News reports that state officials in the crucial battleground states of Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina were purging thousands from voter rolls illegally drew a flurry of media and public attention. The crude, dubious, if not outright illegal, stuff to suppress votes such as the absence of polling places in minority neighborhoods, ballot and vote machine irregularities, using lists of foreclosed homes to challenge voter’s residences, rigid time lines for filing voter applications, the lack of information, misinformation or deliberate disinformation about voter registration forms and materials has also drawn plenty of media attention over the years.
Yet, the main ploys the GOP will use to damp down minority votes on November 4th have drawn virtually no media attention. They include letter writing challenges, residence and citizenship challenges of non-native born Latino voters, and reliance on a provision in the Help America Vote Act on provisional ballots. Worst of all, these tactics are all perfectly legal.
Federal court rulings flatly prohibit Republican organizations from sending letters to newly registered voters in solely low income, black and Hispanic neighborhoods to verify their address. If those letters aren’t returned, the GOP contends that the recipient's address on their voter registration form is incorrect and the registration is fraudulent. When the voter shows up at the polls they are challenged. Republicans insist that the legal prohibition against this tactic applies only to the Republican National Committee and not to state and local Republican organizations and “volunteer groups.” Since GOP groups have declared themselves exempt from the court rulings against the tactic, they fully intend to use the letter writing ploy to challenge the registrations of people in certain designated zip codes. The zip codes just happen to be those in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods.
In April the Supreme Court handed the GOP an even more powerful weapon to water down minority votes. It upheld Indiana’s rigid voter registration law which requires government-issued identification, such as a driver’s license, a passport, or a state or military ID card. Though Indiana got much of the media attention when the court ruled, it’s hardly the only state to require rigid proof of identity. Florida and Georgia require photo IDs. Eighteen other states require either photo or non-photo IDs. In four states polling workers can demand that voters produce a photo ID. Many will. And they’ll likely have the blessing of nearly several dozen state election officials who were chosen in sharply partisan elections.
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