deterrence AA voter suppression

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As lawmakers across the country consider requiring documented proof of U.S. citizenship to vote, Arizona’s voter roll provides clues as to which voters will struggle to provide it.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Voters living on Native land, on college campuses, and at the state’s main homeless campus are all disproportionately represented among voters in Arizona who haven’t provided proof of citizenship, according to a Votebeat analysis of the list of eligible voters who hadn’t provided proof of citizenship for the presidential election. Such voters also were three times less likely to vote this past November than voters who had provided proof of citizenship, the analysis found.

The data shows that, while GOP lawmakers pushing for a documentation requirement say they are attempting to prevent noncitizens from voting — a rare occurrence, according to all available evidence — the requirement in Arizona appears to be disenfranchising some Americans.

Arizona is the only state in the country currently limiting voting for those who don’t prove citizenship by providing a birth certificate or another qualifying document. Such voters can cast ballots in federal elections, but not state and local elections.

The voters who don’t provide such documents are marked as a “federal-only” voter and receive a ballot with just presidential and congressional contests. This applied to less than 1% of the state’s voter roll, or 34,933 out of around 4.4 million active voters eligible for this past November election.

In all other states, voters simply attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. They don’t have to provide documents proving it.

Voters living on tribal land, college campuses, and at the state’s largest homeless campus frequently tell advocacy organizations that they aren’t able to provide documents proving their citizenship because they don’t have easy or immediate access to them when registering. And many college students and Native voters first register to vote at third-party registration drives away from home when they hadn’t necessarily planned to do so, and don’t follow up later to provide additional documentation.

Allie Redhorse Young, director and founder of Navajo advocacy group Protect the Sacred, said it’s just another barrier for Native voters who have long faced challenges voting.

“It’s pretty outrageous for the first people who lived in this country to have these challenges trying to vote,” Young said.

Here’s everything we know about who Arizona’s federal-only voters are, and where they live.

Federal-only voters are unlikely voters in Arizona

The vast majority of federal-only voters are on the list because they didn’t provide documentation of citizenship. But a minimal number are on the list because they haven’t provided proof of residency required under a new state law.

Together, the voters in Arizona who haven’t provided proof of citizenship or residency make up a tiny portion of the state’s voter roll.

These federal-only voters also voted far less often than registered voters in general.

Turnout from active voters who hadn’t provided documents proving citizenship in Arizona was about 19% in the November presidential election, compared to 79% turnout among other active registered voters.

Federal-only voters are spread out pretty evenly across the state with the vast majority of precincts having just a dozen or fewer.

But there are some places where they are more concentrated.

Many federal-only voters live on tribal land

Voters living on tribal land are more likely to find themselves on the federal-only list.

Of all active federal-only voters, 7.3% live in precincts on or close to reservations, whereas voters on tribal land make up only 2.5% of all registered voters, according to a Votebeat analysis. And only 3.6% of the voting-age population in the state is Indigenous, according to U.S. Census voter population estimates. Many of those people do not live on tribal land.

In particular, some precincts on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona saw higher per-capita rates of federal-only voters, compared to precincts in the rest of the state.

There are a few reasons why Indigenous voters may not provide proof of citizenship as often, according to Native voting advocates.

For one, there’s been a big push in recent years to get Indigenous voters registered to vote, so many organizations host voter registration drives at community events or at chapter houses on tribal land. If the voter doesn’t have documentation with them at those events, Young with Protect the Sacred said, it’s a long way back home to get it.

Young’s group hosts voter registration events on the Navajo Nation, including her highly publicized get-out-the-vote horseback rides.

“If they show up without this documentation, it’s likely they aren’t going to drive the 40 minutes and back again,” she said.

Young said the organizations hosting the drive must be clear to residents, before and during the event, that they need to provide this documentation. But she said she knows that some groups conducting voter registration drives on the Navajo reservation turn in incomplete or inaccurate forms.

Young also said many elders living on the reservation may not have documentation proving citizenship at all. Votebeat’s analysis confirmed that the federal-only voters in precincts containing tribal land are generally older than those elsewhere. In fact, 16% of federal-only voters on precincts containing tribal land were 65 and older, compared to 10% in the rest of the state.

Some of these older residents may not have an Arizona driver’s license, which can be used to prove citizenship if issued after 1996, and also may not have a birth certificate. They could potentially have a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, which can also be used to prove citizenship. But, Young said, “it’s one of those documents you don’t have in your wallet.”

Of the federal-only voters who cast ballots in November, at least 8% live on or near tribal land, according to the analysis.

