Blogged quickly by Brad Friedman from Alabama (with a laptop on my knee)…
McClatchy’s excellent Greg Gordon reports that the DoJ had written a letter in support of vote caging by Republicans in Ohio in 2004…
WASHINGTON – Four days before the 2004 election, the Justice Department’s civil rights chief sent an unusual letter to a federal judge in Ohio who was weighing whether to let Republicans challenge the credentials of 23,000 mostly African-American voters.
The case was triggered by allegations that Republicans had sent a mass mailing to mostly Democratic-leaning minorities and used undeliverable letters to compile a list of voters potentially vulnerable to eligibility challenges.
In his letter to U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott of Cincinnati, Assistant Attorney General Alex Acosta argued that it would “undermine” the enforcement of state and federal election laws if citizens could not challenge voters’ credentials.
Former Justice Department civil rights officials and election watchdog groups charge that his letter sided with Republicans engaging in an illegal, racially motivated tactic known as “vote-caging” in a state that would be pivotal in delivering President Bush a second term in the White House.
…
But Robert Kengle, former deputy chief of the department’s Voting Rights Section who served under Acosta, said the letter amounted to “cheerleading for the Republican defendants.”
“It was doubly outrageous,” he said, “because the allegation in the litigation was that these were overwhelmingly African-American voters that were on the challenge list.”
Joseph Rich, a former chief of the department’s Voting Rights Section, called the Ohio scheme “vote caging.”
As BRAD BLOG readers know, we’ve been reporting — often far too exclusively — on the Florida 2004 vote caging scheme by former GOP oppo-researcher turned Karl Rove assistant turned Arkansas US Attorney turned disgraced former US Attorney, Tim Griffin. As we’re on the roll, we’ll have to refer you to our “Vote Caging” category for our previous detailed coverage. Scroll through the articles on that page for much more background.
But here’s a bit more from McClatchy’s piece today…
…
Democrats sued in Cincinnati to block the challenges and before U.S. District Judge Dickinson Debevoise in Newark, N.J., who had issued a consent decree barring the tactic in 1982 after finding the GOP illegally targeted minority voters in the state’s gubernatorial race the previous year.
The Justice Department was not a party to either case. Nor did Judge Dlott solicit the federal government’s views. But Acosta weighed in anyway.
Challenges, he wrote, “help strike a balance between ballot access and ballot integrity.”
Republicans’ use of caging has been a contentious issue ever since Debevoise’s ruling 26 years ago. In 1986, the judge found that Louisiana Republicans had violated the consent decree. In 1990, another consent decree was issued after the Republican Party of North Carolina and the re-election campaign of Republican Sen. Jesse Helms sent 125,000 postcards to mostly black voters to compile a list of voters to challenge.
Oh Susanna o don’t you cry for me…
Now I got that stupid song stuck in my head, thanks.
…It rained all day the night I left the weather it was dry,
the sun so hot I froze to death…
Just gettin u back
It keeps getting bigger, and I predict this is the “tip of the iceberg” and it’s going to get absolutely HUGE!
I didn’t call it the republican dictatorship before th 2006 election for nothing.
Thanks for sharing Brad, and I got the book with Mark and your autograph.
Thanks.
I agree that more investigation should be done. Part of the reason your reporting is exclusive, is because you and your exclusive source cite caging as evidence the 2004 elections were stolen. In fact, while caging occurred throughout the country, there were no challenges to ballots at the polls in Ohio or Florida based on caging lists.
Why?
Because of court orders prohibiting caging until late in the afternoon in ohio, and unwanted attention by BBC in Florida. This issue deserves real reporting and investigation, which has been scant thus far.
… drational opined thusly…
“This issue deserves real reporting and investigation, which has been scant thus far.”
… so far your claim to sit in judgement seems to rely on one case of comparing apples with oranges (which you admitted, and which was understandable given the limited data Palast had released) and one case of being on the receiving end of a blog blast from Palast (which was less understandable because of his professional standing)…
… sooo…
… what the hell are you on about now? 😉
It seems to be unrelated to Palast per se…
Drational-
I’m sure Brad can dispute your claims better than I can (and perhaps will if he see’s your comment here while he is traveling) but I’ll say this: The vote in 2000 and 2004 was stolen in numerous ways, with vote caging playing a likely smaller but important roll in critical states. Brad makes NO reference to an “exclusive source” as you refer to in your comment above. Anyone who has paid attention to this blog and other election integrity sources knows that Brad and others in the movement have written about a variety of evidence of and means by which the vote was likely stolen in those elections and, likely, to some extent in the 2002 and 2006 midterms. For instance, you might check this article out.
