posted
CAMPAIGN 2004: THE BIG ISSUES The Poll Tax, Updated
Published: October 7, 2004
When members of Mi Familia Vota, a Latino group, were registering voters recently on a Miami Beach sidewalk outside a building where new citizens were being sworn in, the Homeland Security Department ordered them to stop. The department gave all kinds of suspect reasons, which a federal court has since rejected, but it looked a lot as if someone at Homeland Security just didn't want thousands of new Latino voters on the Florida rolls.
The suppression of minority votes is alive and well in 2004, driven by the sharp partisan divide across the nation. Because many minority groups vote heavily Democratic, some Republicans view keeping them from registering and voting as a tactic for victory - one that has a long history in American politics. It is rarely talked about publicly, but John Pappageorge, a Republican state legislator from Michigan, recently broke the taboo. He was quoted in The Detroit Free Press as saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election cycle." Detroit's population is more than 80 percent black.
A recent report by the N.A.A.C.P. and People for the American Way includes page after page of examples of how this shabby business works. On Election Day, "ballot security" teams head for minority neighborhoods. They demand that voters produce identification when it is not required, take photographs of voters and single out immigrant voters for special scare tactics.
Two years ago in the governor's race in Maryland, leaflets appeared in Baltimore saying that before voters showed up at the polls, they had to pay off all parking tickets and overdue rent. The same year in Louisiana, fliers were distributed in African-American areas to tell voters, falsely, that if they did not want to vote on Election Day, they could still vote three days later.
What is particularly discouraging this year is the degree to which government officials have been involved in such efforts. In South Dakota's hard-fought statewide Congressional race, poll workers turned away Native American voters who could not provide photo identification, which many of them do not have, even though the law clearly says identification is not required. In one heavily Native American county, the top elections official, who is white, wrote out instructions saying no one could vote without photo identification. In Texas, a white district attorney threatened to prosecute students at Prairie View A&M, a large, predominantly African-American campus, if they registered to vote from the school, even though they are entitled to by law.
And in Florida, the secretary of state, Glenda Hood, had a list prepared to purge felons from the voter rolls; the list had many errors and would have turned away an untold number of qualified black voters. She abandoned the list only when news organizations sued to make it public, then pointed out its many inaccuracies.
In addition to these blatant forms of vote suppression, elections officials have been adopting policies that appear neutral on their face but often have the effect, and perhaps the intent, of disproportionately disenfranchising minorities. With huge registration drives under way among minorities in swing states, some secretaries of state have adopted bizarrely rigid rules for new registrations.
In Florida, Ms. Hood is insisting that thousands of registration forms on which a citizenship box is not checked are invalid, even though elsewhere on the forms each applicant has sworn that he or she is a citizen. In Ohio, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell was insisting until recently that any registration form that came in on anything less than 80-pound paper stock had to be rejected. The continued disenfranchisement of convicted felons in many states also has an unmistakable racial component.
The suppression of minority votes has continued because it is perceived as a winning tactic, and because it is rarely punished. This needs to change.
Trying to prevent members of minorities from voting can be a violation of federal and state law. Election officials, poll watchers and voters should be on the lookout for vote suppression, and should report it. And prosecutors should look for criminal cases to pursue. A few high-profile prosecutions of political operatives, and even elections officials, would go a long way toward ending a disgraceful American tradition.
Making Votes Count: Editorials in this series remain online at nytimes.com/makingvotescount.
posted
Oh, that is totally wrong! People fought long and hard to prevent stuff like that from happening. That's cheating and interfering with democracy!
Furthermore, how do they know the minorities won't vote Republican?
posted
Sorry if I sound a bit naive here, but...man...does it REALLY happend over there? I mean...I'm speechless. Posts: 1785 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:When members of Mi Familia Vota, a Latino group, were registering voters recently on a Miami Beach sidewalk outside a building where new citizens were being sworn in, the Homeland Security Department ordered them to stop. The department gave all kinds of suspect reasons, which a federal court has since rejected, but it looked a lot as if someone at Homeland Security just didn't want thousands of new Latino voters on the Florida rolls.
