Making Votes Count: The Poll Tax, Updated

The party that wants to remake the Middle East by making Iraq a democracy actively undermines the democracy in its homeland. This is a disgrace.

Are all prosecuters Republicans too, is that why they don't pursue the high profile criminals?

The New York Times > Opinion > Making Votes Count: The Poll Tax, Updated

And in Florida, the secretary of state, Glenda Hood, had a list prepared to purge felons from the voter rolls; the list had many errors and would have turned away an untold number of qualified black voters. She abandoned the list only when news organizations sued to make it public, then pointed out its many inaccuracies.

In Florida, Ms. Hood is insisting that thousands of registration forms on which a citizenship box is not checked are invalid, even though elsewhere on the forms each applicant has sworn that he or she is a citizen. In Ohio, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell was insisting until recently that any registration form that came in on anything less than 80-pound paper stock had to be rejected. The continued disenfranchisement of convicted felons in many states also has an unmistakable racial component.

The suppression of minority votes has continued because it is perceived as a winning tactic, and because it is rarely punished. This needs to change.

Trying to prevent members of minorities from voting can be a violation of federal and state law. Election officials, poll watchers and voters should be on the lookout for vote suppression, and should report it. And prosecutors should look for criminal cases to pursue. A few high-profile prosecutions of political operatives, and even elections officials, would go a long way toward ending a disgraceful American tradition.


Complete Article

The Poll Tax, Updated

October 7, 2004

When members of Mi Familia Vota, a Latino group, were

registering voters recently on a Miami Beach sidewalk

outside a building where new citizens were being sworn in,

the Homeland Security Department ordered them to stop. The

department gave all kinds of suspect reasons, which a

federal court has since rejected, but it looked a lot as if

someone at Homeland Security just didn't want thousands of

new Latino voters on the Florida rolls.

The suppression of minority votes is alive and well in

2004, driven by the sharp partisan divide across the

nation. Because many minority groups vote heavily

Democratic, some Republicans view keeping them from

registering and voting as a tactic for victory - one that

has a long history in American politics. It is rarely

talked about publicly, but John Pappageorge, a Republican

state legislator from Michigan, recently broke the taboo.

He was quoted in The Detroit Free Press as saying, "If we

do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a

tough time in this election cycle." Detroit's population is

more than 80 percent black.

A recent report by the N.A.A.C.P. and People for the

American Way includes page after page of examples of how

this shabby business works. On Election Day, "ballot

security" teams head for minority neighborhoods. They

demand that voters produce identification when it is not

required, take photographs of voters and single out

immigrant voters for special scare tactics.

Two years ago in the governor's race in Maryland, leaflets

appeared in Baltimore saying that before voters showed up

at the polls, they had to pay off all parking tickets and

overdue rent. The same year in Louisiana, fliers were

distributed in African-American areas to tell voters,

falsely, that if they did not want to vote on Election Day,

they could still vote three days later.

What is particularly discouraging this year is the degree

to which government officials have been involved in such

efforts. In South Dakota's hard-fought statewide

Congressional race, poll workers turned away Native

American voters who could not provide photo identification,

which many of them do not have, even though the law clearly

says identification is not required. In one heavily Native

American county, the top elections official, who is white,

wrote out instructions saying no one could vote without

photo identification. In Texas, a white district attorney

threatened to prosecute students at Prairie View A&M, a

large, predominantly African-American campus, if they

registered to vote from the school, even though they are

entitled to by law.

And in Florida, the secretary of state, Glenda Hood, had a

list prepared to purge felons from the voter rolls; the

list had many errors and would have turned away an untold

number of qualified black voters. She abandoned the list

only when news organizations sued to make it public, then

pointed out its many inaccuracies.

In addition to these blatant forms of vote suppression,

elections officials have been adopting policies that appear

neutral on their face but often have the effect, and

perhaps the intent, of disproportionately disenfranchising

minorities. With huge registration drives under way among

minorities in swing states, some secretaries of state have

adopted bizarrely rigid rules for new registrations.

In Florida, Ms. Hood is insisting that thousands of

registration forms on which a citizenship box is not

checked are invalid, even though elsewhere on the forms

each applicant has sworn that he or she is a citizen. In

Ohio, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell was insisting

until recently that any registration form that came in on

anything less than 80-pound paper stock had to be rejected.

The continued disenfranchisement of convicted felons in

many states also has an unmistakable racial component.

The suppression of minority votes has continued because it

is perceived as a winning tactic, and because it is rarely

punished. This needs to change.

Trying to prevent members of minorities from voting can be

a violation of federal and state law. Election officials,

poll watchers and voters should be on the lookout for vote

suppression, and should report it. And prosecutors should

look for criminal cases to pursue. A few high-profile

prosecutions of political operatives, and even elections

officials, would go a long way toward ending a disgraceful

American tradition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/opinion/07thu2.html?ex=1098184642&ei=1&en=6c58f1736abd206f



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