You are also off the mark regarding your comment that “there were no challenges to ballots at the polls in Ohio or Florida based on caging lists. Why? Because of court orders prohibiting caging until late in the afternoon in ohio, and unwanted attention by BBC in Florida.” The major point here is the fact of the vote caging effort. How successful it was in Ohio or Florida is impossible to gage but I will refer you to this site that has much more on the issues Brad refers to in this post. That link states the following:
Obviously, there was some success in the Ohio vote caging effort and your point is disengenous because it tries to minimize the fact and significance of the effort to cage voters in the 2004 critical state of Ohio by raising questions about the success of that effort. This was one of many criminal efforts by Republican operatives to try to steal the 2004 election. In combination, these efforts likely allowed them to accomplish their goal.
Drational,
So what if they did or did not pull off the caging effort? How does one judge that? I’d say if letters were sent out to such folks, the very fact that they got letters from the government would be intimidating, a “big brother” moment for black, hispanic or older voters. Would they be less inclined to vote if they felt someone was watching? Yes. So just the fact of this illegal caging scheme surely caused some Ohio voters to stay home on election day. And such voters were by and large Democrat voters…
shw
“… what the hell are you on about now?”
Today (6/26) ePluribusmedia will publish a comprehensive review on caging in 2004. I will post a companion piece on DKos.
1. Caging is an authentic voter suppression tool, and has a sordid history of targeting Blacks.
2. In 2004, Caging was organized by RNC, Bush-Cheney ’04 and state Republican Parties.
3. Court documents from 2004 and other files reveal intent to use caging to challenge voters at the polls in 2004 in Forida, Ohio, and other states.
This was BAD indeed, and was intended to suppress Democratic votes to “steal” elections, but more work is required to PROVE caging was USED to steal elections. More importantly, work is required to understand the depth and degree and practice of caging so it can be blocked in the future.
You cannot base legal arguments on bullshit, and legal arguments are needed to stop caging in the future. Why? Because there is an existing legal structure that prevents RNC from doing it when it is racially biased. I f we define HOW caging is racially Biased, we can base rational arguments against its use.
So what do we know:
1. There were no documented caging challenges in Ohio. There were other serious problems in Ohio, but the challenges were prohibited until too late to matter, and the organization spearheading the legal battle against caging in Ohio (Advancement Project) will confirm that there is no evidence caging was UTILIZED in Ohio.
2. There were apparently no challenges based on caging lists in Florida. I know this because I evaluated every single name on the Duval County caging list, one of only 2 in existence. I then obtained a list of every Duval County registered voter, and every voter who had been removed from the voter rolls since 7/04. I know the party affiliation and race of the 90% of the Duval caging list that could be matched to a specific voter. Not a single identified voter on the Duval caging list cast a provisional ballot, the effect of challenges in Florida. Not a single identified voter was removed from the voter rolls for returned mail or by administrative hearing, the result of a challenge. Further, there were no election day challenges PERIOD in Duval, where the existing Florida list was generated.
So in the 2 most touted states for caging, where challenge laws based on old racist legal code allows poll-watchers to force provisional balloting at the polls, there is no evidence for caging based challenges.
Why?
Successful legal challenges and Greg Palast Reporting, drawing attention to what is probably illegal- RNC involvement in caging. In my mind, Palast played a critical role in interfering with RNC caging plans. But his reporting has serious problems that will be discussed in the articles cited above.
We also know:
Caging is racially biased.
Even when letters are sent diffusely to all precincts in a county, as was done in Duval, it acquires black names disproportionately. Not exclusively, not almost exclusively, not predominantly. But clearly and disproportionately, backed up by statistics and publicly available data. You don’t have to buy a book to find out the truth about this issue.
At the end of the day, though, we are faced with dealing with this now and in the future.
The DOJ prosecutor purge was driven by vote suppression ideology, and they are simultaneously dismantling the civil rights section that protects against voter suppression. Republicans will try to use caging in the future. We have to stop this, but we have to do this with facts and good reporting, based on the truth.
Don’t ya just love how KKKarl does “HIS MATH” ?
{Ed Note: Joe, by all means make a comment, especially if it’s on topic, but your entire case doesn’t go here. If you think we need the info, give us a LINK. –99}
{ED NOTE: Comment deleted. It was not posted by Joseph Frankus, but rather someone else using the name to try and embarrass him for some reason. — BF}