Many federal-only voters are on college campuses

There are just seven precincts, out of roughly 1,700 in the state, where more than 5% of voters cast federal-only ballots in November. They all either include parts of, or are adjacent to, college campuses.

At least 6% of people relegated to the federal-only voter roll live in just three precincts at the center of each of the state’s three public universities’ main campuses. That percentage doubles if expanded to include nearby precincts that include student housing.

Federal-only voters make up 29% of the voters in those three precincts, compared with 0.8% of the overall voter roll.

Student advocates believe they know why college students are landing on the list: Like tribal land, college campuses are targeted by organizations trying to register new voters in the state.

Kyle Nitschke, the organizing director of the Arizona Students’ Association, helps run some of those voter registration drives. Data from his past registration drives found that around 1 in 3 of the students registering have not been able to provide an in-state driver’s license or other form of citizenship proof on the spot at such events.

Nitschke said that’s because many students are originally from out of state, and these drives take place when they first move to Arizona to attend college. So they’re eligible to vote there, but may not have an Arizona-issued driver’s license or have their birth certificate handy.

Changes that went into effect this summer, under a new law requiring proof of residency and requiring state registration forms to be rejected outright if citizenship is not provided, made it even more complicated to get a new student full ballot status, Nitschke said.

Nitsche cautions other states against passing proof of citizenship laws, because he’s seen its impact on the college student population.

“It’s not about citizenship, like they say it is,” he said. “It’s an attack on student voters, and voters from out of state. It just doesn’t solve a problem.”

In the November election, around 7% of federal-only voters who cast ballots live in the three precincts at the center of the main college campuses.

Federal-only voters are often young and unaffiliated

In a potentially related finding, the data show that federal-only voters are generally younger than the voting-age population in the state.

People 18 to 24 years old are roughly 3.6 times as likely to be federal-only voters than people 25 and older.

The federal-only voters who voted in November also followed this pattern.

They’re also more likely to not belong to a political party, compared to all registered voters. That makes sense because these voters are younger, which means they are newer voters, and newer voters are generally less often affiliated with a major party.

But unaffiliated voters, generally, vote at lower rates, and the same was true for those on the federal-only list. Therefore, the political makeup of federal-only voters who actually cast ballots in November looked more like the political makeup of the general voting population.

Arizona doesn’t collect race or ethnicity information from voters when they register, so Votebeat was unable to analyze either.

But in testimony given during a trial on Arizona’s citizenship laws in 2023, Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, told the judge that his analysis found that federal-only voters live in communities that are more diverse, compared to full-ballot voters. The average community for a registered voter in Arizona is 62.9 percent non-Hispanic white, he said, but the average community of a federal-only voter is 47.3 percent non-Hispanic white.

A hot spot on a homeless campus

The other hotspot precinct in the state containing a larger number of federal-only voters includes the state’s main homeless campus, Keys to Change, in downtown Phoenix. The campus has mailboxes that people can use as a mailing address.

There are 510 voters registered at the address, and around half of them, or 269, are federal-only voters, according to Maricopa County data.

Those 269 voters make up 40% of the 669 federal-only voters in the precinct.

Rick Mitchell, executive director of the Phoenix-based Homeless ID Project, said there are several reasons why someone experiencing homelessness might not have a state ID or birth certificate. His organization helps people get new documents, and store them.

Mitchell said people who have recently been evicted, who are aging out of foster care, or who are fleeing domestic violence are among those he helps obtain new identification. He also sees some people who have lost their documents as they move around or live on the street.

In 2023, his organization helped around 20 individuals a day get a birth certificate, and around 40 a day get a new state identification card.

When people come looking for help, they are often trying to get a new job, get housing, or get into school. While getting an ID, they will be asked through the Motor Vehicle Division if they want to register to vote.

Those people might then land on the federal-only list.

But only 19 people of the 669 on the list voted in the November election from the precinct where the homeless campus is located. It has one of the lowest federal-only voting rates in the state, despite having the fourth highest share of federal-only voters.

The people who Mitchell helps have other priorities, he said.

“If I have nothing, and I’m trying to get reestablished, voting isn’t one of them.”

Kae Petrin is a data reporter for Votebeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/cambridge-analytica-database-identified-black-voters-as-ripe-for-deterrence-british-broadcaster-says/

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Cambridge Analytica database identified Black U.S. voters as ripe for ‘deterrence,’ British broadcaster says

Sep. 28, 2020 at 3:26 pm Updated Sep. 28, 2020

By Craig Timberg and Isaac Stanley-Becker

The Washington Post

A database built by Cambridge Analytica, the Republican-aligned firm that unraveled over allegations of improper use of Facebook data, disproportionately identified Black voters as ripe for “Deterrence” in profiles prepared for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to a report Monday from Britain’s Channel 4 News.

