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From Ohio to Florida to Montana, here's where Republicans may be using voter suppression tactics to tilt the presidential election.
It's been another campaign in which the Republican Party has whipped up a media frenzy over the mostly nonexistent problem of voter fraud -- a much-hyped concern that, in reality, could abet a far more serious threat: Republican dirty tricks aimed at suppressing voter turnout in heavily Democratic areas.
The following guide collects recent reports of alleged suppression tactics across a dozen states, from Ohio to Virginia to Montana. If the Nov. 4 vote turns out to be another squeaker, the hottest spots to watch in the battle over the ballot box will likely be in some of these places.
OH-On Oct. 17, a Republican fundraiser from Columbus filed suit against Ohio's Democratic secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, in an attempt to force Brunner to verify the almost 700,000 voters who registered this year. The case quickly made its way to the Supreme Court where, in a unanimous decision, the court ruled that there were no legal grounds forcing newly registered voters to undergo a more stringent verification process.
According to a report in the Dayton Daily News, Republican Gene Fischer, the sheriff of Greene County, provoked an uproar by attempting to figure out which students at a local black university planned to register and vote on Election Day. Fischer's legal representative during his ill-fated “investigation” was the county prosecutor -- also a former law partner of the chairman of John McCain’s Ohio campaign.
FL.-Reportedly there have been 3,247 more Democrats purged than Republicans.
In mid-September, Sasha Rethati of Southwest Florida’s public radio station WGCU accused the McCain campaign of voter caging -- the practice of using returned mailers to challenge the residency status of people who failed to collect their mail -- after it sent out mailers to Florida Democrats and independents.
IN-Indiana has a highly controversial voter ID law that makes it harder for poor voters to cast their ballots. The law was passed in April and was advocated for by Republican Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who voiced more concern about voter impersonation -- a crime that has never been reported in Indiana -- than about the fact that Indiana came in dead last for voter turnout in the 2004 presidential election.
Republican members of Indiana’s Election Board also reportedly attempted to block the opening of satellite election centers in northern Indiana’s Lake County. The centers, which make voting more accessible for those living in Gary, Hammond and East Chicago -- some of the more racially diverse towns in Indiana with significant African-American populations -- would have remained closed but for the Indiana Supreme Court’s Oct. 14 ruling mandating that they be opened.
PA-Like many other states, Pennsylvania has been targeted by the GOP in the battle over ACORN registrations. After publicizing suspicions of the 140,000 new voters registered by the grass-roots advocacy group, the state GOP filed a suit on Oct. 17 demanding that the state review its registration systems and air public service announcements about voting requirements -- quite possibly intimidating first-time voters. In targeting ACORN, Republicans have conflated the issue of faulty voter registration forms with problems at the ballot box, which are protected by more stringent verification safeguards. As Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell's press spokesperson pointed out, "Just because Mickey Mouse fills out a registration form doesn't mean he gets to vote.''
Philadelphia city officials were also concerned about a flier tacked up on campuses and in minority neighborhoods that said law enforcement officials would be using the election to arrest people with outstanding warrants and parking tickets.
WI-On Sept. 10, the Wisconsin Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen -- a McCain campaign state co-chair -- sued the state’s Government Accountability Board, demanding more stringent voter verifications. Members of the state's board and a Madison city clerk reportedly said that would likely disenfranchise many voters by causing long lines and confusion on Election Day. The case is ongoing.
The same week Van Hollen brought suit, the McCain campaign sent out a mailer to hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin voters that included a state application for an absentee ballot stamped with the address of a local clerk. Many of the clerks' addresses did not correspond with the places the mailers were sent, according to a Sept. 12 article in the Wisconsin State Journal. The mailers encouraged voters to apply for absentee ballots in places where they were not eligible. The McCain campaign said it was a mistake.
