Rekna

Voter caging has been a common tactic in past elections to suppress certain voters. Recently it has come to light that the GOP is planning on using forecloser lists to prevent people from voting. The logic is if they don't have that house anymore then there registration isn't valid and thus can't vote. Another method of caging is to send out a mass priority mailing to a certain demographic with the instructions "Do not forward". If the person is not there to get the mail (say they are at work and can't sign for it or are on vacation) then there name is placed on a list of people who will be caged. If you happen to be on a caging list when you go to vote you will be met with someone saying you are not eligible to vote and you will have to vote on a provisional ballot and then prove you are eligible to vote in the next couple days. The idea is that many people won't challenge it either because they don't care or don't have time and their vote will not be counted.

Recently the McCain campaign sent out a letter "verifying people were registered as a Republican" in Florida. This letter had do not forward instructions on it and it was sent to registered democrats. It looks like letter will likely end up creating caging lists. This is a tactic that has been primary used by the GOP and there have been cases where the GOP has accidentally leaked some of its caging plans. For more information see the wikipedia entry on caging lists.


What do you think of this practice? Personally I think it should be illegal. I have no problem with stopping fraudulent voters but I feel this practice prevents more legal voters than illegal voters. The big problem is that this is only done in certain demographics. If the GOP thinks voter caging is fine then they should be forced to do it to every person and not just the ones that fit in a demographic that is not favorable to them.

Baraka_Guru

So this, in a way, is like gerrymandering?

I don't know if you can make this illegal, but you can surely try to get something in place to ensure legal voters can cast their votes regardless of others' tactics to prevent it otherwise.

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The_Jazz

I don't think it qualifies as gerrymandering, but it certainly qualifies as a dirty trick, regardless of who's pulling it.

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dc_dux

There have been several court imposed consent decress since the 80s as a result of Republican voter caging:
I believe there was another recent consent degree in OH after the 04 election. The loophole is that these decrees only apply to the national parties...leaving the state republican parties to do what they want.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Rekna

There is also a loophole that the law doesn't matter anymore. We can now just break the law and then ignore subpoenas and refuse to testify.

loquitur

It's similar to how Obama won his first couple of races, by getting adversaries off ballots.

dc_dux

A Federal law, The Caging Prohibition Act, was introduced in the Senate last year and the House earlier this year.

Of course, it was with the full knowledge that it would never reach the desk of Bush, where it would certainly have been vetoed.

Depending on this election, it may or may not move quickly towards enactment....particularly with a larger Democratic majority in both the House and Senate.

I would be interested in seeing the details of this.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

asaris

Isn't preventing people from voting different from getting people off the ballot?

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Rekna

Just ignore him, he is trying to derail the thread. Instead of actually providing any discussion on topic he wants to point his fingers elsewhere.

loquitur

no, my point was that using legal techniques to advance your election prospects is used pretty frequently and routinely by both parties, and in urban areas it's something of an art form. Here in NY we have ballot access lawsuits all the time, where each side tries to get the other's nominating petitions tossed. Challenging voter rolls is done too, and is conceptually no different, so long as the techniques used are above board and legal. You might not like it but they are in concept the same: the idea is molding the electoral battlefield to your advantage. Obama did it in his early races, it was done in WA by Repubs during the last Gov race, it was done by Dems with military ballots in FL during the 2000 race, it was done by Republicans with ex-felons............ the list goes on and on and on, in both parties. People are getting agitated here over something that is neither new nor illegal. If there is illegality involved that is something else, but it appears from what was described is that this is just legal maneuvering that is very little different from most of the legal maneuvering that happens. It's not like theyr'e trolling cemeteries looking for voters or anything.

Yeah, Rekna, you didn't understand (and didn't like) my point so you say ignore him. Nice. Love the intellectual honesty. You don't like it when I unspike the Kool-Aid, but someone's gotta do it around here. Life just isn't that simple, and this silly cartoonish fantasy world about good guys and bad guys following party identification is just that: a silly fantasy. The sooner you understand that human beings are human and have human foibles no matter what political party they belong to, the sooner the discourse around here will begin to look like anything resembling logic. Until then it's just "hooray for my team, the other guy is a poopy-head."

asaris

Two points, loquitur. First, it's not clear that getting rid of voters based on foreclosure is legal. But second, it seems *really* sleazy. Here are these people who have just lost their house, and you're trying to deprive them of their right to vote! Regardless of whether it is legal, it doesn't look good.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

dc_dux

loquitor....correct me if I'm wrong, but doesnt a consent decree from a federal circut court have some legal standing:

from my first post

...refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting . . . .

or a later modification of the decree prohibiting the RNC from undertaking any ballot security program without the courts consent.

