The Republican Party: Lose Your Home, Lose Your Vote
By Booman, Booman Tribune
Posted on September 12, 2008, Printed on September 13, 2008
https://www.alternet.org/bloggers/https://www.boomantribune.com//98577/
I can't think of anything un-health-related that is more traumatizing
than losing your home. But maybe that is a good analogy. What if the
chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County (Michigan) announced
that he was going to challenge the right to vote of every
cancer-survivor he could identify? Would that be much different from this?
The
chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing
county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed
homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of
the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.
“We
will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t
voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told
Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said
the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures
were followed.
It's remarkable that Mr.
Carabelli would come right out and admit his plan to disenfranchise the
traumatized. And it's not an isolated incident:
Carabelli is not the only Republican Party official
to suggest the targeting of foreclosed voters. In Ohio, Doug Preisse,
director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus)
and the chair of the local GOP, told The Columbus Dispatch that he has
not ruled out challenging voters before the election due to
foreclosure-related address issues.
Hebert, the voting-rights lawyer, sees a connection between Priesse’s remarks and Carabelli’s plans.
“At
a minimum what you are seeing is a fairly comprehensive effort by the
Republican Party, a systematic broad-based effort to put up obstacles
for people to vote,” he said. “Nobody is contending that these people
are not legally registered to vote.
“When
you are comprehensively challenging people to vote,” Hebert went on,
“your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out
from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will
discourage others,” who see a long line and realize they can’t afford
to stay and wait.
Strangely, we don't hear
about any such efforts in Utah or Wyoming. That's evidence that this is
an effort to win states through disenfranchisement, and not a
principled stand against election fraud.
David
Lagstein, head organizer with the Michigan Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), described the plans of the Macomb
GOP as “crazy.”
“You would
think they would think, ‘This is going to look too heartless,’” said
Lagstein, whose group has registered 200,000 new voters statewide this
year and also runs a foreclosure avoidance program. “The Republican-led
state Senate has not moved on the anti-predatory lending bill for over
a year and yet [Republicans] have time to prey on those who have fallen
victim to foreclosure to suppress the vote.”