MI-Republican denials of wrongdoing in Macomb County continued even as a federal judge ordered the Republican secretary of state to restore the 1,438 new voters who had been purged from the voter roles after their voter cards had been returned labeled “undeliverable.” The Oct. 14 ruling put a stop to the illegal purging of voter lists within 90 days of the presidential election.
The Roanoke Times reported that Tracy Howard, the Radford County registrar, was "paying special attention" to the voting status of college students, and that she posted a confusing questionnaire, actions that prompted a strong response from voters' rights groups. Those groups say that college students are being unfairly targeted, and that it could suppress turnout.
Two weeks earlier, according to the Rocky Mountain News, the president of Colorado College received a memo stating falsely that out-of-state students who still claimed dependent status on their tax forms would be ineligible to vote.
RNC lawyers have alleged that ACORN has committed “rampant” voter registration fraud in North Carolina even though only .5 percent of the forms submitted were invalid. This accusation, as in Nevada, may have the effect of diminishing turnout among those legitimately registered by ACORN. It is also impossible to "straight ticket" vote on the presidential race, which may confuse newer voters.
The judge said the Montana Republican Party had challenged the voters with "the express intent to disenfranchise voters."
Georgia also has a controversial voter ID law that a U.S. District Court Judge compared to the poll taxes of the Jim Crow era.
Where the GOP could get dirty | Salon News
The Myth of Voter Fraud
Earlier this month, Republicans in Ohio lost their lawsuit challenging a state rule that allows voters to register and vote early on the same day. But the state party had no intention of conceding the point. GOP officials demanded records from all 88 county boards of election identifying every person who took advantage of same-day registration and voting. In one county, the Republican district attorney even opened a grand jury investigation.
"(Republicans are) trying to do what they can to poison the well on the eve of the election because they're not winning on the issues," contends Charles Lichtman, statewide lead counsel for the Florida Democratic Party. The party, like the Obama campaign, is assembling a team of volunteer lawyers to take on unwarranted challenges and obstruction to voters on Election Day. "They know there are more Democrats registered than Republicans," said Lichtman, "so they're calling out fraud where it didn't occur."
For months now, Republicans have been claiming that voter fraud is rampant and that government officials aren't sufficiently cracking down. Democrats insist that voter fraud is practically nonexistent -- the real problem is intimidation and harassment of voters at the polls, they say.
Voting-rights experts tend to agree with the Democrats. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, for example, found that, "It's more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls."
Another study, by Barnard College political scientist Lori Minnite, similarly concluded that voter fraud is "extremely rare." The Brennan Center also showed that the sort of strict rules advocated by Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere would disenfranchise thousands of people -- usually the poor, elderly and minorities.
In fact, even official Justice Dept. policy had acknowledged until recently that individual voter fraud has "only a minimal impact on the integrity of the voting process" and therefore usually wasn't worth trying to prosecute. Then last year, the Bush administration changed that to allow individual prosecutors to pursue such cases at their discretion.
When some U.S. attorneys refused because of a lack of evidence, several were fired, contributing to the scandal that ultimately forced the resignation of Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales. Since then, Democrats have become even more vigilant in fighting back against claims of voter fraud.
The Myth of Voter Fraud | Election 2008 | AlterNet
The Republican voter fraud hoax
It's an old Republican scam, but it's never been carried out with more zeal than this year. The Republicans have been putting so much time, money and resources into the propaganda leading up to this over the last four years, we should have expected no less.
As luck would have it, the Democrats have a man who, as an attorney years ago, actually had the temerity to join the US department of justice in representing Acorn in a successful lawsuit, forcing the state of Illinois to follow the law by allowing citizens to register to vote at the department of motor vehicles. What a scoundrel.
That, of course, was before the department of justice, under George Bush's corrupt command, would itself become politicised by the very Republicans so desperate to keep low-income voters from voting, that they were willing to fire their own US attorneys 'for failing to bring phoney' charges of voter fraud in key swing states like Nevada and Missouri.
Brad Friedman: The Republican voter fraud hoax | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
I believe in every case so far,the State Supreme courts have ruled against the GOP's false charges!
