Academic

?Purge, Baby, Purge??

By Sherrilyn Ifill

While most people were watching the Dow Jones, disturbing reports were released last week documenting efforts, often spearheaded by Republicans, designed to discourage minority voters from showing up at the polling place on November 4^th.  Two of the best reports aired on NPR and on Amy Goodman?s Democracy Now. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95509946 , http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/9/greg_palast_on_vote_rigging_and  The New York Times ran a chilling story about the illegal removal of voters from the rolls in several swing states. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=States’%20Action%20to%20Block%20Voters&st=cse&oref=slogin  The voter purges described in the Times story appear not be deliberately partisan, but instead the result of a misunderstanding of the requirements of the Help American Vote Act (HAVA), passed by Congress in 2002.  HAVA is the law that was enacted in response to public outrage over the disputed election of 2000 and the Florida recount.  But the result was less one that promoted and protected the franchise, and one that instead in large part yielded to the Republican?s unsubstantiated paranoia about voter fraud.  The HAVA requirement that states remove voters from the rolls for a number of reasons has opened the door in some states to expansive purges that may affect the outcome of electoral contests held in those states.  As we learned in 2000 when Florida engaged in an expansive voter purge effort prior to the presidential election, overreaching voter purges can change the outcome of elections in the states where they occur, with consequences for the entire country.  ?Purge, baby, purge!? may become as popular a chant at future Republican conventions as the menacing, ?drill, baby, drill!? came to identify the essence of the Republican spirit this year.

The roots of the Republican Party?s obsession with voter fraud (sometimes called ?ballot integrity?) has long-standing, ugly racial connotations.  The allegation (on the sworn testimony of two witnesses) that he was involved in the intimidation of black and Latino voters at the polls in Arizona in the 1960s when he was a young Republican lawyer, threatened to derail Justice Rehnquist?s elevation to Chief Justice at his confirmation hearings in 1986.  Efforts to scare off black voters through a North Carolina Republican Party ?ballot security? program was one of the features of the contentious, racially-charged 1990 Senate contest between the late Senator Jesse Helms and the challenger, African American Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEFD61739F931A35752C1A966958260.  The program was ended after the Justice Department under the elder President Bush stepped in.  Actions designed to intimidate minority voters were also reported in the 2004 presidential election.  http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/conason/2004/10/29/injustice/print.html .  Even the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was largely a response to Iglesias? refusal to accede to pressure from Republican legislators and activists, demanding that he bring voter fraud cases in New Mexico where, although there was little evidence to support it, Republicans believed that illegal immigrants and ex-felons were being registered to vote. http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/4/former_us_attorney_david_iglesias_on  

                In past years ?robo calls? to minority voters reportedly warned (erroneously) that you cannot vote if you are behind in your child support payment or if you have unpaid traffic tickets.  Other calls targeted at minority communities included false claims that the polling place for Election Day had been moved.  Then there are the ?misleading? campaign materials, in which Republican candidates attempt to make minority voters believe that the Republican candidate is supported by the minority community.  In the hotly contested 2006 Senate and gubernatorial races in Maryland, campaign literature bearing red, black and green colors purported to show prominent current and former black elected officials (including the former head of the national NAACP) endorsing the Republican candidates.  The materials were plainly marked as paid for by the state Republican Party.  On Election Day, the Republican incumbent Governor also bused in homeless people from a shelter in Philadelphia to stand outside polling places in black communities and hand out flyers supporting his reelection.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/08/AR2006110802525.html   Black voters were not fooled, but the tactics themselves left a bad taste in the mouth of voters and politicians on both sides of the aisle.  (The Republican Senate candidate in question was Michael Steele, the telegenic black speaker who last month exhorted the conventioneers in St. Louis to chant, ?drill, baby, drill.?  The Republican gubernatorial candidate, former Governor Bob Ehrlich, appeared on cable news shows this week delivering the odious Party talking point that blames the financial crisis on affirmative action in mortgage lending).

                The latest array of tactics is particularly vile.  Several weeks ago the Republican Party of Michigan announced that they would use foreclosure lists to challenge voters at the polls.  http://michiganmessenger.com/4076/lose-your-house-lose-your-vote This is bogus and they know it.  That a registered voter is in foreclosure proceedings is no basis on which to challenge their right to vote.  Certainly, voters who have changed their residence should file a change of address with their state election board.  But even if registered voters vote by provisional ballot in their former polling place, state election boards should count their vote for the Presidential election (which is entirely unrelated to residence within a particular district within a state), and for congressional elections, so long as the provisional ballot was cast by a registered voter residing within the relevant congressional district.

After Barack Obama?s campaign filed suit in federal court against the Michigan Republican Party challenging this intended activity, the Party recanted. http://michiganmessenger.com/4231/republicans-recant-plans-to-foreclose-voters-but-admit-other-strategies   But the damage was done.  The point was to frighten people involved in foreclosure proceedings from showing up at the polls, lest they be embarrassed by Republican challengers who might ?put their business in the street? in front of their friends and neighbors.

                This kind of effort and others like it are a reflection of a democracy in trouble.   And yet there appears to be little concerted effort to stop it.  The Department of Justice?s Civil Rights Division, which was created and shaped largely in response to racist interference with the right of minority voters to participate in the political process in the south, and which stepped in to stop so-called ?ballot integrity? efforts in North Carolina in 1990 (under a Republican President), should be at the forefront of this.  But the Civil Rights Division, another casualty in the aggressive politicization of the Department of Justice under the leadership of John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, shows no signs of aggressively entering the fray on this issue. 

You?d think that in a country in which less than half the electorate votes in major congressional elections, we?d be more concerned with promoting voting, rather than trying to suppress it.  And yet through laws disenfranchising ex-offenders in a number of states, voter I.D. laws, and the failure to aggressively take on these voter intimidation tactics, we look more and more like a country that doesn?t want all of its eligible citizens to vote.  Instead we look more like a country that increasingly regards voting as just another obstacle that stands in the way of power.

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Full post as published by BlackProf on October 11, 2008 (boomark / email).