Lose your house, lose your vote 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.” ---------------------- 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. http://www.michiganmessenger.com/4076/lose-your-house-lose-your-vote
That's pretty cold. I favor an orderly election day, in which people are voting in their proper precincts. But, challenging people on election day doesn't make it orderly. Orderliness could come from contacting those people on his list and making sure their registration is okay ahead of time. Obviously, the republicans won't do that. Of course, maybe Obama's campaign could or should (for their own benefit) undertake that effort.
As long as folks have properly updated their voter registration with their current address, then I don't see a problem here. If your house was foreclosed on in precinct 1 and you now live in precinct 5, you should not be allowed to vote in precinct 1 - correct?
It would seem so. The article touches in this and the problem arises when people who have been foreclosed on are still living in their house or are fighting the foreclosure. Seems like it can get messy
Correct, but is election day the day to work all that out? It is the voter's responsibility to work it out ahead of time. But still, partisan volunteers challenging people at the voting booth can't be the best way to get things done.
They will challenge people based on being on a foreclosed list. Problem is, just because your house has been foreclosed doesn't mean you still aren't living in it. So they will basically be picking on people with enough stress in their lives as is. Its like "Do I take the time and effort to find a lawyer to help me deflect the challenge to my right to vote or do I go back to figuring out how to refinance my mortgage..."
This tells you everything you need to know about the choice on November 4. Dems are putting an organization in place to make it easier for people to vote while Repubs are putting an organization in place to make it more difficult.
It semes to be that this is the same as moving. If you move out of your precinct then you should no longer be on the voting roles for that precinct. For example, if my house was foreclosed upon (precinct 1) and I moved in with my brother (precinct 5) and I properly update my registration, I would go down to the precinct 5 polling place and cast my vote. Should I then be allowed to go down to the precinct 1 polling place and vote using my foreclosed home's address? There are election officials at my polling place that look at the records containing names and addresses and then verify that with the ID (my driver's license) I present and then give me the go-ahead to vote. If they look at that list and see "foreclosed" next to my address, I should be required to prove I live where I said I do. If I did not update my registration, that is my own fault. Obviously, there is room for foul play, but that exists on any voting rolls. EDIT: I do see the point some of y'all are making with still residing in a foreclosed home. If everything is on the up and up (and I know many would doubt that), then the list should only include those homes which have been foreclosed and finalized (for lack of a better word).
This shouldn't be such a problem in the internet age. When people go to vote, they should go into a database. When they show up again, they should be turned away. Why should it matter nowadays which precinct you vote in? They (the gubment) can build a nationwide, realtime system (if they had their **** together) to see who has voted already.
As long as the house foreclosure has truly been finalized and the folks are no longer living there, what is the difference?
This is the typical Repub game plan for presidential elections. This whole voter suppression game is a major flaw in US democracy. It is the type of thing you would expect in Zimbabwe. Let me also say that the fact that it has not been cleaned up is probably also due to Democratic incumbents, though this does not appear to be the problem wirt to presidential elections.
Don't bring a knife to a gun fight. via TPM -- With that in mind, it's worth paying attention to a little-noted development this week in Michigan. The Obama campaign filed suit in state court to block the GOP's "Lose your home, lose your vote" scheme, a plan to challenge the eligibility of voters whose homes have entered foreclosure - despite the fact that many remain resident in those homes. It's a typical GOP disenfranchisement campaign, and it's nice to see the Obama folks taking a proactive position. But the really interesting part of the filing is the effort by the Obama campaign to demonstrate, in a court of law, that this behavior is "part of a broader state and nationwide campaign by the Republican Party to suppress the vote." And, upping the ante, the filing alleges that "Defendant Republicans have a long history of engaging in coordinated, systematic campaigns to suppress and deny the right to vote of American citizens. Those campaigns are often targeted at various racial groups, language minorities, or individuals of low or modest economic circumstances whom Defendant Republicans believe are unlikely to support them in political campaigns." The filing is aimed at a particularly egregious and politically ill-advised initiative. Not only are the Republican claims here tendentious, but they're targeted at a sympathetic group - largely white, financially-struggling voters, caught up in the economic crisis. But the suit invites the court to go a step further - to recognize a persistent pattern of egregious misconduct; to find that this is a local instance of a state and national campaign; and in so doing, to link this initiative with other, less politically toxic drives. The court is more likely to rule narrowly than to recognize those claims in its decision. But by intervening directly in a local case, the Obama campaign is signaling that a national campaign to disenfranchise voters will receive a national response. And by reframing a technical debate over local election laws as a broader discussion of fundamental rights, the Obama campaign has already won. The GOP has long employed the chimerical notion of "voter fraud," and preyed upon unpopular groups like students, non-Anglophone Americans and ex-felons. But they made a strategic miscalculation by going after homeowners suffering foreclosures. And by linking this effort at disenfranchisement to the others, the Obama campaign is going to make them pay. The filing is here
In Texas and in most states, if someone challenges your right to vote, it is your RIGHT to demand a provisional ballot that is filled out by hand by you and then revisited by a voting precinct official immediately following the election. After you vote, your ballot will be placed in a special provisional ballot envelope. Your vote will be counted if the county elections official can verify that you are, in fact, registered to vote and you have not already voted. Voters should also follow up with their ballot number to make sure the vote was counted.