I understand that it has loopholes that allow the practice by state political parties which is why I believe we need federal legislation.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Rekna

Just because something is legal doesn't make it right. In this case caging is illegal in some cases and I believe it should be made illegal in all cases. If I ever get caged you will be I will sue the people doing the caging for violating my constitutional rights.

And my comment to you was because you posted 1 line which was a finger pointing and didn't provide any commentary whatsoever.
-----Added 17/9/2008 at 02 : 31 : 19-----
On a side note I found this funny

loquitur

yes, asaris, it might be sleazy. Welcome to politics.

dc_dux, this is the "default to racism" thing I alluded to elsewhere. You're presuming it has to be racial; why? Because the Brennan Center says so? There is something called standard of proof, and evidence, that is needed before assuming someone broke the law. See, my working assumption in most situations is that people will do anything they can, sleazy or not, to benefit themselves and the groups they care about, including political candidates and parties, within the law. I usually withhold judgment on illegality. The reason is that I have seen too many mushy factual situations in my life and too much legal uncertainty to be able to "know" someone broke the law unless I have actually seen the underlying documentation and factual development. (That's what comes from litigating cases for 25 years; you become skeptical of most argumentative claims.) I'm especially skeptical of advocacy organizations - they have a vested interest in perpetuating the problems they address, and will find problems in order to continue their existence and increase their funding. That applies to orgs on both the left and the right, btw.

dc_dux

loquitor...it is not what the Brennen Center said..it was what the Circuit Court in NJ said in its consent decree agreed to by the political parties:

....refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting . . . .

so....if I am wrong about it being a court consent decree (not the Brennan Center), correct me....If I am not, please stop with the "default to racism" charges.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

loquitur

dc_dux, read your own source document. It describes a 1981 consent decree that prohibits racially driven vote suppression. Unless what is going on now is demonstrably racial, and you have provided no evidence that it is, then the NJ decree is irrelevant even in NJ, much less in FL, which is what the OP is talking about.

Just as an aside: a consent decree is an agreed termination of a lawsuit, ordered by a court, usually at the litigants' request. It typically provides some kind of focused relief based on the allegations of the lawsuit and the particular misconduct alleged in the lawsuit. It's not a universal finding that one or the other side, and any of its affiliates, is bad and is prohibited from doing bad things anywhere in the country in the future. It usually binds only the entities in that lawsuit. If you want to see who the NJ consent decree binds, you have to see who the litigants were. And if you want to see what it prohibits, you have to look at the underlying order. I think you might be ascribing to it a broader effect than it has.

dc_dux

Here is more info from a challenge in OH in 2004:
So in the end, the full Circuit Court allowed the RNC to target certain neighborhoods for caging.

IMO, all the more reason for a federal anti-caging law....but I understand why Republicans might not support it.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

loquitur

do you have a citation for the opinion? That thing you linked to was written up by an advocacy group. I'd like to see the full 3d circuit opinion before giving any views about it. I did notice that it looks like the effort to go after the RNC failed in Ohio as well. So it's a two-circuit loss. I can think of oodles of different reasons those lawsuits might have failed, most of them fairly technical and neutral. But basically, all that story you linked to says is that a lawsuit was filed and ultimately lost. Lots of lawsuits get filed. So? It doesn't prove anything.

guyy

Sorry, that's wrong.

Candidates and voters are different entities.

loquitur

guy, go back and read my next post. I was up one level of abstraction. It's about molding the electoral battlefield in your favor using the legal/bureaucratic system. And yes, in that respect it's exactly the same. Obviously candidates aren't voters. But petitioners are, and by striking their signatures you're "disenfranchising" them from participating in the democratic process, too, right? It's not all that different. In concept it's exactly the same, it's just an issue of which effort you want to make: going after voter rolls takes more work than going after candidate petitions, so it's less efficient. But depriving voters of the chance to vote for someone they want to vote for, which is what striking a candidate does, is not very different from what you're complaining about.

Rekna

Legal issues aside do you feel that this tactic hurts or helps the American people?

loquitur

What I think is good or bad is not the issue. Political parties play a high-stakes game and are in it to win, period. They don't care about the American people in any but the abstractest sense. They want to win, they want power. And they'll do anything within the rules to get it.

My preferences are for clean races, but I'm very realistic. In this country, 'clean' = 'passes legal muster' and maybe that's the best we can hope for.

asaris

I still think there's a difference between sleazy and really sleazy. I mean, Republicans looking into allegations of voter fraud more seriously when they involve likely democratic voters? Sleazy, but in the larger scheme of things, probably acceptable. But trying to kick people off the voter rolls when they've just been foreclosed, two months before the election? I think that's a whole nother level of sleaze.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Rekna

This is exactly the issue. This is supposed to be a government for the people by the people. If the government is not serving our needs then it is our duty to overthrow the current government and start a new one. Thus the question comes back to this. "Is this type of tactic good or bad for the American people and our country?"

