There appears to be a well-concerted effort on to discourage people, typically poor persons, from voting.

This is a shame because the United States, including Texas, has a rather dishonorable voter turnout as it is – hovering, at best, around 50 percent or so. We do a poor job compared to other countries. Voter turnout in Brazil, Israel, Canada, and most European countries ranges from high 70 percent numbers to more than 90 percent.

Those countries make it easy to vote, using weekend elections, and so on. In the United States, on the contrary, politicians seem bent on complicating voting, rather than making it easier. Moreover, election-day intimidation occurs frequently.

Indiana enacted an election-day photo ID law that makes if difficult for poor people and older folks to vote … remember those twelve elderly and disabled nuns from South Bend who could not vote in Indiana’s Spring primary because they lacked current passports or driver licenses? If my 83-year-old mother lived in Indiana, she would not be able to vote either. Her license and passport have long ago expired.

Poor people are less likely to have passports and less likely to spend their low wages for state-issued identification rather than for food or gas. Contrary to popular belief, many people do not have drivers’ license.

When I lived in South Texas, about two weeks before the election, paid Spanish-language political advertisements started up, warning people that, if they illegally voted, they would be prosecuted. On polling day, a bunch of young Anglo men in white shirts and ties from Dallas station themselves at the polls, with cameras, intimidating voters with the same message.

Obviously, intimidating voters, especially those whose main language is not English, causes them not to cast ballots out of fear of getting embroiled in a legal system that is foreign to them, and expensive.

There is absolutely no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Attorney General Greg Abbott’s well-publicized prosecutions have netted only a pathetic handful of perpetrators. Nor could the Administration’s perverted Justice Department Voting Section, which decided to prosecute fraud, rather than helping people vote, could produce much other than the scandal of firing seven U.S. Attorneys who refused to cooperate for lack of evidence.

Nationwide, between 2002 and 2006, there were only 86 convictions, mainly for errors in filling out forms or confusion over eligibility. This is hardly an epidemic of fraud, even though, according to a Rasmussen poll earlier this year, 23 percent of Americans believe otherwise – thanks to the incessant drumbeat of right-wing and anti-immigrant commentators.

A far greater danger to electoral integrity is paperless electronic voting, a system that malfunctions and is open to fraudulent manipulation involving thousands of votes – even 100,000, as we saw in a Tarrant County election. Where are the commentators on this issue, so serious that some 30 states now require a form of paper voting record?

The Texas Legislature came within a vote of passing photo ID, but didn’t lift a finger about electronic voting.

One gets the unnerving feeling these vote suppression efforts are really directed at those whose political views are less likely to be in sync. America has a colorful, and less-than- praiseworthy, history of election shenanigans. It is ironic that, as our election process has become cleaner over the years, rather than extending it as much as possible, politicians are attempting to make voting more burdensome. That’s not what democracy is about.

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James C. Harrington is director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit foundation, promotes civil rights and economic and racial justice throughout Texas.