It's been another campaign in which the Republican Party has whipped up a media frenzy over the mostly nonexistent problem of voter fraud -- a much-hyped concern that, in reality, could abet a far more serious threat: Republican dirty tricks aimed at suppressing voter turnout in heavily Democratic areas.
The following guide collects recent reports of alleged suppression tactics across a dozen states, from Ohio to Virginia to Montana. If the Nov. 4 vote turns out to be another squeaker, the hottest spots to watch in the battle over the ballot box will likely be in some of these places.
OH-On Oct. 17, a Republican fundraiser from Columbus filed suit against Ohio's Democratic secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, in an attempt to force Brunner to verify the almost 700,000 voters who registered this year. The case quickly made its way to the Supreme Court where, in a unanimous decision, the court ruled that there were no legal grounds forcing newly registered voters to undergo a more stringent verification process.
According to a report in the Dayton Daily News, Republican Gene Fischer, the sheriff of Greene County, provoked an uproar by attempting to figure out which students at a local black university planned to register and vote on Election Day. Fischer's legal representative during his ill-fated “investigation” was the county prosecutor -- also a former law partner of the chairman of John McCain’s Ohio campaign.
FL.-Reportedly there have been 3,247 more Democrats purged than Republicans.
In mid-September, Sasha Rethati of Southwest Florida’s public radio station WGCU accused the McCain campaign of voter caging -- the practice of using returned mailers to challenge the residency status of people who failed to collect their mail -- after it sent out mailers to Florida Democrats and independents.
IN-Indiana has a highly controversial voter ID law that makes it harder for poor voters to cast their ballots. The law was passed in April and was advocated for by Republican Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who voiced more concern about voter impersonation -- a crime that has never been reported in Indiana -- than about the fact that Indiana came in dead last for voter turnout in the 2004 presidential election.
Republican members of Indiana’s Election Board also reportedly attempted to block the opening of satellite election centers in northern Indiana’s Lake County. The centers, which make voting more accessible for those living in Gary, Hammond and East Chicago -- some of the more racially diverse towns in Indiana with significant African-American populations -- would have remained closed but for the Indiana Supreme Court’s Oct. 14 ruling mandating that they be opened.
PA-Like many other states, Pennsylvania has been targeted by the GOP in the battle over ACORN registrations. After publicizing suspicions of the 140,000 new voters registered by the grass-roots advocacy group, the state GOP filed a suit on Oct. 17 demanding that the state review its registration systems and air public service announcements about voting requirements -- quite possibly intimidating first-time voters. In targeting ACORN, Republicans have conflated the issue of faulty voter registration forms with problems at the ballot box, which are protected by more stringent verification safeguards. As Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell's press spokesperson pointed out, "Just because Mickey Mouse fills out a registration form doesn't mean he gets to vote.''
Philadelphia city officials were also concerned about a flier tacked up on campuses and in minority neighborhoods that said law enforcement officials would be using the election to arrest people with outstanding warrants and parking tickets.
WI-On Sept. 10, the Wisconsin Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen -- a McCain campaign state co-chair -- sued the state’s Government Accountability Board, demanding more stringent voter verifications. Members of the state's board and a Madison city clerk reportedly said that would likely disenfranchise many voters by causing long lines and confusion on Election Day. The case is ongoing.
The same week Van Hollen brought suit, the McCain campaign sent out a mailer to hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin voters that included a state application for an absentee ballot stamped with the address of a local clerk. Many of the clerks' addresses did not correspond with the places the mailers were sent, according to a Sept. 12 article in the Wisconsin State Journal. The mailers encouraged voters to apply for absentee ballots in places where they were not eligible. The McCain campaign said it was a mistake.
MI-Republican denials of wrongdoing in Macomb County continued even as a federal judge ordered the Republican secretary of state to restore the 1,438 new voters who had been purged from the voter roles after their voter cards had been returned labeled “undeliverable.” The Oct. 14 ruling put a stop to the illegal purging of voter lists within 90 days of the presidential election.
