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Republican Operatives Step Up Attempts to Purge Voters
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Seems like every day, we hear about more efforts by Republican operatives to suppress the vote. Kyla Berry, a college senior in Georgia, received a letter three weeks ago telling her that she is not a U.S. citizen and is not eligible to vote.
That came as a surprise to Berry, who was born in Boston and has a U.S. passport and birth certificate to prove it. The letter, dated Oct. 2, gave her a week from the time it was dated to prove her citizenship. One big problem: The letter was postmarked Oct. 9.
Berry is one of more than 50,000 registered Georgia voters whose names have come up as a mismatch when checked against state computer records. At least 4,500 of those people are having their citizenship questioned, and the burden is on them to prove they are eligible to vote. Check out the video of CNN’s interview with Berry here.
An African American college student, Berry represents the kind of voter Republican operatives often have sought to purge from the rolls before elections. Millions of new voters—many of them from groups that usually vote for Democrats—have registered, making it likely that next week’s vote will smash all previous records.
Republicans across the country are pulling out all the stops to keep the new voters and Democratic voters at home on Election Day. One of their biggest tools is the computer matching system in which registered voters’ names are cross-checked with state and federal databases. The databases are notorious for errors and typos, which means legitimate voters could be “flagged” and possibly purged from the rolls for no good reason.
A report by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that states are secretly purging roles with no supervision or national standards. As a result, efforts to clean up voter rolls are not as precise as they should be and eligible voters often are wrongly removed.
But that didn’t stop Colorado Secretary of State Michael Coffman, a Republican. The voter advocacy group, Advancement Project, has filed suit against Coffman challenging illegal purges and cancellation practices that have removed between 16,000 and 30,000 voters from Colorado’s rolls.
The suit alleges, among other things, that Coffman has removed tens of thousands of voters from the official voter rolls after Aug. 4, 2008, in violation of federal law, which bans systematic removal of voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election.
Here are other examples of Republican determination to purge legal voters from the rolls:
- Even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against them, Ohio Republicans still are trying to use computer mismatches to challenge voter registrations. At the request of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), the White House asked the Department of Justice to look into whether 200,000 new Ohio voters must reconfirm their registration information before Nov. 4.
- In Florida, election officials found that 75 percent of some 20,000 voter registration applications from a three-week period in September were mismatched due to typographical and administrative errors. Florida’s Republican secretary of state ordered the computer match system implemented in early September. Also in Florida, according to Ari at Oxdown Gazette, some officials are planning to challenge the vote of anyone whose name is on a home foreclosure list—a move that has been successfully challenged in Michigan and Ohio.
- In Wisconsin, Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen sued the state’s election board after it voted against a proposal to implement a “no-match” policy. The board conducted an audit of its voter rolls and found a 22 percent match failure rate—including for four of the six members of the board. Van Hollen’s lawsuit was dismissed late last week.
- In Montana earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy issued a scathing ruling denouncing the state Republican Party’s effort to challenge the registration of 6,000 voters. “The timing of the challenges is so transparent it defies common sense to believe the purpose is anything but political chicanery,” Molloy said. The Montana Republican Party and its leaders, he wrote, “are abusing the process.”
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5 Comments
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I am wondering with so many people being foreclosed on will the right wingers try to disenfranchise them?After all these are mostly working people who havenot received any real wage gain since 1979 and are most likely to vote for Obama
What can I do about this illegal voting issue?
Tim:
It’s great you want to get involved. If you live in Virginia, you can get involved on Election Day.
For info on becoming a poll worker in Virginia, please e-mail vavoterprotection@aflcio.org or call 1-866-338-5720.
Tula
And people are so worried about illegals voting?? Let’s get real!! The real voter ‘fraud’ is the fact that legitimate US citizens are being prevented from voting because of a number of ‘technicalities’, all of which have been implemented by the Republican party, for the sole purpose of preventing anyone who does not vote Republican to be questioned. Racial and social profiling are at play here, and anyone who doubts that is seriously misinformed or naive. Voter suppression is the worst kind of violation of citizens’ rights in a democracy, because it clearly dictates who the winners are likely to be, while ignoring the voice of the people.
It was suggested that those registering for the first time should register early to find out if there is a particular problem with their application being flagged for mismatched entries, but most states allow registration up to a few weeks before the election, which makes it almost too late in many instances to correct the errors. The problem here is that registrations should NOT be matched to databases, for there will most certainly be discrepancies; even a name misspelled, or a missing hyphen could throw out the registration. Is this what our America has become?!?
Just yesterday, I heard of a sinister attempt by Republicans in Virginia, a state now favoring Obama, sending out official looking fliers telling voters that they will have two days to vote because of the large number of expected voters: Republicans will vote on Nov. 4, and Democrats should not vote until Nov. 5. And you think you’ve heard it all?!?
In North Carolina, students are being told that should they vote where they go to school, which by law they ARE allowed to, they will lose their scholarships, and the police will be there to arrest them if they have any outstanding vehicle citations, which is clearly illegal. (But, during these past 8 years do you see the Republicans worrying about what is illegal and what is not?) This kind of thing is happening all over.
Democracy is founded on the principal of free and equal elections; without this right, we no longer have a free and equal people. What the Republicans are doing is infringing upon the rights of every single citizen, by preventing the rights of those they can get away with.
What I would do is question anyone who says I can’t vote. I would make sure I had as much proof of citizenship as I can gather and go to the polling place and demand that I be allowed to vote. If I am still not allowed to, I would contact the local newspaper immediately and state that I am being prevented from voting. Get this out as soon as possible, before the polls close.
Voter fraud is real, but not because of a few isolated individuals who might try to vote illegally, but because of an organization, the GOP, that is doing everything it possibly can to prevent legitimate citizens from voting, and suppressing their civil rights as free American citizens.
The elections are only a few days away, and Obama is in the lead, and gaining ground as more and more people come to realize he has the best plans for this country and would be our best leader. If Obama does not win the election, I will most certainly blame voter suppression. One could not look at all the people going to Obama rallies and contrasting that to the very small number of people going to McCain rallies and think for one minute that Americans do not want Obama as president. McCain is losing, and he and the Republicans can’t stand the thought. They are doing everything they can to steal this election. Every single American needs to be aware of this.
IF YOU ARE PREVENTED FROM VOTING, CALL THE NEWSPAPERS, REPORT IT, GET THE WORD OUT!!!!
Yes, but what do you intend to do about these purges? If there is something I can do, let me know.
Tim Mara
tmara@ufcw.org