Republicans want a small turnout tomorrow. The more legitimate votes they can prevent, the better they will do. So we can expect the entire Republican panoply: dirty tricks, misinformation, intimidation, snake-eyed lawyers, and maybe even head-stomping thugs. What can we do to prevent it?
The late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist cut his political teeth suppressing the vote in Arizona. It was an issue at his confirmation hearings, but it didn’t prevent his being seated.
One of the more under-reported stories about the stolen Florida presidential election of 2000 was the racist and partisan purging of legitimate voters, to suppress the Democratic vote count. And in Florida, it didn’t end there.
In October 2004, Joe Conason wrote:
And in cities and states across the country, the cruder racist techniques are being revived again. In Florida, as Bob Herbert reported in the New York Times last summer, state officials sent armed officers into certain Orlando neighborhoods to scare elderly black registrants. In Kentucky, Nevada, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio, Republicans have planned to challenge voters en masse in minority neighborhoods. That return to the methods of the bad old days is the Republican response to the upsurge in minority registration — and the enormous threat that Republican strategists perceive in those new voters. Last week, Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio summarized his findings in a report on the battleground states by noting that "minority turnout is a wildcard in this race and represents a huge upside for Senator Kerry and a considerable challenge for the President’s campaign."
So despite all the blood and toil expended to expand American democracy over the past four decades, the right to vote and to be counted is still unfinished business for both sides.
We later found out that the Bush White House had been replacing U.S. attorneys for refusing to play along with their attempts to intimidate voters.
In 2007, the Republican Secretary of State of Louisiana purged tens of thousands of mostly minority voters, without going through proper procedures.
This year, groups tied to Koch Industries are continuing their efforts to suppress the vote in Wisconsin, where a champion of campaign reform may lose his Senate seat to a climate denier and enabler of pederasts.
Does anyone need to be reminded that women had to wait more than a century after this nation was founded before they were allowed to vote? Does anyone need to be reminded that nearly a century after the Fifteenth Amendment it still required a federal Voting Rights Act to help protect blacks who wanted to avail themselves of their basic Constitutional right to vote?…
Inserted from <Daily Kos>
In fact, William Rehnquist even signed compacts on two properties he purchased, promising he would not sell them to racial or religious minorities.
Regardless, voter suppression is a key page in the Republicans playbook. Here’s Keith Olbermann with more.
There are several things that we can do little as individuals to prevent, but we can watch the polling places. I would love to volunteer as a poll watcher, but I can’t. With vote by mail, Oregon has no polling places to watch. But I would encourage you to volunteer, or if you can, drive around minority areas with a camera, ready to document any intimidation you find. Elections are too important to allow Republicans to steal another one.
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