Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
The Right Wing Gears Up to Suppress the Vote
On November 2, GOP and Tea Party election observers will be coming to
a polling center near you. Although Republicans cry “voter fraud”
almost every year, this election is unique in that the GOP now has an
army of Tea Party foot soldiers to man the polls.
Numerous reports have documented how state GOP chapters, local Tea
Party groups and organizations like Americans for Prosperity are
mobilizing across the country—holding training sessions and posting
instructional videos on their websites about how to challenge suspicious
voters. But the right’s concern about widespread voter fraud has
virtually no basis in empirical reality; a 2007 study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that “an American is more likely to get struck by lightning than impersonate another voter at the polls.”
Yet many conservatives believe that voter fraud is all the rage among progressives. Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin announced recently that “We are all voter fraud police now.” The 600 people who attended California’s Central Valley Tea Party coalition meeting on August 5th were urged to join an “Army of Republican Poll Watchers” because (according to their website) “it’s not just Bosnia that needs election observers to keep voter fraud in check.”
The act of voter challenging, however, is problematic for many reasons. It not only creates long lines at polling centers but also disenfranchises and intimidates legitimate voters. Below is a list of the most egregious attempts of so-called “voter integrity” campaigns:
·The Minnesota-based group Election Integrity Watch--a coalition of conservative organizations that includes the Northstar Tea Party Patriots and the Minnesota Majority--aired an ad that essentially puts a $500 bounty on the head of a fraudulent voter. The ad features a Mafioso named “Vinnie” who tells listeners to “fuggedabout” cheating at the polls because Election Integrity Watch has trained thousands of poll watchers and surveillance teams. An announcer then concludes the air-spot stating that rewards of up to $500 are being offered.
·In a Brennan Center briefing that served as a preview of voting problems to come, Wendy Weiser, deputy director of their Democracy Program, discussed documents found on the Michigan State GOP website that details the GOP’s plan of operations on election day. (The Brennan Center saved copies of the slideshow in case it was taken off of the website.) The power point details plans to send 3,666 challengers to the 17 counties that poll less than 35 percent Republican.
·“We know illegals are voting and that the Democrats are not above doing whatever it takes to win...legal or otherwise,” says the North Phoenix Tea Party’s website. This level of absolute certainty might lead to some racially fueled intimidation at the polls.
·Milwaukee community groups protested large billboards that had been placed around the city that displayed pictures of people behind bars under the caption “We Voted Illegally” on the merits of voter intimidation. There is no evidence that one particular group sponsored the signs.
·An instructional video on the Houston-based King Street Patriots website shows a picture of an African American woman at a 2000 Gore-Lieberman recount rally carrying a sign that reads: “I only got to vote once.” It has since been discovered that the photo was doctored from a sign that read: “Don’t Mess with Our Vote.”
·A recent Mother Jones article discusses how the Illinois state GOP has banded with the Illinois Republican Renaissance to create an “election fraud prevention task force.” But that’s not all. An audio recording of Republican candidate Mark Kirk--who is vying for Obama’s old seat in the US Senate--was leaked online. In this tape, Kirk says that he has funded the largest voter integrity program that will make use of “lawyers and other people that will be deployed in key, vulnerable precincts, for example, South and West sides of Chicago, Rockford, Metro East, where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat.” These are all areas with a large African American populations.
·The organization One Wisconsin Now (see Sarah Posner “Inside the Wisconsin Right’s Voter Suppression Scheme”) has accused the Republican Party in Wisconsin along with Americans for Prosperity and local Tea Party groups of plotting to carry out the illegal practice of “voter caging.” They have provided documentation and audio files on their website. Voter caging is when non-forwardable, official-looking mail is sent to registered voters. If it is returned to the sender, the letter can be used to challenge a voter on Election Day with claims that the address in not valid. This usually targets students and members of the military.
·Conservative polling security has even gone mobile. American Majority Action created the nation’s first mobile application to help “identify, report and track suspected incidents of voter fraud and intimidation.” The application automatically opens up the smartphone’s camera so that “concerned citizens” can document an event of fraud and fill out a report immediately. The app is free and compatible with iPhone, Blackberry and Droid.
Challenged voters are encouraged to call the Election Protection hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Many who find their vote challenged also have the right to cast a “provisional ballot.”
18 Comments so far
Show AllProvisional ballots go right in the trash. That is not an option if your vote is challenged. The whole system is broken, from the voting on down to the actual governing. It's like a pit of snakes. Nobody wants to go there but other snakes. So we let the snakes make life and death decisions for the world. What we need is a true representative democracy, where the people of this country are given first consideration in all things. That would bring an end to the war profiteering and colonial ambitions of certain classes of people. Hopefully enough common sense would also dictate an end to corporate 'personhood'.
The right plays hardball, while the left is still playing T-ball.
The right often rails on and on about "restoring freedom". Just what freedoms are they referring to?
People here have so little respect for the democratic rights of others.
I can't imagine this happening in any other western democracy.
Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, Black Box voting - the real problem is election fraud and the Democrats have done nothing about it.
It is as if the Dems want an evenly split congress.
Dems say that if we make election fraud an issue then voters will be turned off and not vote. This is silly. Besides if making election fraud an issue would keep people from voting Republicans would make it a huge issue.
Electronic voting - think your vote counts? You have no way of knowing.
And what exactly does a "suspicious voter" look like? Don't answer that, I think I can guess....
