{"id":4283,"date":"2008-04-11T00:39:51","date_gmt":"2008-04-11T07:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/04\/11\/the-republican-war-on-voting\/"},"modified":"2008-04-11T00:39:51","modified_gmt":"2008-04-11T07:59:39","slug":"the-republican-war-on-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4283","title":{"rendered":"The War On Voters of Color"},"content":{"rendered":"

Study: Stricter voting ID rules hurt ’04 turnout<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

A study by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University shows turnout in 2004 was about 4% lower in states that required voters to sign their name or produce documentation. Hispanic turnout was 10% lower; the difference was about 6% for blacks and Asian-Americans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kevin Drum<\/a>:<\/p>\n

By a substantial margin, the Indiana residents most likely to possess photo ID turn out to be whites, the middle aged, and high-income voters. And while this is undoubtedly just a wild coincidence, these are also the three groups most like to vote for Republicans. […] Overall, 91% of registered Republicans had photo IDs compared to only 83% of registered Democrats.<\/p>\n

But like I said, this is probably just a coincidence. I’m sure Karl Rove and the RNC had no idea that the demographics broke down like this. Right?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Art Levine, writing in The American Prospect<\/em>:<\/a><\/p>\n

But Republicans were not deterred by their loss in civil court and pressed for a criminal investigation, a probe which U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias started on the same day that the court ruled against the GOP. Iglesias was a true believer in the menace of voter fraud. As one of just two U.S. attorneys in the nation to form such task forces, he was invited to lecture other U.S. attorneys in 2005 as part of the annual Justice Department ballot-integrity conference.<\/p>\n

Iglesias’ efforts weren’t enough for Patrick Rogers, the Republican National Lawyers Association point person in the state, who mounted a campaign to pressure Iglesias to bring criminal charges before the election, rather than form a task force. Indeed, even before Iglesias concluded in 2006 that there wasn’t enough evidence to indict on voter fraud, major Republicans in the state had started asking the Bush administration for his removal. In early December 2006, Iglesias was one of seven U.S. attorneys whom the Justice Department fired.<\/p>\n

Today, Iglesias says of voter fraud: “It’s like the boogeymen parents use to scare their children. It’s very frightening, and it doesn’t exist.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Art Levine (again), this time in The Huffington Post<\/em>:<\/a><\/p>\n

“Black voters in Dallas, Texas in 2006, after Mr. Agerwal joined the Justice Department, received a letter that said if you were registered by ACORN, they’re a fraudulent organization, and if you try to vote, you’ll be prosecuted and arrested at the polls.” He testified that he had alerted the Justice Department, but no action was taken. Project Vote, ACORN’s partner in managing voting registration drives, also contacted the Dallas FBI, which declined to investigate the intimidating mailers sent to thousands of African-Americans.<\/p>\n

The FBI belatedly responded to Project Vote in late December 2006, asserting that “no factual predication of voter intimidation was established.” The FBI’s decision not to investigate, critics say, is the latest sign that politicization appears to have compromised the nominally non-partisan law enforcement agency.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the Justice Department’s response was part of a striking pattern of indifference to alleged intimidation violations. In fact, The Huffington Post has learned, President Bush’s Justice Department hasn’t brought a single prosecution or lawsuit in more than seven years on behalf of any African-American voters who faced direct voter intimidation threats and challenges…<\/p>\n

[…]such threatening incidents include black-shirted, gun-toting thugs thwarting Latino voters in Tucson, Arizona in 2006, and fliers from a fake “Milwaukee Black Voters League” distributed during the 2004 election in Milwaukee inner-city neighborhoods warning people that if anyone in their family had been convicted of a crime, “you can get ten years in prison” if you dared to vote. Unfortunately, such cases don’t seem to have been deemed worthy of serious investigation by DOJ, and certainly no prosecutions or lawsuits have resulted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With US economies <\/del>elections often quite close, the 2-4% gain that Republicans gain in elections because they’re led by cheating, lying racists actually does make a real difference. And the system is self-perpetuating; the more racist Republicans are in charge, the more racist Republicans are appointed to positions from which they can make sure that crimes against non-white voters are ignored.<\/p>\n

For regular coverage of voting rights and voting access issues, check out the Voting Matters Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Study: Stricter voting ID rules hurt ’04 turnout A study by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University shows turnout in 2004 was about 4% lower in states that required voters to sign their name or produce documentation. Hispanic … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservative-zaniness-right-wingers-etc","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}