A few weeks ago, I linked to an article by Eartha Jane Melzer on the Michigan Messenger site about GOP plans to challenge voters who had lost their homes in foreclosure. Well, today, the story made it all the way to CNN. You can see the report here:
update: It looks as though State Democrats and Republicans have come to an agreement on the matter. This afternoon, they issued a joint statement saying that foreclosure lists would not be used to challenge voters… Still no word as to whether or not the defamation case brought against the “Michigan Messenger” by the Michigan GOP will be dropped.
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Our only hope is that Michigan’s a blowout for Obama and they know it. If it were going to be close here, you can bet that we’d see them pursuing this strategy.
Not nearly as bad as their “Show Your Union Card, Go to Jail” initiative.
The foreclosure list thing is primarily a pretext for placing people at the highly democratic polling locations who will be engaging in voter intimidation on many other levels. You get more Republicans volunteering for the training if you pull them in with this relatively mild issue which still has some significant draw for Republicans. Once they get the volunteers in the training meetings they can determine who can be assigned to do the more extreme suppression jobs. Using the foreclosure list story is also a way of providing an excuse before hand for other voter suppression activity in the event that individuals engaging in more serious voter intimidation are confronted. In 2004, I saw this kind of stuff happening on a huge scale in Ohio, and in heavily Democratic precincts in and around Detroit. The cover story was that the list watchers were making sure no unregistered people were voting. But I saw these people intimidating senior citizens and otherwise meek folks as they walked from their cars to the building. I also saw some of them try to confuse some of the older people by suggesting that they may be at the wrong precinct. If you don’t believe me, volunteer for one of the precinct watcher trainings the GOP is conducting in the area. The cool thing is that there are highly effective counter measures that can be carried out on Election Day. They’re a hell of a lot of fun too, at least for me. I’m pretty sure the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign will be looking for volunteers to go around watching for voter intimidators. They’ll need as many people as they can get for that.