linky-dink
Quote:
Millions Blocked from Voting in Election
By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Millions of U.S. citizens, including a disproportionate number of black voters, will be blocked from voting in the Nov. 2 presidential election because of legal barriers, faulty procedures or dirty tricks, according to civil rights and legal experts.
The largest category of those legally disenfranchised consists of almost 5 million former felons who have served prison sentences and been released.
In total, 13 percent of all black men are barred from voting due to a felony conviction, according to the Commission on Civil Rights. Polls consistently find that black Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
"This has a huge effect on elections but also on black communities which see their political clout diluted. No one has yet explained to me how letting ex-felons who have served their sentences into polling booths hurts anyone," said Jessie Allen of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
Conservatives disagree. "Society is not required to turn a blind eye to the fact that someone has a criminal record. Someone who was not willing to follow the law and was sent to prison should not be in a position to make the law for others by electing lawmakers," said Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity think tank.
Millions of other votes in the 2000 presidential election were lost due to clerical and administrative errors while civil rights organizations have cataloged numerous tactics aimed at suppressing black voter turnout.
"There are individuals and officials who are actively trying to stop people from voting who they think will vote against their party and that nearly always means stopping black people from voting Democratic," said Mary Frances Berry, head of the U.S. Commission on Human Rights.
'DISCOURAGED' FROM VOTING
Vicky Beasley, a field officer for People for the American Way, listed some of the ways voters have been "discouraged" from voting.
"In elections in Baltimore in 2002 and in Georgia last year, black voters were sent fliers saying anyone who hadn't paid utility bills or had outstanding parking tickets or were behind on their rent would be arrested at polling stations. It happens in every election cycle," she said.
In a mayoral election in Philadelphia last year, people pretending to be plainclothes police officers stood outside some polling stations asking people to identify themselves. There have also been reports of mysterious people videotaping people waiting in line to vote in black neighborhoods.
Minority voters may be deterred from voting simply by election officials demanding to see drivers' licenses before handing them a ballot, according to Spencer Overton, who teaches law at George Washington University.
"African Americans are four to five times less likely than whites to have a photo ID," Overton said at a recent briefing on minority disenfranchisement.
Courtenay Strickland of the Americans Civil Liberties Union testified to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last week that at a primary election in Florida last month, many people were wrongly turned away when they could not produce identification.
BLACKS' BALLOTS REJECTED
The commission, in a report earlier this year, said that in Florida, where President Bush (news - web sites) won a bitterly disputed election in 2000 by 537 votes, black voters had been 10 times more likely than non-black voters to have their ballots rejected and were often prevented from voting because their names were erroneously purged from registration lists.
Additionally, Florida is one of 14 states that prohibit ex-felons from voting. Seven percent of the electorate but 16 percent of black voters in that state are disenfranchised.
In other swing states, 4.6 percent of voters in Iowa, but 25 percent of blacks, were disenfranchised in 2000 as ex-felons. In Nevada, it was 4.8 percent of all voters but 17 percent of blacks; in New Mexico, 6.2 percent of all voters but 25 percent of blacks.
Penda Hair, co-director of the Advancement Project, which seeks to ensure fair multiracial elections, recently reported that registrars across the country often claimed not to have received voter registration forms or rejected them for technical reasons that could have been corrected easily before voting day if the applicant had known there was a problem.
Beasley said that many voters who had registered recently in swing states were likely to find their names would not be on the rolls when they showed up on Election Day.
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I am not a "conservative" per se, but if you commit a felony, I think you should forfeit your right to vote.
I personally have no problem with denying criminals the right to vote nor do I see any issue with requiring people to prove that they are who they say they are in order to vote...we dont need another election rife with mistakes and fraud. These rules should be consistent, however, and not applied arbitrarily to constituencies based upon demographic profiles.
I
do think that it is wrong to arrest people for other charges or delinquent payments while trying to vote is unacceptable and un-American.
My concern about the legitimacy of the 2004 election results grows daily...especially with the inaccuracy and opaqueness of the new electronic voting machines being adopted around the country...(see picture)
Hell, the CEO of Diebold (one of the leading makers of touch-screen voting machines) is a heavy contributor to the Bush campaign and even publicly stated that he was
“committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”
Scary stuff.