Von Spakovsky 2.0
by digby
Biden mentioned the latest caging gambit in his speech this morning and progressives in Michigan are gearing up for it:
Stop McCain’s Plan to Deny Votes of People Who Have Lost Their Homes
Sign below and tell John McCain and the Republican Party to stop their outrageous plans to prevent Michigan residents who have lost their homes to foreclosures from voting this November!
Republican Party officials have admitted they plan to suppress the vote in November of families that have lost their homes. Plans include party officials who will monitor polls on election day and use foreclosure lists in an attempt to stop voters who have lost their homes from casting their ballots (MI Messenger 9/10/08).
Families who have lost their homes to foreclosure should not be kicked when they are down. Their homes have already been taken away from them because of the disastrous economic policies of the last eight years and the unfair, policies of the Bush administration.
Do not take away their right to vote this November. Having lost their homes, losing their right to vote would be a slap in the face of all Americans.
Here’s the story:
Republican leaders have since disavowed plans to use foreclosure lists as part of their plan to challenge the eligibility of some voters, but an attorney for the party, Eric Doster, did confirm that the party would use returned mail to challenge voters based on residency. As veteran Republican activist Allen Raymond told Michigan Messenger in a recent interview, holding down Democratic turnout is a key part of Republican strategy for victory in November.
Raymond knows about Republican campaign tactics. For almost a decade he managed campaigns for Republicans running for state and national office. In the 2002 New Hampshire elections, he ran a phone-jamming operation aimed at blocking elderly people from arranging rides to the polls, an illegal action that he says was approved by the highest levels of the party. He spent three months in federal prison. Earlier this year Raymond published a book about his life and work as a Republican operative, titled “Confessions of a Republican Operative: How to Rig an Election.”
As for our report that the Michigan GOP planned to use foreclosure lists to block likely Democratic voters, Raymond said: “It’s a very good tactic. It works.”
“It is actually a very smart thing to do,” he went on, “particularly in this climate with so many foreclosures.”
For Republicans, he said, targeting the foreclosures would be a cost-effective and “probably” legal method of reducing Democratic votes.
If he were still in the election business, he said, “I’d be doing that all day long.”
Raymond explained how he would use foreclosure lists.
“You would go into certain geo-political areas and make a selection based on voter history and performance, and then what you would do is look for foreclosures within those geopolitical areas, and you would mail letters, and then those letters would come back and say that that person’s not there any more because their house has been foreclosed on, and they get challenged,” he said.
He explained why it makes sense for Republicans to seek to disqualify people who have lost their homes.
“If you look at who is being foreclosed upon, it is going to be sub-prime [borrowers]. Sub-prime [borrowers] are generally going to be low-income people, and low-income people are generally going to be Democratic voters.”
“You got to remember this is a cost-per-contact business,” he explained. By targeting households in foreclosure, for the price of a letter and first-class postage, Republicans get a high rate of return, because people in foreclosure are very likely to move and to have their mail returned.
Raymond estimated that people might have moved out of as many as a third of homes listed as foreclosed. “That is a huge number,” he said, noting that people enduring the stress of foreclosure are not likely to think to change the address of their voter registration.
Raymond said that, barring some legislative action, Republicans will be free to challenge people who’ve lost their homes at the polls.
“They will get challenged and they will get denied,” he said
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John Fund, who’s recently written a book on “voter fraud” said on Bill Maher that the Republicans would be challenging every provisional ballot, which means if the race is close it could get thrown into the conservative courts. It’s unlikely that would happen, just as it’s unlikely they could cull enough voters from foreclosure lists to swing an election. But a lot of this is just designed to create havoc at the polls on election day and make the process so arduous that busy people with jobs and kids and lives just don’t have the time to wait.
The last presidential election I had to vote by provisional ballot. Even though I’d been on the same voter roll for 15 years, for some reason my name didn’t show up. It happens even by acident. But it took me nearly an hour to vote. After standing in line for 30 minutes, I had to go through many hoops before I could get my ballot. People were very nice, but it was a frustrating experience. I can only imagine what happens in someplace with a high population density and fewer machines — and you’re already late for work.
They’ve built this vote suppression machine since the 1980s. There is absolutely no reason to believe they will not use it — particularly in an election that’s going to be won or lost on turn out among first time voters.
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