I'm not sure I agree with the assessment in this particular instance. Remember the outcry over the lack of Latino-sounding surnames on the purge lists of felons in Florida? That was supposed to benefit the Republicans.
You can't have it both ways. Why would eliminating these Latino votes act in the opposite way?
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
ok, so it says that if we see this happening, we should report it. To who exactly? Obviously not the people that are doing it. If this kind of stuff is happening, i'm sure it goes pretty high up in the chain of things too. I doubt its just the poeple running the booths.
Posts: 298 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote: And in Florida, the secretary of state, Glenda Hood, had a list prepared to purge felons from the voter rolls; the list had many errors and would have turned away an untold number of qualified black voters. She abandoned the list only when news organizations sued to make it public, then pointed out its many inaccuracies.
Are felons in Florida only Black or Democrat? I would be offended by such an accusation.
I think that any suppression of votes is wrong from EITHER side of the aisle.
quote: In Florida, Ms. Hood is insisting that thousands of registration forms on which a citizenship box is not checked are invalid, even though elsewhere on the forms each applicant has sworn that he or she is a citizen.
Again, what is this article insinuating? That Democrats/Minorities are too stupid to fill out their paperwork correctly? Logically how would the claim above affect mostly Democrats/minorities and not Republicans/non-minorities as well?
I would be offended at such a claim.
quote: The continued disenfranchisement of convicted felons in many states also has an unmistakable racial component.
Again, are all felons racial minorities?
WTH?
I am all for blocking the votes of Inmates. Voting is a priviledge you should lose when you are incarcerated. Once you completely PAY your debt to society you should be allowed to vote.
But this article blatantly slams minorities/democrats indirectly.
It is basically insinuating that the majority of Convicted Felons are minorities and that those minorities will vote Democrat.
Are we saying the majority of felons are democrats then? The majority of the lawless are left leaning people?
That article makes a good point that suppression of votes is a bad thing...
But it sure paints a bad picture of Minorities and Democrats.
I say if you are going to keep convicted felons from voting, then that would affect all races equally would it not?
Posts: 1533 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
CStroman, convicted felons are disproportionately black. They also get their voting rights restored on a disproportionately lower basis. The historical record is pretty clear that felon disenfranchisement was enacted to frustrate minority voters.
I would bet that your position of blocking inmates voting but reenfranchising after the completion of the sentence is the majority (or high plurality) opinion.
posted
Chad, I live in Florida. Let me explain what is happening here, because this is the second time you have brought it up. The purge lists identify felons by two characteristics: Name and race. That's it. If there is a Jerome Brown who is black and a convicted felon, all black Jerome Browns are disenfranchised. Proportionally, a higher percentage of convicts are black. We can debate the causes or what it means, but not the truth of this statement. Therefore, a higher proportion of the MISTAKENLY disenfranchised people are black. A higher proportion of black voters are also democrats. So the thrust is not that felons should be able to vote, but that people who are NOT convicted felons are being disenfranchised because of coincidence of name and race.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
They should cut the "race" out of it then it would be harder for the idiot trying to supress votes to identify a "minority".
Of course you do have Hispanics with names that are very identifiable....as well as the Moesha, Keisha, Motefas, Lashondas, Letishas, etc that are very usually Black as well.
They need to have it be "Name" and "SSN" or heck, even just a SSN.
That way of felon tracking stinks and needs to be changed.
posted
But this editorial is based on verified news reports. I have read of these and more shenanigans going on over the last few months.
Like this little tidbit:
quote:DAYTON | Voters-rights advocates are criticizing two recent decisions by Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell that they say will unfairly limit some people's ability to vote Nov. 2.
Blackwell's office has told county boards of elections to follow strictly two provisions in Ohio election law:
• One requires Ohio voter registration cards be printed on thick, 80-pound stock paper.
• The other ordered boards to strictly interpret the rules regarding provisional ballots, the ones cast by voters who move before the election but are still registered in Ohio.
