Shen writes: "The Tea Party organization launching a multi-pronged voter suppression effort this election is under investigation by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) for a possible 'criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.'"
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) sent a letter to True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht. (photo: ThinkProgress)
Tea Party Voter Suppression Group Under Investigation
06 October 12
he Tea Party organization launching a multi-pronged voter suppression effort this election is under investigation by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) for a possible "criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights."
Cummings sent a letter to True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht warning her that the Ohio branch of the group, in suing to throw thousands of students, trailer park residents, homeless people and African Americans off the voting rolls, may be violating the law:
At some point, an effort to challenge voter registrations by the thousands without any legitimate basis may be evidence of illegal voter suppression. If these efforts are intentional, politically motivated and widespread across multiple states, they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.
True the Vote released a statement affirming their support for the Ohio voter purge advocates on Monday:
True the Vote stands by the well-intentioned efforts of these citizens and is disgusted by the attempts of some within government and media to warp what should have been a simple, legal process into a calculated partisan charade.
The most radical voter suppression efforts - including voter ID laws, voter purges, gerrymandered districts and restrictions on voter registration - have been killed in the courts or delayed til after the election. In many cases, judges concluded that minorities would be disproportionately affected by these efforts. Indeed, an analysis of the failed voter purge in Texas, True the Vote’s home state, found that African American and Latino names were much more likely to be flagged for removal, and African American districts received more letters questioning their eligibility to vote than any other districts.
Rather than rely soley on these initiatives, True the Vote is also mobilizing a national network of volunteer poll watchers to challenge and intimidate voters on Election Day. In light of the misinformation and questionable tactics disseminated in these volunteer trainings, Rep. Cummings is seeking "the data you have been using to challenge voter registrations, the training you have been providing volunteers to conduct these activities, and the manner in which you have been determining where to deploy your resources in select jurisdictions."
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Out in the world, it is common for a full time national electoral office to organise elections, to ensure that all are enrolled, to maintain accessible rolls and to provide facilities for easy updating, to enable voters to vote within or outside their electorates, to enable scrutineering of ballot counts, to protect voters from undue harassment at polling booths. It's not rocket science.
How can it be that a nation which can teach the world a sorely needed lesson in democracy with binding citizen-initiat ed referenda (BCIR) in many states can't organise an election in which every citizen gets a vote? Maybe what is needed is a major inquiry in which a team visits other countries to see how it's done and report on it.
Of course the Rethugs are trying to kill or privatize the P.O. too, and I'm pretty sure a lot of envelopes would "go missing" but it might be worth trying.
The Republican voting mantra as expressed by Conservative Paul Weyrich in 1980, "Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome — good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." Any Republican who dances around this should work at an Arthur Murray studio. Disenfranchisin g likely Democratic voters whenever possible has been their goal for the past thirty two years. In my humble opinion, only willfully ignorant or calculatingly dishonest Republicans will state otherwise.
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