Here’s something to ask your friends, family, and co-workers. Is it a legitimate form of political action to target groups that tend to vote against you with intimidation in an effort to dissuade them from casting a vote? In this case, it’s the Republican Party of Wisconsin, in league with Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin and various Tea Party groups, who is hoping to keep racial minorities and college students from voting in the midterms. Here’s how it works. You send mail to a huge list of blacks and college students. Your mail informs them that they may not be eligible to vote. This makes them wonder if trying to vote might get them in trouble or present some kind of hassle. So, that suppresses some votes. Then, since people move, a lot of the mail will bounce back to the sender. They make a list of all the returned mail and then they send volunteers to various precincts under the pretense of being neutral election observers. These volunteers watch the polls like a hawk, seeking to challenge the right to vote of anyone who had their mail returned as undeliverable.
Now, you might be thinking that there’s no problem with making sure people actually live where they say they live and that they are voting in the appropriate precincts. But this is no ‘clean election’ strategy, as it targets only racial minorities (usually blacks) and college students. Because blacks have lower levels of home ownership than whites, and because college students are college students, both groups have a tendency to change addresses between election cycles.
So, is this kind of behavior defensible in any way? Do we think elections should be decided by the deliberate suppression of just one or two segments of the electorate? In a democracy, shouldn’t we try to encourage people to participate? What does it say about a party’s philosophy that it relies on suppressing the political opinions of young people and racial minorities? Didn’t we have the Civil Rights Movement in this country so whites would stop using bullying tactics to keep blacks away from the polls? Ask people about this. See what they say.
It’s just wrong, but I gotta tell ya BooMan, ur preaching to the choir with me. As a African American, if I ask my friends, family and some co-workers, they are liable to say wait, “the Republican party is trying to suppress our votes…No Shit Sherlock”.
Yeah, the party doing it has changed, but the people have not.
The Vegas smart money is on they say “F*ck ’em — why do they even get to vote anyway?”
You need to upgrade your friends, family, and co-workers.
Can’t upgrade the family. You can take the guy out of Dorchester, but you can’t take the Dorchester out of the guy.
But … but .. but . ACORN!! illegal aliens!! JFK and Chicago!! ACORN!!
It’s wrong, period. There is no rationalizing it.
Also, question for everyone else, as I’m one of the few liberals I know who goes this far:
Do you think anyone should ever have their right to vote revoked for any reason whatsoever?
I’m on the extreme on that topic, where I don’t think there is anything any person can do to have their right to vote taken away. I don’t care if you’re in prison for the rest of your life, you should still have a say in the political process. For people who commit felonies where they’ll be released in 5-10 years, it will get them involved in the political process, making them better citizens.
I think telling Jeffrey Dahmer that we’re not interested in his political opinion is completely legitimate. However, if it is possible to serve your debt to society, and you have done so, then you should be able to vote.
So if you’re a felon you don’t think they should be able to vote, no matter what the circumstances of their crime?
This is why I can’t see taking away anyone’s right. Ok, Dahmer is obviously the sickest form of evil, but there are other murderers out there with different circumstances. Should it come as a case by case basis on sentencing? I just don’t see people being “light” on some criminals and not on others, and then we’d see disparities among African Americans and whites with who is given their right to vote in prison and those who aren’t.
This is why I just make it an across the board thing. Sure there are some people who probably don’t deserve it, but I’m an absolutist, and I’ve seen too many people disenfranchised.
If you are currently in prison then, no, you should not be allowed to vote. I know we have a flawed system of criminal justice and there are a lot of people who are in prison who shouldn’t be there or who should have been let out long ago. But people who have committed crimes and received sentences, and who have not yet completed those sentences and satisfied their terms of release? Those people have temporarily given up their right to be considered members of the body politic. Once they have satisfied their debt to society they should be treated like any other citizen and their voice should be honored. Some people can never satisfy their debt to society, and that includes murderers. If you take a life, you should not see a day of freedom, nor be considered a member of the body politic.