The Roanoke Times reported that Tracy Howard, the Radford County registrar, was "paying special attention" to the voting status of college students, and that she posted a confusing questionnaire, actions that prompted a strong response from voters' rights groups. Those groups say that college students are being unfairly targeted, and that it could suppress turnout.
Two weeks earlier, according to the Rocky Mountain News, the president of Colorado College received a memo stating falsely that out-of-state students who still claimed dependent status on their tax forms would be ineligible to vote.
RNC lawyers have alleged that ACORN has committed “rampant” voter registration fraud in North Carolina even though only .5 percent of the forms submitted were invalid. This accusation, as in Nevada, may have the effect of diminishing turnout among those legitimately registered by ACORN. It is also impossible to "straight ticket" vote on the presidential race, which may confuse newer voters.
The judge said the Montana Republican Party had challenged the voters with "the express intent to disenfranchise voters."
Georgia also has a controversial voter ID law that a U.S. District Court Judge compared to the poll taxes of the Jim Crow era.
Where the GOP could get dirty | Salon News
The Myth of Voter Fraud
Earlier this month, Republicans in Ohio lost their lawsuit challenging a state rule that allows voters to register and vote early on the same day. But the state party had no intention of conceding the point. GOP officials demanded records from all 88 county boards of election identifying every person who took advantage of same-day registration and voting. In one county, the Republican district attorney even opened a grand jury investigation.
"(Republicans are) trying to do what they can to poison the well on the eve of the election because they're not winning on the issues," contends Charles Lichtman, statewide lead counsel for the Florida Democratic Party. The party, like the Obama campaign, is assembling a team of volunteer lawyers to take on unwarranted challenges and obstruction to voters on Election Day. "They know there are more Democrats registered than Republicans," said Lichtman, "so they're calling out fraud where it didn't occur."
For months now, Republicans have been claiming that voter fraud is rampant and that government officials aren't sufficiently cracking down. Democrats insist that voter fraud is practically nonexistent -- the real problem is intimidation and harassment of voters at the polls, they say.
Voting-rights experts tend to agree with the Democrats. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, for example, found that, "It's more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls."
Another study, by Barnard College political scientist Lori Minnite, similarly concluded that voter fraud is "extremely rare." The Brennan Center also showed that the sort of strict rules advocated by Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere would disenfranchise thousands of people -- usually the poor, elderly and minorities.
In fact, even official Justice Dept. policy had acknowledged until recently that individual voter fraud has "only a minimal impact on the integrity of the voting process" and therefore usually wasn't worth trying to prosecute. Then last year, the Bush administration changed that to allow individual prosecutors to pursue such cases at their discretion.
When some U.S. attorneys refused because of a lack of evidence, several were fired, contributing to the scandal that ultimately forced the resignation of Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales. Since then, Democrats have become even more vigilant in fighting back against claims of voter fraud.
The Myth of Voter Fraud | Election 2008 | AlterNet
The Republican voter fraud hoax
It's an old Republican scam, but it's never been carried out with more zeal than this year. The Republicans have been putting so much time, money and resources into the propaganda leading up to this over the last four years, we should have expected no less.
As luck would have it, the Democrats have a man who, as an attorney years ago, actually had the temerity to join the US department of justice in representing Acorn in a successful lawsuit, forcing the state of Illinois to follow the law by allowing citizens to register to vote at the department of motor vehicles. What a scoundrel.
That, of course, was before the department of justice, under George Bush's corrupt command, would itself become politicised by the very Republicans so desperate to keep low-income voters from voting, that they were willing to fire their own US attorneys 'for failing to bring phoney' charges of voter fraud in key swing states like Nevada and Missouri.
Brad Friedman: The Republican voter fraud hoax | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
I believe in every case so far,the State Supreme courts have ruled against the GOP's false charges!
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