Civil Rights Groups say GOP Moves to Stifle Minority Vote
Tron Nick
New Report Examines "Voter Suppression" of Minorities
The NAACP and other civil rights leaders yesterday charged that recent events suggest the Republican Party is mounting a campaign to keep African Americans and other minority voters away from the polls this November. In a new report, the NAACP and People for the American Way cite incidents from Florida to Detroit. NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said efforts at intimidation and suppression, once a tool of Democrats in the Jim Crow South, "have increasingly become the province of the Republican Party" as it seeks to counter the overwhelming advantage Democrats enjoy among black voters. Studies suggest that as many as 4 million to 6 million voters were disenfranchised in 2000, either because registration problems prevented qualified voters from casting ballots or because of errors caused by faulty, outdated technology. In Florida, the Civil Rights Commission found that black voters were 10 times as likely as whites to have their ballots rejected, a trend also found in other parts of the country. To prevent against a repeat, more than 60 nonprofit groups have banded together to form a "Voter Protection Coalition." The group is planning to have 25,000 volunteers -- including 5,000 lawyers -- staff Election Day hotlines, videotape polls and go to court if necessary. In the meantime, the coalition has been collecting anecdotes that form the basis of yesterday's report. Incidents such as the following are cited in the report:
The use of armed, plainclothes officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to question elderly black voters in Orlando as part of a state investigation of voting irregularities in the city's 2003 mayoral race, which critics said intimidated black voters, potentially suppressing this year's turnout.
The barring of Native Americans from voting in South Dakota's June primary after they were challenged to provide photo identification, which is not required by state or federal law.
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. [more ] and [more ] and [more ]
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