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Methods of voter suppression Jim Crow laws
Main article: Jim Crow laws
In the United States, voter suppression was used extensively in most Southern states until the Voting Rights Act (1965) made most disenfranchisement and voting qualifications illegal. Traditional voter suppression tactics included the institution of poll taxes and literacy tests, aimed at suppressing the votes of African Americans and working class white voters.<1><2>
Ex-Felon disenfranchisement
In 2004, 5.3 million Americans were denied the right to vote because of previous felony convictions. Thirteen states permanently disenfranchise convicted felons; eighteen states restore voting rights after completion of prison, parole, and probation; four states re-enfranchise felons after they have been released from prison and have completed parole; thirteen allow felons who have been released from prison to vote, and two states do not disenfranchise felons at all.<3> However, for states that do offer a path for restoration of voting rights, the process can often be very difficult.
The United States is the only democracy in the world that bans its felons from voting. Other countries including Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Norway, Peru, Sweden, and Zimbabwe all allow their prisoners to vote.<4>
Some countries, notably the U.K., do not permit convicted prisoners in jail to vote but restore full civil rights on release even if that release is on parole.
In Florida during the 2000 presidential election, some non-felons were banned due to record-keeping errors and are not warned of their disqualification before they no longer had the right to contest it.
This form of vote suppression disproportionately affects minorities including African-Americans and Latinos.<4>
Partisan election administration
Across the United States, 33 state election directors are elected partisans. The majority of the world's democracies use independent agents to manage elections. Because of their partisan ties, election officials are often presented with a confilict of interest while directing elections. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris served as state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign during the 2000 presidential election, and Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell served as his state's Bush-Cheney co-chair during the 2004 presidential election.<5>
Inequality in Election Day resources
Elections in the United States are funded at the local level, often unequally. In the 2004 elections, Wyoming spent $2.15 per voter while California spent $3.99 per voter. In contrast, Canada spends $9.51 per voter. This can result in long lines at the polls resulting in wait times of multiple areas predominantly in urban areas.<5><6>
Caging lists
Main article: caging list
Caging lists have been used by political parties to eliminate potential voters from the other party's voting roll. A political party sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable the party uses that fact to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the address, the registration is fraudulent.
Examples of voter suppression
2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal
In the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal, Republican officials attempted to reduce the number of Democratic voters by paying professional telemarketers in Idaho to make repeated hang-up calls to block Democrats' ride-to-the-polls phone lines on election day.<7><8>
United States Senate election in Virginia, 2006
During the United States Senate election in Virginia, 2006, Secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections Jean Jensen concluded that the incidents of voter suppression appeared widespread and deliberate. Documented incidents of voter suppression include:<9>
* Democratic voters receiving calls incorrectly informing them voting will lead to arrest.
* Widespread calls fraudulently claiming to be "Webb Volunteers," falsely telling voters their voting location had changed.
* Fliers paid for by the Republican Party , stating "SKIP THIS ELECTION" caused was allegedly an attempt to suppress African-American turnout.
The FBI has since launched an investigation into the suppression attempts.<10>
2004 presidential election
In the U.S. presidential election of 2004, some voters got phone calls with false information intended to keep them from voting--saying that their voting place had been changed or that voting would take place on Wednesday as well as on Tuesday.<11><12>
Other allegations surfaced in several states that the group called Voters Outreach of America had collected and submitted Republican voter registration forms while inappropriately disposing of Democratic registration forms.<13><14><15><16>.
Michigan Republican state legislator John Pappageorge, was quoted as saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."<17>.
In 2006, four employees of the John Kerry campaign were convicted of slashing the tires of 25 vans rented by the state Republican Party which were to be used for driving Republican monitors to the polls. At the campaign workers' sentencing, Judge Michael B. Brennan told the defendants, "Voter suppression has no place in our country. Your crime took away that right to vote for some citizens."<18><19>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression#United_States_Senate_election_in_Virginia.2C_2006
Examples of proven or alleged political caging
From the Washington Post: "In 1981, the Republican National Committee sent letters to predominantly black neighborhoods in New Jersey, and when 45,000 letters were returned as undeliverable, the committee compiled a challenge list to remove those voters from the rolls. The RNC sent off-duty law enforcement officials to the polls and hung posters in heavily black neighborhoods warning that violating election laws is a crime." Republicans however, denied that black voters were the target. An attorney for the RNC, Bobby Burchfield, stated that "troubling reports" of fictitious names such as Mary Poppins were appearing on Ohio's rolls and that is what prompted the challenges.
