peace,
Jim Davis Ozark Bioregion, USA
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--- On Wed, 9/10/08, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] lose your house, lose your vote
> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 6:10 PM
> <http://www.michiganmessenger.com/4076/lose-your-house-lose-your-vote>
>
> 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 spreadsheet 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
> Knowles 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.”
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