NAACP report on voter intimidation and suppression

[Paul Walmsley <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

We often focus on electronic and computer-related voting security issues,
where the computer "eats the vote."  But the United States also has a long
and sordid history -- continuing to the present election -- of various 
schemes to disenfranchise various portions of the population that are 
likely to vote a certain way.  The NAACP has just released a report 
describing many of these tactics: "The Long Shadow of Jim Crow."
It's available at:

    http://www.naacp.org/news/releases/jimcrow.pdf

A short excerpt is below.


- Paul

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                    The Long Shadow of Jim Crow:
                 Voter Intimidation and Suppression
                         in America Today

Overview

In a nation where children are taught in grade school that every citizen
has the right to vote, it would be comforting to think that the last
vestiges of voter intimidation, oppression and suppression were swept away
by the passage and subsequent enforcement of the historic Voting Rights
Act of 1965. It would be good to know that voters are no longer turned
away from the polls based on their race, never knowingly misdirected,
misinformed, deceived or threatened. Unfortunately, it would be a grave
mistake to believe it. In every national American election since
Reconstruction, every election since the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965,
voters ­ particularly African American voters and other minorities ­
have faced calculated and determined efforts at intimidation and
suppression. The bloody days of violence and retribution following the
Civil War and Reconstruction are gone. The poll taxes, literacy tests and
physical violence of the Jim Crow era have disappeared. Today, more
subtle, cynical and creative tactics have taken their place. Race-Based
Targeting Here are a few examples of recent incidents in which groups of
voters have been singled out on the basis of race.

- Most recently, controversy has erupted over the use in the Orlando area
of armed, plainclothes officers from the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement (FDLE) to question elderly black voters in their homes. The
incidents were part of a state investigation of voting irregularities in
the city's March 2003 mayoral election. Critics have charged that the
tactics used by the FDLE have intimidated black voters, which could
suppress their turnout in this year's elections. Six members of Congress
recently called on Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate potential
civil rights violations in the matter.

- This year in Florida, the state ordered the implementation of a
"potential felon" purge list to remove voters from the rolls, in a
disturbing echo of the infamous 2000 purge, which removed thousands of
eligible voters, primarily African-Americans, from the rolls. The state
abandoned the plan after news media investigations revealed that the 2004
list also included thousands of people who were eligible to vote, and
heavily targeted African-Americans while virtually ignoring Hispanic
voters.

- This summer, Michigan state Rep. John Pappageorge (R-Troy) was quoted in
the Detroit Free Press as saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote,
we're going to have a tough time in this election." African Americans
comprise 83% of Detroit's population.

- In South Dakota's June 2004 primary, Native American voters were
prevented from voting after they were challenged to provide photo IDs,
which they were not required to present under state or federal law.

- In Kentucky in July 2004, Black Republican officials joined to ask their
State GOP party chairman to renounce plans to place "vote challengers" in
African-American precincts during the coming elections.

- Earlier this year in Texas, a local district attorney claimed that
students at a majority black college were not eligible to vote in the
county where the school is located. It happened in Waller County ­ the
same county where 26 years earlier, a federal court order was required to
prevent discrimination against the students.

- In 2003 in Philadelphia, voters in African American areas were
systematically challenged by men carrying clipboards, driving a fleet of
some 300 sedans with magnetic signs designed to look like law enforcement
insignia.

- In 2002 in Louisiana, flyers were distributed in African American
communities telling voters they could go to the polls on Tuesday, December
10th ­ three days after a Senate runoff election was actually held.

- In 1998 in South Carolina, a state representative mailed 3,000 brochures
to African American neighborhoods, claiming that law enforcement agents
would be "working" the election, and warning voters that "this election is
not worth going to jail."