The Republicans are up to their disenfranchisement tricks again. Apart from the recent Supreme Court ruling that you practically need a passport to identify yourself in order to vote, it seems that the elephant party is compiling lists of the more than a million people who have been foreclosed upon because many of them did not know they had to register at their new address in order to qualify to vote.
According to the New York Times, many states have a cutoff date of October 6, a week from now, for people to register their new address. Many people had no idea they faced this deadline. Of course, no one from the Federal Election Board felt it was necessary to tell them:
Todd Haupt, a home builder, lost his home in Josephville, Mo., to foreclosure last year, and said he had since become more interested in politics. But asked whether he had remembered to update his voter registration information when he moved into his parents' home in St. Charles, Mo., Mr. Haupt, 33, paused silently. "Is that required?" he said. "I had no idea."
"I've moved three times in the past two years," he added. "Keeping my voter registration information was not top on my mind because I figured it was all set already."
Many of the nation's highest foreclosure rates are also in crucial swing states like Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. Because many homeowners in foreclosure are black or poor, and are considered probable Democratic voters in many areas, the issue has begun to have political ramifications.
The Reps will double down on this tactic. They're not even subtle about it:
Asked whether his party planned to use foreclosure information to compile challenge lists, Robert Bennet, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said the party did not discuss its election strategies in public.
In 2004, a Republican Party official challenged a large number of voters at a largely black precinct in Boone County, Mo., causing a backup. Such challenges can cause long lines at polling places if there are not enough poll workers to pull challenged voters out of line, or if the workers have to consult with higher-level election officials for each challenge.
State political parties have traditionally used the mail to determine which voters to challenge. By sending out mailings to voters likely to be of the opposite party, and then seeing which mailings are returned as undeliverable, they know whom to challenge at the polls for not living at their registered address. Using public lists of foreclosed homes, however, can save money by allowing a party to avoid sending out mailings.
I am worried about Election Day as I know you all are. It's hard enought to vote in America. Election Day is on a Tuesday, a work day. And you have to contend with the Lee Atwater lineage.
[Please, if you already read a diary on this subject that I worked hard to write, forgive me. Sometimes there are also two books on the same subject.
I am very angry that some dude named MajorFlaw TROLL RATED me for writing an email to the head of a Jewish organization that had invited Sarah Palin to speak at an anti-Iran rally in NYC. He TROLL-RATED me for "cluelessness" because I mentioned Nuremberg and threatened to bar me from the dailykos community. I have written about 40 diaries so far and put a lot of time and energy into it. If I'm barred from dailykos, no biggie. That's censorship and I don't want to be there.
However, Sarah Palin was disinvited. What's more important, political correctness to the point of forcing me to withdraw one word or I was threatened with exile, or preventing Sarah Palin from putting on a mantle of credibility? I advise MajorFlaw not to read Jonathan Swift. He recommended eating Irish babies because they were delicious.]