The Washington Post<11>: "In 1986, the RNC tried to have 31,000 voters, most of them black, removed from the rolls in Louisiana when a party mailer was returned. The consent decrees that resulted prohibited the party from engaging in anti-fraud initiatives that target minorities or conduct mail campaigns to 'compile voter challenge lists.'" The Republican National Committee reportedly stopped the practice following the consent decree in the 1986 case, but allegations of RNC-conducted voter caging arose once again in the 2004 elections.
In October 2004, the BBC Newsnight program reported on an alleged George W. Bush campaign caging list, the existence of which suggested that the campaign might have been planning illegal disruption of African American voting in Jacksonville, Florida. The BBC obtained a document from George W. Bush's Florida campaign headquarters that was inadvertently e-mailed to the parody website GeorgeWBush.org. The program reported that the e-mail attachment contained a list of 1,886 voter names and addresses in largely African-American and Democratic areas of Jacksonville. Democratic Party officials and a number of journalists allege that the document is a caging list that the Bush campaign was going to use to issue mass challenges to African-American voters, in violation of the court ordered 1982 and 1987 consent decrees. Although Florida statutory law allows the parties to challenge voters at the polls, this practice is not allowed if the challenges appear to be race-based. Court documents produced during limited discovery in a challenge to use of cagings list in Ohio, revealed clear intent to use caging lists to challenge voters. Specifically, in the US District Court, District of New Jersey, Civil Action No. 81-3876, exhibit D, filed 10/29/04 and entitled "Declaration_of_Caroline_Hunter_and_emails_exh_d", emails exchanged between RNC operatives (Blaise Hazlewood, Caroline Hunter, Terry Nelson, and Tim Griffin), Bush-Cheney '04 campaign workers (Christopher Guith, Coddy Johnson, Robert Paduchik, and Dave DenHerder) and the Ohio Republican Party personnel (Mike Magan) revealed involvement of these entities in caging operations and intent to utilize the caging lists to challenge ballots in Ohio and other states<12>. Furthermore, these email exchanges also revealed concern about GOP fingerprints with ballot challenges based on caging lists in states that did not have flagged voter rolls<13>. The concern about GOP involvement in the email sent by Tim Griffin to Christopher Guith and others may have reflected knowledge of the fact that the RNC is prohibited by Consent Decrees from involvement in ballot security measures such as caging, when the measures have racial bias. Regardless of the intent of caging list design, there are no documented voter challenges based on caging lists in the 2004 elections.
The list came to light because of numerous e-mails accidentally addressed by, among others, Republican campaigners to the georgewbush.org anti-Bush site instead of the georgewbush.com Bush campaign site. Two of these e-mails had the subject line "Re: Caging" and contained Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file attachments called "Caging.xls" and "Caging-1.xls".<14><15>.
Investigative reporter Greg Palast initially received the emails from the owner of georgewbush.org, and in a 2007 interview has drawn a link to the scandal surrounding the Alberto Gonzales U.S. Attorney firings, claiming that the firings are part of a wider effort by Republicans to use caging to "steal the 2008 election."<16>
In December 2007, Kansas GOP Chair Kris Kobach sent an email boasting that "to date, the Kansas GOP has identified and caged more voters in the last 11 months than the previous two years!"<17>
On September 16, 2008, Obama legal counsel announced that they would be seeking an injunction to stop an alleged caging scheme in Michigan wherein the state Republican party would use home foreclosure lists to challenge voters still using their foreclosed home as a primary address at the polls. <18> Michigan GOP officials called the suit "desperate."<19>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caging_list#Examples_of_proven_or_alleged_political_caging |
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