I'll leave you with this quote i'm sure you have seen before.

loquitur

Rekna, if it were up to me we would all meet over drinks and work things out because, after all, reasonable people should be able to reach agreement. That's not the world we live in. So yes, what I think is good or bad isn't the issue. I'm very atypical, and it is clear to me more and more just how atypical I am. The issue is what rules make sense in a heterogeneous society, that are enforceable, knowable and not unduly intrusive. You can't legislate good behavior, Rekna. Especially not when power and patronage are at stake. All you can do is fix minimum and minimal standards.

Rekna

So then you are against legislating abortion? Do you think we should end the war on drugs and legalize drugs? Should we legalize prostitution? Should we get rid of speed limits on roads? Should we get rid of the requirement to have drivers licenses? It seems to me that we legislate good behavior all the time....


This is a simple question that should have a simple answer. Is caging good or bad for the American people.

loquitur

I'm against prohibiting abortion, yes.

As to most drugs, yes.

Can't think of a good reason not to.

Depends which roads.

probably not, for safety's sake.

Yes, and I probably should have been more specific in my post above. I'm against using mushy standards to regulate behavior. To use your examples: A speed limit is knowable and clear. So, for that matter, is use of a prohibited substance. Or getting an abortion. There is nothing "soft" in those - you know what is prohibited, it's clear, it's easy to comply. Whether the particular prohibition is a good idea or not is a different question, but assuming there is a prohibition, you know what it is and you know how to comply with it.

Now try defining "caging" for me in a way that tells people exactly what they can and can't do. I don't think it can be done. Just let the lawyers loose on it and watch what happens. I know; I am one and I can tell you it's easy to drive trucks through mushy language. If you believe in the rule of law you want the law to be knowable. Anytime someone has no way of knowing until after he does something whether it was legal or not, we have a problem with the rule of law and we're on the road to tyranny.

Rekna

How about this:
In this case intent is tied to the prevention of the voting and not to whether the person is legal or not. I'm sure there are better ways to word this but the idea is that if someone is challenging voters they better be 100% certain that person can't vote. If they are wrong they have committed a crime.

dc_dux

I think it is fairly easy to define:

a process of targeting voters by district or precinct by a political party or private individual/organization in an attempt to verify eligibility in advance of an election

admittedly, it would be difficult to prove an intent to suppress a selective group of potential voters

If a city/county/state (or an independent agent for the government) wants to conduct a city- or state-wide review of voter eligibility by confirming residency....that is an appropriate role for government...and it is not selective....assuming the government would provide an opportunity to respond in advance of an election for those whose eligibility might be questioned.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

loquitur

it seems to me like we already have laws that prohibit race-based interference in voting rights. What does that add? As you defined it, btw, caging would be simple verification of eligibility - give that some thought, I don't think that's what you want to enact into law. There would be no way to legally vet people moving away, people who die, people with multiple addresses. The opportunities for a Mayor Daley to send whole cemeteries full of people into the voting booths with no effective check would be enormous.

"Sir, why did you verifiy eligibility in this neighborhood and not htat one?" "I cna't verify every neighborhood, and I'm more worried about taht one becaues it's filled with my political adversaries." What's wrong with that? Assuming it's politically driven and not racially driven, that makes perfect sense, for either party. I get the feeling this whole issue would go away if substantial numbers of blacks started voting for Republicans, because then Democrats couldn't use race as a weapon.

dc_dux

Or some might see it as the Republicans using race as a weapon because blacks vote Democratic in substantial numbers.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with either party challenging particular voters' eligibility after an election. Efforts to suppress a class of voters before an election is a different matter.

But I dont expect you to agree.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Rekna

If you want to verify voter eligibility you should do it prior to the election not during it. Also don't want to restrict caging to race only, I think it should be all caging. If people are worried about people voting twice then make a national voter database that records who is eligible to vote and where they voted at. If someone votes twice then charge them for voter fraud and throw them in prison.

loquitur

Rekna, look at what you're saying: people outside the govt shouldnt' be able to seek to have the laws enforced in the way they prefer. By that standard, every advocacy group would be shut out of seeking govt instrumentalities to further their own goals. Heck, it would be the end of community organizing. To say nothing of violating the First Amendment freedom of petition.

Methinks you're proposing rules that have short-term benefits for the political side you prefer but which if, if you thought what they would mean if applied in a consistent way, you'd see would ultimately restrict people's liberty and ultimately lead to bad results. Or you can keep adding more and more rules (which means, always, more and more loopholes), then more rules to close off the new loopholes, followed by yet more rules. And so it goes. That's what happens when you try to tilt the playing field by government fiat.