Elections could have been clean if we had publicly funded elections that would have ended the "suppress the vote" madness but who's ever gonna get that passed? They all want failure so that they can succeed.
So does that mean Republicans and Teabaggers are going to start advocating for hand-counted, paper ballots, and receipts at the ballot box?
I highly doubt it.
Right on my friend. As Thomas Frank would always say, "Failure is not an option. It is mandatory."
As we have learned in previous elections, we vote, but we don't count the votes. And Obama has shown that victory is an illusion. I wish the tea baggers would come out of the closet, put on their white sheets, lock and load, and restore bigotry and rightousness to its rightful place in the halls of power.
In a recent election, several precincts recorded vote totals that exceeded the registered voter population by more than 5%. Voter integrity efforts are a bad thing? If the right is watching, why shouldn't the left? If you don't like it, quit bitching and go to work!
"If the right is watching, why shouldn't the left? If you don't like it, quit bitching and go to work!"
Because personal voter fraud in US elections is a speck of fly crap floating in an ocean of corruption. These so called "vote monitors" are nothing but the right wing's useful idiots. They are not inetrested in preventing voter fraud just in discouraging the wrong people from voting by use of legal chicanery. If the left tried that they would be arrested. Just ask Georgia Thompson and Don Seigleman about trying to use the same playbook as the right. There are two Americas with two sets of judicial standards. That said. I am still not voting for any Democrat except Russ Feingold. We gave the Dems the house, senate and presidency and they gave us the finger. Enjoy your loss of power you gutless worms.
In my part of the world, the "poll watchers" are nearly 100% leftists. Despite hundreds of news stories of "vote suppression", no one so far has pulled up one legitimate report of a registered voter attempting to get to the correct precinct being diverted, impeded, or not being allowed to vote. I know this is not true everywhere, but here, in a very racially-motivated area, people get to vote.
So, the Dems even needed help to suppress the votes they haven't managed to do on their own already?
First of all, this whole 'election' is bullshit, since none of the candidates support or even understand most of the real issues, such as SLASHING THE MILITARY AND MILITARY SPENDING SO THAT THE COUNTRY CAN USE THE MONEY TO SAVE ITSELF.
The whole 'election' is bullshit because of the coup d'etat in 200 that has never been properly investigated or dealt with, and which makes a lie of every move made in a democracy or election direction ever since. Because of the fact that an 'election' in America is defined by corruption, fraud and money, money, money, money, money. And because no-one is allowed to publicly discuss this.
DUH.
None of the candidates supports universal health care or bringing the education of American children up to within the top three countries on the planet. They'll kneel at the altar of their socialized military, but will not support the taking care of their own people - possible only with socialized mechanisms in a populous, complex modern nation-state. Fucking period. Wake up.
None of them supports getting real about the threat their alleged democracy faces from the 'Christian' right - some of the real terrorists.
None of them will open their lying trap about how a 4 or 5 or 900 billion-dollar election, with the Supreme Court prostituting themselves to the corporations and handing the process over to them, is ANTI-DEMOCRATIC, FASCISTIC.
None will get real, because they'll most likely be killed for it.
None has the slightest humility, or the slightest humility on any of these issues.
Most of them fell for this 'election' being about two issues: FEAR AND HATRED.
And a heavy percentage of them, notably the Republicans and 'Tea Partiers', is certifiably insane, and are chomping at the bit to continue to fuck over women, children, blacks, purples, greens, gays, the environment and anyone who doesn't attend their stinking cesspool church.
Of course they're gearing up to suppress the vote. They got away with their coup d'etat in 2000, and their favourite whore Bush and his pimp Cheney are still at large, along with all of their vassals.
The U.S. is a country bereft of any morality or lawfulness or common human decency on this level. A country poisoned to death with 'the dangerously limited ways [it has]codified masculinity', and worshipping only war and money in no particular order. A nation deluded with the bullshit idea that it is exceptional and important, when it has become approximately the greatest shithole on Earth, because of the way in which the people are betrayed, victimized and enslaved, and the land and sea itself are treated as a toilet, despite the goods they can buy, the guns they can shoot, the hate they're free to express, the shows they can see, the well-appointed streets they live on, the quality of the services they can avail themselves of, the obscene military they can count on to hide their cowardice behind, their immorality on virtually every count.
And if the right is going to intimidate the left, the left and progressives need to get up off their arses and intimidate right back. Have a goddamn civil war. Level the playing field. Straighten out the travesty of a country.
Bravo.
*golf clapping*
Now, tell us how you really feel...
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
For all of you who are nostalgic about ACORN's "grass-roots"election activities, see http://www.rottenacorn.com/activityMap.html. For example, in 2009:
Nevada authorities indicted ACORN on 26 counts of voter registration fraud and 13 counts of illegally compensating canvassers. ACORN provided a bonus compensation program called “Blackjack” or “21+” for any canvasser who registered more than 20 voters per shift, which is illegal under Nevada law.
Also, re Washington state in 2007:
Three ACORN employees pleaded guilty, and four more were charged, in the worst case of voter registration fraud in Washington state history. More than 2,000 fraudulent voter registration cards were submitted by the group during a voter registration drive.
And in Wisconsin (2008):
At least 33,000 ACORN-submitted registrations in Milwaukee have been called into question after it was found that the organizations had been using felons as registration workers, in violation of state election rules. Two people involved in the ongoing Wisconsin voter fraud investigation have been charged with felonies.
take heart acorn is reforming itself under different guises