Re: Republicans: "Lose your house, lose your vote"

Minun olisi pitänyt tietää, olisi pitänyt tietää,
olisi pitänyt tietää KUKA SINÄ OLET, Emperor Wonko the Sane:
On Sep 17, 11:15 am, Drazhka <tinkasdraz...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Lose your house, lose your vote
By Eartha Jane Melzer 9/10/08 6:42 AM
Michigan Republicans plan to foreclose African-American voters

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.

State election rules allow parties to assign ?election challengers? to
polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll
workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter
provided they ?have a good reason to believe? that the person is not
eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a
?true resident of the city or township.?

The Michigan Republicans? planned use of foreclosure lists is
apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being
?true residents.?
One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

?You can?t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,?
said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S.
Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a
Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. ?I don?t think a
foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people
often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are
able to negotiate and refinance.?

As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed
property owners, Hebert called it, ?mean-spirited.?

GOP ties to state?s largest foreclosure law firm

The Macomb GOP?s plans are another indication of how John McCain?s
campaign stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures
in the state. McCain?s regional headquarters are housed in the office
building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm?s founder,
David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the
Republican nominee.

The Macomb County party?s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted
on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-
Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60
percent of all sub-prime loans ? the most likely kind of loan to go
into default ? were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according
to a report issued last year by the state?s Department of Labor and
Economic Growth.

Challenges to would-be voters

Statewide, the Republican Party is gearing up for a comprehensive
voter challenge campaign, according to Denise Graves, party chair for
Republicans in Genessee County, which encompasses Flint. The party is
creating a spread*** of election challenger volunteers and expects
to coordinate a training with the regional McCain campaign, Graves
said in an interview with Michigan Messenger.

Whether the Republicans will challenge voters with foreclosed homes
elsewhere in the state is not known.

Kelly Harrigan, deputy director of the GOP?s voter programs, confirmed
that she is coordinating the group?s ?election integrity? program.
Harrigan said the effort includes putting in place a legal team, as
well as training election challengers. She said the challenges to
voters were procedural rather than personal. She referred inquiries
about the vote challenge program to communications director Bill
Nowling, who promised information but did not return calls.

Party chairman Carabelli said that the Republican Party is training
election challengers to ?make sure that [voters] are who they say who
they are.?

When asked for further details on how Republicans are compiling
challenge lists, he said, ?I would rather not tell you all the things
we are doing.?

Vote suppression: Not an isolated effort

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.

Challenging all voters registered to foreclosed homes could disrupt
some polling places, especially in the Detroit metropolitan area.
According to the real estate Web site RealtyTrac, one in every 176
households in Wayne County, metropolitan Detroit, received a
foreclosure filing during the month of July. In Macomb County, the
figure was one household in every 285, meaning that 1,834 homeowners
received the bad news in just one month. The Macomb County foreclosure
rate puts it in the top three percent of all U.S. counties in the
number of distressed homeowners.

Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent and Genessee counties were ? in that
order ? the counties with the most homeowners facing foreclosure,
according to RealtyTrac. As of July, there were more than 62,000
foreclosure filings in the entire state.

Joe Rozell, director of elections for Oakland County in suburban
Detroit, acknowledged that challenges such as those described by
Carabelli are allowed by law but said they have the potential to
create long lines and disrupt the voting process. With 890,000
potential voters closely divided between Democratic and Republican,
Oakland County is a key swing county of this swing state.

According to voter challenge directives handed down by Republican
Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, voter challenges need only be
?based on information obtained through a reliable source or means.?

?But poll workers are not allowed to ask the reason? for the
challenges, Rozell said. In other words, Republican vote challengers
are free to use foreclosure lists as a basis for disqualifying
otherwise eligible voters.

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.?

http://www.michiganmessenger.com/4076/lose-your-house-lose-your-vote

Deer Idot:

They have the right to vote where they live now. If they don't live
in a precinct, they don't have the right to vote in that precinct. No
one is taking away anyone's right to vote by this.

Doug

I bet you still defend Florida's removing the voting rights
of a lot of people under the guise of stopping felons from
voting in a crude, ham-handed way.

rich
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