Rekna

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that we can't have peoples votes selectively taken away by private entities. You don't see a problem with private entities selectively attempting to apply the law to one group but not to another?

The rule of law should be applied equally to everyone or not at all failure to do that is discrimination which is exactly what caging is. The big fallacy in all of this is the assumption that someone must be of a certain race for it to be discrimination. Discrimination is not restricted to race alone.
-----Added 18/9/2008 at 03 : 32 : 06-----
Since you don't seem to have a problem with the selective application of caging lists then I trust you don't have a problem with selective recounts and feel that the selective recounts in Florida in 2000 were ok and should not have been stopped? I also trust you have never complained about selective recounts.

loquitur

Rekna, private entities can't take votes away. That's the point you are missing. All private entities can do is either (1) try to persuade the govt not to recognize certain voters as acceptable based on noncompliance with established criteria, in which case either the govt can accept that position or not, or (2) go directly to the voter and in a legal manner try to persuade the voter not to vote or to vote as the private entity advocates (that means no lying, which is fraud, and no threats). There are existing statutes that prohibit misconduct in the course of both those categories of activities. In light of that, what additional restriction are you advocating in terms of "caging" that are not already illegal?

As for the selective recounts, my position is NOT that the Gore forces didn't have the right to go to the counties they chose in order to advocate for recounts selectively. They had the right to do that and it's not a crime. What you're advocating is that the private nongovernmental entity - the Gore campaign - didn't have the right to pick and choose where they would advocate to have the recounts done on a selective basis. Of course they had that right. And the other side, by the same token, had the right to advocate that either there's a recount everywhere or a recount nowhere. The govt ultimately does the counting, and it's bound by law to comply with whatever the applicable legal standards are. But that tells you nothing about the scope of private people's right to advocate a standard other than the one that ultimately is followed.

The flaw in your logic is that you're collapsing what private people have the right to do with what govt is obligated to do. Very different issues.

As far as Republicans going after blacks because they are Democrats, can we agree that if black voting patterns went majority Republican, the practices you're complaining about wouldn't be happening? And if that's the case, then what the GOP operatives are doing is not tied to the fact that the voters are black but to the fact that they tend Democrat. If they were black and tended Republican this wouldn't happen. So it's not racial discrimination at all.

Rekna

I agree that they are targeting the because they vote democratic. I however, think that it is still racial discrimination.

My problem with all of this is that it is applied selectively in a targeted manner in order to disenfranchise a certain type of voter.

Lets say we have 2 groups that want to vote.

Group A) goes to vote, there is no line because there are plenty of voting machines, they vote in 10 minutes and are back at work.

Group B) goes to vote, there is an 8 hour line because they only have 2 working voting machines, they have to take a day off work, they get to the front of the line and there is someone there saying they cannot vote and in order for them to vote they have to take another day off work to prove they can vote.

Tell me was this vote fair? Will the results of this vote truly represent the will of the people? Democracy is about the will of the people, not the will of the "right" people. When we start trying to exclude legal voters we have a problem.

Back to the foreclosure issue, do homeless people have a right to vote?

loquitur

In your example of group A and group B, the fault for the unfairness is very obviously the government entity that ran the bad polling place. Who else's fault could it possibly be? The people at location B obviously should demand better services from their local government, and if they don't get it, toss the bums out in the next election. It's the American way.

And yes, homeless people of course have the same right to vote as anyone else - no less but no more.

Rekna

But how do they toss them out when they can't vote them out? What if group A likes the people in power because they favor them more and thus keep voting for the people in power?

loquitur

Rekna, who is doing the bad stuff? it's the people running the polling place. That's not private entities, it's the government. This is an example of why I have issues with putting the govt in charge of things: people in govt act first to perpetuate their own power and privilege. They are no better or worse than private individuals in that respect, but can cause a lot more damage than private people because they are in the govt and their damage spreads through the jurisdictino instead of being confined to one private entity. If your contention is that someone other than the govt should be running polling places, that's a really strange position to be taking. Even I (pretty hardcore libertarian) don't advocate that, at least not wihtout some govt supervision.

Rekna

I agree with you that the government can be a problem especially when checks and balances fail. My point is this, any disenfranchisement whether by the government or a private entity is wrong and should not be allowed. Caging is a form of disenfranchisement and I think should be made illegal (along with all other forms of disenfranchisement). The only way caging should be allowed is if it is applied to everyone equally. If the GOP wants to send out mailers and then challenge returned addresses they better be able to prove they did not send those mailers to a specific group and that they are challenging all voters who did not respond not just those from a specific group.

Also I think challenging a voters eligibility should have to be done at least 2 weeks prior to an election if it is not done before 2 weeks then it cannot be challenged.