accomplishing that, and I expect that
the parks policy will be immediately changed
so that such blatant constitutional violations
do not land the city in federal court.
Alley Valkyrie
Eugene
VISION DEFICIENCY
I moved to Eugene in 1991 because
the people and elected leaders of Eugene
and Lane County seem to have a vision of
doing things that benefi ted the community,
the working people within and the
environment that surrounds us.
Around 1996, Eugene Mayor Jim
Torrey and his puppet masters hijacked
that vision by accommodating Hyundai
to build a huge computer chip factory on
endangered wetlands. Subsequent to that
fateful decision the ruling elite and their
puppets accommodated a Walmart, Target,
Lowe,s and Home Depot. A few years
later, round two of mega-stores moved in.
This did not happen because the people of
Lane County changed their vision. I attribute
most if not all of the commodifi cation and
destruction of Eugene/Springfi eld’s livability
to the ruling elite of Lane County and our so-
called elected leaders. Lane County’s wealth-
iest families and our “elected leaders” seem
to have been struck by a “vision defi cient
disorder.” Their vision seems to be stuck in
1950. It seems they think that all the people
need is strip malls, mega-stores, football and
the wealth will trickle back up to them.
Eugene, Springfi eld and Lane County
government actions of approving and con-