NetRootsMass » Elections

390. Voter suppression efforts in the 2008 elections

Hugh — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:48:32 +0000

In the run up to the 2008 Presidential elections, Republicans deployed a variety of unsuccessful strategies to suppress the vote and cast doubt on the validity of the election if it were close.

In Colorado, the Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman purged 35,000 names in violation of the Voting Rights Act by eliminating them too close to the election and using dubious methods to do so.
In Florida, the Republican Secretary of State Kurt Browning also tried to eliminate voters on the basis of minor discrepancies in their voter information, but after a public outcry the state’s Republican governor Charlie Crist overruled Browning.
In Georgia, the Republican Secretary of State Karen Handel tried to purge newly registered voters whose citizenship was called into question. A judge rejected this and ruled that the some 5000 involved be given provisional ballots. After the election, Handel threw away the ballots of those who had not submitted proof of citizenship. It remains unknown how many of these were legitimate voters who had their votes nullified by the Secretary of State.
In Indiana, the GOP tried to shut down early voting in Democratic areas.
In Montana, the GOP tried to challenge likely Democratic voters on the basis of discrepancies in their addresses. When it came out that one was a World War II veteran who had moved across town, the effort was dropped.
In Nevada, the GOP wanted new voters to cast provisional ballots if they corrected their voter information at the polls.
In New Mexico, Republicans released illegally obtained names of 10 voters, all of them Hispanic, who they claimed had voted fraudulently in the state primary in June, except as it turned out they were all legitimate. One GOP operative Pat Rogers then hired an investigator to harass some of them and this has led to lawsuits against him and the state Republican party.
In Ohio, Republicans tried and failed to get the US Supreme Court and Justice Department to force the Democratic Secretary of State to provide election officials lists of voters whose information did not match that on other government documents. Such errors usually result from inputting errors or the use or non-use of a middle name or initial.
In Pennsylvania, they wanted a list of 140,000 voters registered by ACORN in order to mount challenges.
In Virginia, hackers sent a bogus email to the 30,000 students of George Mason University telling them the election had been moved from November 4th to November 5th.
In Wisconsin, in one of the most egregious attempts at voter suppression, the state’s Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen, at the behest of state Republicans, filed suit to force the election board to reconfirm the eligibility of thousands of voters. His suit was thrown out. He then said he would send 50 lawyers and law enforcement officials to “monitor” the polls and harass voters.

As for the other big Republican election scare, that of voter fraud, out of more than 125 million votes cast, there were virtually no allegations that any had occurred. I doubt that this will deter Republicans or those like Hans von Spakovsky (item 101) who see it everywhere. It is after all such a convenient pretext for the much more important Republican political goal of suppressing the vote.

376. Policing the national political conventions

Hugh — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:06:08 +0000

Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security $100 million ($50 million each) to provide security for the Democratic and Republican national conventions. At the Democratic convention in Denver, political dissent and protest were marginalized. Protesters were confined to free speech zones, also known as “freedom cages”. This is a tactic that was perfected by the Bush Administration (see item 282). At the Republican convention in St. Paul, this went even further into outright suppression of dissent. Earlier in 2008, local law enforcement coordinated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (see also item 372 on fusion centers) began infiltrating Twin City groups with no history of violence, like vegans, in anticipation of the convention.

Then just days before the convention opening, the FBI and local law enforcement, especially of diehard Republican loyalist Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, initiated a series of punitive raids over the weekend against various groups. The first occurred at a central clearinghouse for protestors known as the “Welcoming Committee”. Those there were handcuffed, computers were seized, but no arrests were made. Sheriff Fletcher released a statement in which he described the “Welcoming Committee” as a “criminal enterprise made up of 35 self- described anarchists who are intent on committing criminal acts.” If such were the case, it is surprising no arrests were made. The following day raids were also carried out against other “dangerous” groups, such as Legalwatch and Food not Bombs. In one case, building inspectors arrived after a raid and gave owners until 6:30 the next morning to fix the door the police had kicked in or have the premises boarded up.

In the later raids, some 6 individuals were arrested but none charged. Instead they were kept on probable cause holds. Such a hold allows police to hold someone up to 36 hours, weekends not counting, without charge. Effectively, this permits law officers like Sheriff Fletcher to mete out 4-5 day jail sentences to anyone he doesn’t like, in other words, punishment without charge, conviction, or crime. Similar strong arm tactics by the New York police at the Republican convention in 2004 led to settlements in the millions. But with the federal government underwriting security costs this is not much of a disincentive.

On September 1, 2008, the police using pepper spray, tear gas, and “less lethal” projectiles fought numerous battles with demonstrators most of whom were peaceful. By the end of the first day, official figures listed 163 arrests, unofficial numbers 256.

This pattern of infiltration, fearmongering, high profile raids, large shows of military style force, aggressive indiscriminate treatment of demonstrators, and mass arrests has come to be known as the “Miami model” from its use against protesters to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations in Miami in November 2003.

