IN OUR OPINION: Stop Voter Repression
When one imagines a great election, one imagines the largest number and greatest percentage of informed voters casting their ballots in the history of the United States. The question before America in 2008: Will this always be something we must imagine or will it become a reality?
If John McCain and George Bush and the Republican Party have their way, the number of new voters will be diminished as much as possible. If Barack Obama and Democrats have their way, the number of new voters will be expanded.
Republicans and indeed the whole world applaud Iraqis for having the courage to vote. Why would any American political party expend significant time and effort to shrink the number of voters here in the U.S.? Is it patriotic to use the powers of the Justice Department to keep people from voting? Would it not be much more patriotic for our Justice Department to work to expand the number of voters?
Barack Obama has inspired volunteers to register huge numbers of voters across the country. According to a recent Associated Press article (Voter registration boom favors Obama, October 9, 2008) 9 million new voters have been registered in the United States this year. Also:
“An AP survey of election officials nationwide found that as of October 1, the number of registered Democrats had grown by nearly 5 percent since 2004—outpacing overall population growth in the 28 states where information on voter registration by party was available for 2004 and 2008.
“During the same time, the GOP lost more than 2 percent of its registered voters.
“In states where registration is recorded by party, voters have signed up Democratic in the past six months by a margin of nearly 4-to-1.”
A Washington Post article (Registration Gains Favor Democrats, October 6, 2008) lists these figures for certain battleground states:
• In Florida, 800,000 voters have been added to the rolls this year; while Democratic rolls were up by 316,000, GOP rolls went up by 129,000.
• In North Carolina, Democrats have added 208,000 voters this year; Republicans have added 34,000 voters, and 148,000 new independent voters have registered.
• In Pennsylvania, 474,000 Democrats have been added to the rolls this year while the GOP rolls have lost 38,000 voters.
• In Virginia, 310,000 new voters have registered this year. “Although voters do not register by party in Virginia, there have been increases of 10 percent, or close to it,” in Virginia counties that are traditional Democratic strongholds with combined voter counts of 58,000.
• In Colorado, Republicans “were well in the lead for registrations at the start of the year, but are now on the verge of being overtaken. By September 1, Democratic registration was up by 80,000. That far exceeds the gain of 28,000 unaffiliated voters and 21,000 Republicans.”
• In New Mexico, Democrats have added 40,000 voters this year, compared with 12,000 new Republicans.
• In Nevada, Democrats have added 91,000 voters to the rolls this year, Republicans have added 22,000 voters, and 26,000 independents have registered. Registered Republicans now trail Democrats in the Silver State by 81,000.
In the face of such statistics, Republicans are using various tools to repress the numbers of these new voters:
1) President Bush is using the Department of Justice to investigate Acorn (an anti-poverty group which has sought through its voter registration drive to empower low-income and minority communities) on behalf of John McCain.
Those of us who lived through Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre find Bush’s 2006 firing of all Attorneys General who used independent judgment a necessary prelude to what he is doing now. (To read more on this issue: White House Delays Action in Inquiry on Attorneys, New York Times, March 2007.)
2) Republicans are using law enforcement intimidation on a local level. According to a recent article in the Columbus (OH) Dispatch:
“Meanwhile, the Greene County sheriff backed off an investigation of new voters in his county yesterday after Democrats complained that it was a blatant attempt to discourage voting, especially among black college students.”
3) Republicans also have used legal maneuvers to restrain newly registered voters from voting. In Ohio, the Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has announced that her battleground state has gained more than 660,000 new voters over the course of the last nine months.
When a federal appeals court decided to require the disclosure of (approximately 200,000 new Ohio) voters whose names did not match those on government databases, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office filed an appeal of the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Brunner. According to The Plain Dealer of Cleveland (Supreme Court’s voter registration ruling favors Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, October 18):
“The U.S. Supreme Court [has] ruled that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner does not have to cross-check hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters, decisively striking down a state Republican Party challenge.
“But a Republican [fund-raising consultant] who agreed with his party that the high court had dismissed the case on a technicality filed a new case—this time in the Ohio Supreme Court.
“[The new] case delves into an area the U.S. Supreme Court did not address. The high court’s unsigned opinion, barely over a page long, did not deal with the substance of the Republicans’ claim that voter fraud could run rampant without closer scrutiny by Brunner.
“Rather, the court cited legal precedents in agreeing with Brunner that when Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002, laying out new voter registration guidelines, it established avenues other than the federal courts for private parties like the GOP to complain.
“The Ohio Republican Party ‘never should have been allowed through the courthouse door’ in this case, Brunner said in a legal filing to the high court.
“Brunner spokesman Jeff Ortega, addressing this newest twist, said, ‘It is time for the Ohio Republican Party to stop injecting chaos and confusion into our excellent election system.’
“Gov. Ted Strickland, also a Democrat, accused Republicans of orchestrating well-timed diversionary tactics aimed at weakening voter confidence in Ohio’s elections system and making it a national mockery.
“‘There is no evidence of voter fraud in Ohio, and it offends me, quite frankly, that some of the leaders within the Republican Party seem to me to be attempting to convey that impression in their criticism of Secretary Brunner and our voting system,’ Strickland said.
“Strickland was joined on a conference call by U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown. ‘They are trying everything, everything to distract voters,’ Brown said.
Republicans vehemently disagree and note that they have prevailed in some courts. They accuse Brunner of bending election rules to benefit her party’s candidates.”
In addition to pursuing the original case regarding Ohio voter registrations, it gained a temporary restraining order to prohibit newly registered voters to vote because they did not believe there were sufficient safeguards.
Such McCain/Bush “repress the vote” efforts reveal how very well the administration and the current Republican candidate for the presidency work together. Ohio is receiving so much of their attention because Barack Obama and John McCain are polling so closely in this critical battleground state. If all 660,000 new Democratic voters in Ohio show up to vote, McCain will not win a state every Republican president has carried.
It’s time to insist leaders of the Republican party stop endorsing and implementing such tactics that target innocent voters and start addressing their own issues with voter registration fraud. According to a Los Angeles Times article (Ontario police arrest man in voter fraud case, October 20):
“The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario over the weekend on suspicion of voter registration fraud.
“State and local investigators allege that Mark Jacoby fraudulently registered himself to vote at a childhood California address where he no longer lives so he would appear to meet the legal requirement that all signature gatherers be eligible to vote in California. His firm collects petition signatures and registers voters in California and other states.
“Jacoby’s arrest came after dozens of voters said they were duped into registering as Republicans by people employed by [Jacoby’s firm]. The voters said [Jacoby’s firm] workers tricked them by saying they were signing a petition to toughen penalties against child molesters.
“The firm was paid $7 to $12 for every Californian it registered as a member of the GOP.”
—Sherry Seiber
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