Voting Rights--We Must Protect Them Ourselves

In the 1960 presidential election, the one between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, throughout the South, sharecroppers were evicted from the land they farmed in retaliation for registering to vote. Merchants refused to sell goods to these brave men and women. By 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was passed and signed into law, we believed in the enforcement authority of the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department to secure the right to vote anywhere in the country.

By the 2000 presidential election, the one between George W. and Al Gore, when we witnessed thousands of people throughout the state of Florida losing their right to vote, we realized that this ability we had, and took for granted often by not exercising it, was more fragile than we believed.

In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which didn't do much to secure the right to vote. Instead it created windfall profits for the Republican owners of untested electronic voting machines that failed to leave paper trails, and added more obstacles to registration and voting.

In 2004, remember, Ohio was the battleground state, and Republican Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, coincidentally also the chair of the Reelect Bush Committee, openly operated with an inherent conflict. He was supposed to make sure the election ran smoothly. His definition of "smoothly" included disenfranchising thousands of qualified voters. At one point before the election, he tried to disallow voter registration forms that were downloaded off the Web because they were on the wrong stock of paper.

This year we need to be vigilant. Now with the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department dismantled, once the pride of the Department, we can't rely on the federal government to protect the right to vote. The US Commission on Civil Rights has been taken over by right wing ideologues. The Supreme Court validated voter ID requirements in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board and these essentially knock out the young, the poor, and the very old. In the primary, with Indiana's onerous ID laws in effect, Indiana nuns couldn't vote because they didn't have driver's licenses.

In this election, will eager new voters be able to vote? Florida and Georgia, too, have new ID requirements in effect.

All first time voters must bring ID with them to the polls. Check individual state requirements way ahead to make sure you comply.

We have vote caging, a now notorious voter suppression technique perfected in Florida in 2000. In Ohio, the 2004 battleground state, a 2006 state law requires that a piece of registered mail with election information be sent to every registered voter in the state. The young and the poor are most likely to move residences often, thereby making them more susceptible to no longer being at registered addresses. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner issued a directive that 60-day notices sent by boards of election to voters that are returned as undeliverable cannot be used as the sole reason for canceling an Ohio resident’s voter registration. This is a victory since some 660,000 pieces of mail were sent out. Republicans are screaming bloody murder.

In Michigan, some Republican Party operatives were overheard saying that they were going to obtain foreclosure notices as a way of challenging residency. Lose your house, lose your vote.

There is more voter hanky panky going on in Wisconsin, another battleground state where the State Attorney General just so happens to be the co-chair of the McCain Committee. Read Josh Marshall for more details.

Check out the PBS news show NOW from July 2007, where David Iglesias, one of the fired US attorneys general, adds credibility to the charges that voter caging is a strategy of the Republican Party and the current administration.

Check out The Truth about Fraud website of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

We have to be vigilant. How?

1. We need to have poll watchers, armed with mobile phones that have video capacity, at every vulnerable polling place.

2. We must take testimony at all polls. In Pittsburgh, at a public hearing, voters testified that they had been turned away from participating in the primary because they were wearing Obama tee shirts. We have the means now to broadcast any and all attempts to prevent people from voting.

3. One North Carolina county organization called African Americans and reminded them to register to vote. The problem was that the deadline had already passed, and many of the calls were made to registered voters. Confusion and intimidation resulted. Report all robo-calls to the local ACLU, Obama Headquarters, District Attorney.

4. Read Black Box Voting to learn about the tactics being used to disenfranchise, and the counter strategies to guarantee the vote.

We are part of a community. We can't do this alone. We have to work in concert so that this election, especially, is fair, clean, and that everyone's vote is counted.