Republican Tricks Aim to Limit Voting by Students, Poor, People of Color

by James Parks, Sep 11, 2008

With less than two months to go before voters elect a new president, new members of Congress and many governors, the Republican Party is engaged in an all-out effort to deny the vote to millions of voters who traditionally vote for Democrats.

From Michigan to Mississippi, Republicans are actively working to challenge the votes of people of color, the impoverished and students.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker defined the problem, saying: 

We have learned painfully that in this third century of our republic, we cannot take our right to vote for granted. We have to defend it. There are people in our political system who think that voting is a privilege reserved for those like themselves, that it is fair and right to confuse and intimidate people into not voting. 

The AFL-CIO’s 2008 Voting Rights Protection Program, My Vote, My Right, helps ensure votes cast at the ballot box are properly counted, especially those in communities where the public’s political will repeatedly has been compromised by failings in our election system. Click here to learn more about the My Vote, My Right campaign. 

One of the most egregious moves to deny voters their rights is cropping up in the key battleground states of Ohio and Michigan. The Republican Party, whose economic policies helped force hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes through foreclosure, now wants to take away their votes as well. Republican county chairpersons in those states are planning to use lists of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election. 

Macomb County (Mich.) Republican Chairman James Carabelli told the Michigan Messenger his army of election challengers “will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses.”

African American voters in Michigan would be the most affected by the challenges. More than 60 percent of all subprime loans—the most likely kind of loan to go into default—were made to African Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth. 

Gerald Hebert, head of the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based public-interest law firm, told the Messenger that using foreclosure lists to disqualify voters is not only “mean-spirited,” it may be illegal.

You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so. I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.

If you vote in Michigan, click here to check out a Voters’ Bill of Rights for your state.

In Ohio, Doug Preisse, director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus) and the chairman of the local Republican Party, told The Columbus Dispatch that he may challenge voters who have foreclosure-related address issues.

Such actions are part of a “systematic broad-based effort to put up obstacles for people to vote,” Hebert says.

Nobody is contending that these people are not legally registered to vote.

When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote, your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others who see a long line and realize they can’t afford to stay and wait.

With record numbers of newly registered young people eligible to vote in November, Republicans also plan to challenge students who want to cast their ballots. In past elections, some college students have been denied the right to vote because local officials questioned whether they were full-time residents or if they were voting at the right precinct.

For example, in Virginia, election officials in the county that is home to Virginia Tech issued and later retracted a press release saying college students who register to vote there cannot be claimed as dependents on their parents’ income tax returns. The news release came late last month during a voter registration drive at the university conducted by supporters of Barack Obama. After a lawyer for the Obama campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union complained, the registrar for Montgomery County issued a revised release saying his office is prohibited from offering advice on taxes or other benefits and suggesting anyone with questions about those issues direct them to the appropriate agency or organization. 

In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican national chairman, has come up with a novel way of discouraging progressive voters from voting in a close race. First, Barbour tried to move the hotly contested special election to replace retired Sen. Trent Lott to the bottom of a long ballot. With the Republican candidate possibly facing defeat, political observers say Barbour wants to hide the race where most voters, especially the elderly, poor and people of color, may not see it or will give up before they reach it. But a circuit judge has blocked that plan. 

So, according to Adam B., writing on Daily Kos, Barbour has come up with another plan to try and save the seat for interim Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican, who is locked in a tight battle with former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D), who has the strong support of union members and people of color. On Election Day, the candidates will not be identified by party on the ballot.

Yep. Unlike every other race that appears on the Mississippi ballot, this one won’t tell voters which candidate’s the Republican. It appears to be the case that under Mississippi law, election officials aren’t required to list party affiliations in special elections like this but I can’t find anything in Mississippi law which would forbid it either.

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