I don’t even believe in the 30 years part of 30 years-to-life.
If there are mitigating circumstances, those should be dealt with at trial and sentencing. I can envision certain circumstances where a murder conviction could lead to something other than a life sentence in prison. Legitimate untreated mental illness is one possible circumstance. A history of abuse from the murder victim could be another. But anyone who takes a life should not ever hope to see their freedom again, let alone have their opinion matter in elections.
Well I guess we’re at odds with the issue of criminal justice to a stark degree haha. Thanks for your input.
Maybe it’s stark, maybe it isn’t.
We probably agree on quite a lot. But we don’t agree that the solution to our flawed criminal justice system is to let criminal prisoners vote.
I agree with you that we shouldn’t have a system where we pick and choose which prisoners can vote. The solution is to ensure that felons can vote once they’re in good-standing, and to create many less felons in the first place. Obviously, the drug laws are the biggest culprit.
That’s not my solution (obviously), but it is part of it. Other countries allow people in prison to vote, and I think we should follow in their footsteps (felons or otherwise). It’s just like the death penalty: it hits the poor and minorities far more than the wealthy and whites. I see it as another civil rights issue.
And from what I saw it seems you’re in support of mandatory minimums…I’m against those.
I support sentencing guidelines, not mandatory minimums. The sentencing guideline for premeditated murder should be life in prison without the possibility of parole. You convince the judge that you should get less than that, then God Bless You.
Unless, of course, they tortured someone to death while trying to get them to say that Saddam was behind 9-11. Then we should just “put that behind us.”
I don’t think many prisons set up polling stations.
True, but it’s easier these days with vote-by-mail.
Vote caging is wrong because validating addresses should be a function of the board of elections.
What vote caging does is target certain neighborhoods and gives other neighborhoods a pass.
Maybe a third party should send out caging postcards to the inhabitants of Greenwich CT or Palm Beach FL; maybe then it will be considered an egregious activity.
Oh, they’re organized here in Indiana alright, with the enactment of the most restrictive voter ID law in the country.
The SCOTUS and just recently, the Supreme Court of Indiana have both rejected challenges to the ID law.
In 2008
and now 2010
There’s another vote suppression technique recently used against the student vote in the county next door to mine. Kill any satellite and early voting centers in targeted areas where other than GOP voters might be lurking.
Like the South in 1890-1895, and we know where that went.
To prevent college students from voting, one thing they do is misinform them. I had to run articles around here countering the bs. One thing they do is tell students that if they register in their college town, they’ll lose student aid and health insurance. They’ll also just flat out tell them they can’t do it.
Pain in my ass.
I saw voter suppression in person when I was volunteering on Election Day 2008 in Indiana (I live in Chicago). The person in charge of the polling location ended up having to call the County Sheriff as I was physically threatened three times (by a guy who hated that we were volunteers from the Obama campaign) that if I didn’t leave the parking lot I would be sprayed with something.
If we hadn’t been there in that parking lot I’m sure that hundreds of people showing up to vote would have been misdirected to a wrong polling location by those bastards. As it was, with us there, they couldn’t carry on their shenanigans.
wonder how many other state rep orgs have set up caging and we just haven’t found out about it.
Another problem with this sort of vote caging, which anyone who’s ever used direct mail understands, is you get a lot of false positives. When I send out a bulk mailing return service requested, a remarkable percentage of the pieces that come back have perfectly valid addresses – but there was a sub on the route who didn’t recognize the address, or it got missorted, or whatever. It’s a pain in the ass (and of course you get charged for the return, and USPS doesn’t even return the actual envelope any longer – they just discard them.)
For vote caging what this means is that a fair number of people whose voter addresses are absolutely correct get challenged anyway. You might as well just pick out people based purely on age or race, and you’d get as many “hits.” Makes me wonder why they even bother sending out cards. Maybe they don’t.