In the early phases, police actions were largely ignored by the mainstream media and most of the reporting came from bloggers and independent media sources. As violence increased, the mainstream media did pick up the story but even they noted that most protesters were peaceful.

It is important to remember that the real object of these raids, seizures, and arrests is not to stop crime but dissent. They are meant to send a message, that if you protest, even legally, even peacefully, you risk arbitrary detention, seizure of your property, punishment, and humiliation by the powers that be. Dissent in this country has become for many un-American. Worse it is seen as a kind of terrorism. This is all the more bizarre and disheartening because our country was itself founded on dissent. Pilgrims, Quakers, believers and non-believers of all sorts, came to these shores precisely because they did not agree with the powers of their day. The Founding Fathers were dissenters and started a revolution and a country over their dissent. The Framers understood this and enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution the right to dissent in both the guarantees of freedom of speech and of peaceful assembly. Yet in the Age of Terror, dissent is no longer seen as a living, breathing expression of our democracy but as suspicious, probably criminal, certainly unpatriotic, a thing to be suppressed, especially so that the greater good, in this case the photo-ops of the national party conventions can proceed unquestioned, unchallenged, and unhindered.

345. The Indiana voter ID case

Hugh — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:53:21 +0000

On April 28, 2008, SCOTUS decided 6-3 in Crawford et al v. Marion County Election Board et al that Indiana’s law requiring government issued photo ID for voting was valid. Even by the standards of this Court, the reasoning in its opinion can only be qualified as stupid, contradictory, and partisan. They look upon the IDs as “‘even handed restrictions’ protecting the ‘integrity and reliability of the electoral process itself.’” They are in fact nothing of the kind. While free in theory such IDs place disproportionate burdens on the poor, minorities, the disabled, and the elderly, groups that are least able to bear them and just happen to often vote Democratic. Costs of acquiring the needed documentation for the photo ID such as a birth certificate and of transportation to and from state offices are blown off by the Court. As for the “electoral process”, the Court admits “the record contains no evidence that the fraud SEA 483 [the Indiana law] addresses –in-person voter impersonation at polling places—has actually occurred in Indiana.” In other words, the Court has accepted a remedy which is selectively burdensome for a problem that doesn’t exist. Could anything be more stupid? Well yes, the Court also accepts the state’s argument that its failure to keep its voting rolls up to date is a reason not for it to do a better job with regard to them but to pass the onus for its failure on to certain groups of voters, even though as mentioned above the state has never prosecuted anyone for voter fraud. Finally, there is this central dishonesty in the majority opinion that “minority” is mentioned only once and that in passing without further reference. This omission is deliberate since addressing the effects of the Indiana law on minorities would raise voting rights questions that the Court for all its legal gymnastics could not duck. What the Court is engaged in here is the promotion of a voter suppression scheme (see item 101), one whose effects if they had been primarily on Republicans the Court would never have signed off on. This is the state of law and the courts in 2008.

329. A crook at the House Republican campaign committee

Hugh — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:12:42 +0000

Call it irony. From 1995, Christopher Ward who promoted the Swift Boaters in the 2004 election worked at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) whose job is to elect Republicans to the House. He was its treasurer from 2003 to July 2007, submitted the NRCC’s yearly audits to the FEC from 2002 through 2006, and remained on as a consultant, at least until he was fired on January 28, 2008. You see there was this one tiny problem. Ward had been faking the yearly audits down to forging the letterhead on them. Things were going swimmingly until Representative Mike Conaway (R-TX) who headed the NRCC’s audit committee and was a CPA, asked to meet with the NRCC’s auditors. Apparently no one at the NRCC had bothered to do this for the previous 4 years. Ward’s scam quickly began to unravel. On February 1, 2008, the NRCC contacted the FBI and arranged for its own audits. So far it has found that it is out some $990,000 in cash on hand for 2006 and $740,000 for 2007 plus another $200,000 on a line of credit. According to the Washington Post, Ward also served as treasurer on 83 individual committees of Republican candidates. Who knows what all went on with those. The sad lesson in all this is that there really is no honor among thieves.

202. SCOTUS: Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life (issue oriented political advertising)

Hugh — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:14:14 +0000

On June 25, 2007, SCOTUS decided 5-4 in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. that corporations could use their general funds to run “issue” oriented ads, even those naming candidates, within 30 days of a federal primary election or 60 days of a federal general election in contradiction of requirements of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. This is a continuation of the infamous dictum that money equals free speech. Apparently SCOTUS thinks there isn’t sufficient money in our political system or that it is not sufficiently bought. Another interesting aspect of the case is that the specific timeframe in question occurred during the 2004 election cycle and had long been rendered moot. Nevertheless, it was resurrected by invoking the notion that the controversy was capable of repetition, yet evading review. In other words, the Court will, if it wants to and regardless of the facts, look at a case long over (as here), take a very restricted view of time limits as in Ledbetter, or declare it moot as in Padilla.