Column

A cagey way to keep voters from being counted

By ROBYN BLUMNER
Published August 26, 2007

The Republican Party learned well at the knee of Southern Democrats how to keep African-Americans from the polls.

After the party took over from the boll weevils as the political home for those standing against the expansion of civil rights, black voters swarmed into the ranks of the Democrats. In the last presidential election, African-Americans gave John Kerry 88 percent of their vote.

This stark imbalance has led to an aggressive campaign by Republicans to find a new iteration of the repudiated poll taxes and literacy tests of the Jim Crow past.

In 2000 the successful tactic was the padded felons list. George Bush was essentially handed the presidency by brother Jeb thanks to a felons list of ineligible voters that included the names of thousands of people who were valid voters. The felons list was never fully vetted for accuracy, and conveniently, those mistakenly barred from the polls were disproportionately black and Democratic-leaning. In a presidential election that turned on 537 votes, this could have been the margin of victory.

In 2004, with the felons list trick discredited, the Republicans had to look elsewhere to try to tamp down black voting. They dusted off an oldie but a goodie: vote caging.

Have you ever received a piece of first-class mail from a political party? Not likely; campaign literature typically comes bulk rate. But in its vote caging effort, the Republican Party sent out registered and first-class mail with "do not forward" instructions to thousands of new voters in certain districts in key states. Then the party waited for some of that mail to come back as undeliverable. Those voters were then placed on a list and subject to challenge on Election Day due to their invalid address.

This is a disgraceful tactic no matter who is the target - there are plenty of legitimate reasons for mail getting returned, typos on addresses for one, or Democratic voters not wanting to sign for mail from Republicans. But when the tactic is to single out black voters, it's illegal. Yet that is what appears to have happened in Florida and Ohio - two battleground states - in the lead-up to the 2004 election.

Thanks to his friends at "GeorgeWBush.org," an anti-Bush parody site, BBC journalist Greg Palast was given confidential e-mails with attached files named "Caging.xls" and "Caging-1.xls." These e-mails were sent by the Republican Party of Florida to a long list of national Republican officials, and were accidently also sent to the ".org" address. Among the intended recipients was Tim Griffin, research director and deputy communications director for the Republican National Committee, who responded to one with, "thank you, perfect."

You might also remember Griffin's name since he was the Karl Rove acolyte who replaced Bud Cummins as an interim U.S. attorney in Arkansas. Cummins is one of the nine U.S. attorneys fired for political reasons, purposely dumped to make room for Griffin, who has since left the job.

Palast writes in his book Armed Madhouse, that nearly 2,000 names were on the RNC caging lists and they were disproportionately made up of black voters in Duval County. The names included students at the historically black Edward Waters College who weren't around in the summer to get their mail, as well as dozens of black soldiers - troops who may not have been at their proper addresses because they were serving overseas.

In the end, however, no challenges to Duval voters took place, maybe because Palast broadcast the scheme on British television a week before the election.

But in Ohio, the Republican Party was open about its plan to use poll workers to challenge voters on Election Day off a 35,000-person caging list.

It took the brushing off of a standing federal consent decree from 1982 to hold off the Republican onslaught.

That year, the RNC agreed to stop illegally targeting minority voters in future caging operations.

Now, with the Democrats in control of Congress and Griffin being a key figure in the U.S. attorney purge scandal, this insidious practice is getting more attention. Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island have sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales demanding an investigation into vote caging and whether Griffin's voter suppression activities were known before he was appointed U.S. attorney.

Protecting minority voting rights used to be a priority for the department; now it promotes to top jobs those who stand in the voting booth door. Who are the Dixiecrats now?

[Last modified August 25, 2007, 22:08:16]