The president’s reelection campaign called the segment “fake news,” and an aide who handled data in 2016 said the material went unused by the campaign.

Still, the evidence the British broadcaster says it has uncovered is likely to intensify concerns about voter suppression and the opportunities afforded by Facebook to narrowly segment and target portions of the electorate.

The material revives debates over the extent to which the voter profiles touted by Cambridge Analytica were actually used to sway the vote in 2016. The firm was founded in part by The Trump campaign’s onetime chief executive, Steve Bannon, and collapsed in 2018 after news reports detailed its improper use of Facebook data in analyzing voters and other allegations of impropriety.

The new cache of materials could add detail to allegations about Cambridge Analytica’s role in the campaign, particularly in efforts to harness Facebook’s powerful ad technologies to dissuade Black voters from supporting Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. Four years later, turnout among similar communities may help decide the Nov. 3 contest.

The tactics described in the Channel 4 report are legal, and the sorting of voters into categories for the purposes of political messaging has been a routine – and all but unregulated – part of campaign tactics for years.

A database of nearly 200 million American voters, obtained by Channel 4, sorted likely Democratic voters into several categories, such as “Core Clinton” or “Disengaged Clinton.” The database put 3.5 million African Americans into a third category called “Deterrence,” in an apparent bid to single them out for messages designed to dissuade them from voting, the report said.

The file spanned 16 states, according to the news channel. In crucial battlegrounds, Black voters made up a disproportionate share of those marked for “Deterrence” – 17% in Wisconsin despite making up just 5.4% of voters, and 33% in Michigan while accounting for 15% of the voting population.

The margin in these states, which Trump won in 2016, was exceptionally narrow. Trump bested Clinton in Michigan by 11,000 votes. Meanwhile, Black turnout fell in Michigan and Wisconsin by more than 12 points, estimates suggest.

The database, in Channel 4’s telling, was “used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign” – an allegation the campaign denied.

“This machine was built in part by a team from the now-notorious company Cambridge Analytica, working hand in glove with a team from the Republican National Committee,” the segment further claimed. Channel 4 did not say how it had obtained the database.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Trump’s reelection campaign, dismissed the report as “fake news,” adding in a statement that Trump’s record gave him a “relationship of trust with African American voters.” The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, “has not seen the documents” described by the British broadcaster, said Paris Dennard, the party’s senior communications adviser for Black media affairs. He added, “that is not our data.”

Matt Braynard, who served as the Trump campaign’s data director in 2016, said his team did not use the categorizations featured in the report, relying instead on material from the party and from thefirm L2 Political.He also said, “Deterrence doesn’t mean suppression and it doesn’t mean deterrence from voting. It just means deterrence from voting for Hillary Clinton.” James Barnes, a former Facebook employee embedded with Trump’s team, said he had “no exposure to a ‘deterrence’ segment in 2016.”

Trump’s 2016 campaign paid Cambridge Analytica $5.9 million, according to Federal Election Commission data tallied by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Wisconsin state Sen. Lena Taylor, a Democrat from Milwaukee featured in the Channel 4 News report, called the revelations “shocking” in an interview with The Washington Post. “It just makes me feel disgusted what the president of the United States did to disenfranchise the citizens of our most important thing, which is our democracy.”

Cambridge Analytica’s former director of business development, Brittany Kaiser, called the new findings consistent with her understanding of how Cambridge Analytica and Republicans targeted Black voters in 2016. She provided an internal company document describing a similar sorting of Democrat voters into categories, including “Deterrent,” from that year.

The document also showed $55,000 spent in Georgia targeting African American voters with advertising, including the Clinton “Superpredator” video.

“This comes as no surprise,” said Kaiser, who did not work on the Trump campaign but received detailed briefings about it while still working for Cambridge Analytica. “I’ve been screaming my head off about this for years.”

More than half of the voters the database marked for “Deterrence” messages were Black, Asian or Latinos, with particularly high percentages in predominantly African American neighborhoods in urban areas in key areas such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida, according to Channel 4 News. It quoted voters in predominantly Black areas of Milwaukee and elsewhere expressing frustration that they had been targeted in this way.

The Channel 4 report also showed evidence that the database sorted American voters into categories based on psychological analyses provided by Cambridge Analytica, using terms such as “Individualist,” “Thinker” and “Adventurer” as shorthand indicating what kind of political messaging might be most effective in reaching them.

David Carroll, an associate professor of media design at the New School in New York who has waged a multi-year battle to learn what information Cambridge Analytica had assembled on him, said he found the evidence of Republican voter suppression presented by the Channel 4 report “unambiguous.”