And his other order:
quote:The other directive forbids poll workers from giving a provisional ballot unless the person can prove they live in that precinct. Peg Rosenfield, spokeswoman for the league, said she interprets federal to be less restrictive. Rosenfield says people who show up at the wrong precinct should be given a ballot and allowed to vote on the non-local races.
Then there is this in Colorado:
quote:Davidson has proposed that anyone who applies for an absentee ballot but loses it cannot cast a provisional ballot. They can, however, get a replacement absentee ballot.
In the 2002 election, voters who lost their absentee ballot were allowed to vote with a provisional ballot, but lawmakers repealed that portion of the law.
Just because the law no longer specifically allows the practice does not mean it should be prohibited, Cavanaugh argued. If Davidson doesn't change her stance, he said, thousands of voters could lose the opportunity to vote.
"This is going to be a disaster," Cavanaugh said.
In 2002, Cavanaugh said, about 27,000 provisional ballots were cast. Among those, nearly half had applied for an absentee ballot.
That isn't EVEN getting into the Fla upcoming debacle, the incidents of intimidation in poor neighborhoods, the fliers sent out about having to have utilities and rent current to be allowed to vote....
What the hell is happening to this country?
Posts: 986 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
SSN doesn't always help. You'd think your credit rating would be based on only *your* debts, but it took me 6 months to convince Equifax that I was *not* my deceased father and that they mistakenly combined both our reports based on the fact we share the same name. I was shocked after doing a little research that this kind of thing happens all the time. Makes me wonder, what's the point of even having a Social Security Number if our government still confuses people that share the same name.
Posts: 236 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I agree that this type of vote supression is awful, but to a couple of your points I could think of logical reasoning.
The attempt to have voter registration cards printed on a certain paper was no doubt an attempt to prohibit forgeries. I can see the need for registration cards to be standardized, so it's easier to track them to a verifiable source.
Also - there is probably similar reasoning behind not allowing absentee voters to cast a provisional vote. If a lost ballot is involved, it's really not unreasonable to ask them to request another ballot. There are too many chances that someone could be voting twice or otherwise abusing the system.
I don't see either of these rules as being racially motivated - they're just calling for a common degree of order and authenticity.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Annie, I think the issue with the paper-weight is the timing of the new requirements (within the past year, maybe even more recently). That means that you lose time waiting for the new cards to be printed, and therefore turn away prospective new voters. Why couldn't this have been done in a non-election year?
posted
Exactly. These new rules were put in effect weeks before registration deadlines. Why then? Why not last year? 6 months ago? It smacks of partisan manipulation and machinations in order to disenffranchise certain portions of the population. And to add even more confusion on what appears to be a harrowing day for all involved. Poll workers, voters and officials.
Posts: 986 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Recently, the AJC ran an article with an interview with former president Jimmy Carter. Many of you may know that he has been involved in observing democratic elections in many different places around the world, as a part of his work for the U.N.
He basically said there was no way he could certify a U.S. election the way he has been able to in many other places. He cited some abuses, but also the electronic voting machines, etc.
It horrifies me that the U.S. really doesn't have democratic elections.
Oh, and say what you will about Jimmy Carter, but he has been a tireless worker for the betterment humanity since he left office, even if his own party didn't particularly like having him in office.
Posts: 1664 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I capped WHO to stress that no matter if it be Republican, Democrat or little Green Men, this isn't acceptable behaviour. People have died for us to be able to be the country we are today. These types of shenanigans trivializes their sacrifice (IMO)
Posts: 986 | Registered: Jul 2001
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My last two posts may have sounded more snarky than intended. I didn't intend ANY snarkiness. If that is how it was taken you have my apologies.
Posts: 986 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
You know, as long as we're talking about voting fraud and disenfranchising people, I can't believe nobody has complained about the new electronic ballots Florida will be using this year.
posted
I have a problem with linkage being very slow. I guess I need to shut down. So, no, I didn't look. Posts: 1664 | Registered: Apr 2004
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