Announcing The Launch Of The Voter Suppression Wiki -- Learn, Report, Act

It's that time in the American political cycle again, when politicians and activists and famous people and your family members tell you how important it is to vote. They tell you this election is more important than ever. They tell you if you don't vote, you don't count.

But what about the votes that don't count? What about the systematic attempts to erect barriers between voters and the ballot box? What about voter suppression?

In order to educate, document and mobilize action, I'm excited to introduce the Voter Suppression Wiki.

Inspired by my fellow blogger, rikyrah, at Jack and Jill Politics, plus input from several online and voting rights activists, the purpose of the wiki is to have a central location to coordinate information and action around efforts to suppress the vote in this 2008 election.

Here's a video intro I made at a most ridiculous hour this morning.

There's more.

Some History

Here's a useful definition from Wikipedia

Voter suppression is a form of electoral fraud and refers to the use of governmental power, political campaign strategy, and private resources aimed at suppressing (i.e. reducing) the total vote of opposition candidacies instead of attempting to change likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters. This method is particularly effective if a significant amount of voters are intimidated individually because the voter might not consider his or her single vote important.

America has an uneven history with voting rights. For generations, half the population was prevented from exercising its right to vote. And, while on paper, black men could vote, the reality was never close to the ideal. There is no federal right to vote. Voting is controlled by the states, and many states have had a history of trying to limit the votes of certain groups, especially blacks and poor whites.

The National Voting Rights Act was established in 1965 to outlaw some forms of discriminatory voting practices and is regularly renewed by the U.S. Congress (unless Republicans are messing around)

The Present & Future Of Voter Suppression

So how does voter suppression work today, and what's emerging as the new way to undermine our democracy? Some helpful definitions from The Progressive States Network.

• Voter intimidation "takes many forms from videotaping or asking inappropriate questions of voters in a polling place, to placing heavily armed police outside poll sites, and distributing threatening flyers announcing the penalties for voting fraud"


• Deceptive practices "involves using disinformation campaigns to prevent targeted populations from voting"


• Caging "is the practice of sending non-forwardable mail to voters and challenging the eligibility of every person for whom the mail is returned as undeliverable"


• Voter ID laws "are not intended to prevent in-person voter fraud, of which there is almost no evidence, but are truly designed for the simple purpose of suppressing the vote of groups less likely to have or be able to obtain the required ID - the poor, the disabled, the elderly, and racial and ethnic minorities"


• Proof of citizenship laws "are requirements to provide proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, and in some instances every time you vote"


• Registration drive restrictions "have a discriminatory effect as African Americans and members of Spanish speaking households are twice as likely to be registered through a voter registration drive than whites or members of English speaking households."


• Lack of poll site resources "sometimes have the effect of disproportionately reducing the vote in minority or low income communities."


• Poll location placement involves "placing sites in difficult to access locations [to] help suppress the vote of disfavored groups. This is an especially prevalent tactic in college towns where local leaders want to discourage the participation of students in local elections"

And there are new deceptive tactics emerging online.

Check the incident tracker on the wiki right now. There are incidents targeting the poor, college students, even veterans.

The Role Of The Wiki

The wiki has three broad goals

Educate people about voter suppression. The term encompasses a wide range of tactics designed to limit voter participation. We want the wiki to offer an explanation of what these tactics are, places to learn more about them and the laws involved.

Collect incidents of voter suppression activity. Based on a standard template, wiki users will be able to add reports of voter suppression to the wiki. Each incident has its own page with a standard form to fill in plus discussion area.

Mobilize action to combat and prevent voter suppression. Knowledge is powerful, but only to the extent that you use it to inform decisions. We don't just want to create a group of pissed off people. We want to create a group of pissed off people who are going to write letters, make phone calls and file lawsuits to protect citizens' votes.

How it works.

There are two groups of users: registered and unregistered.

Registered users will be able to edit pages, update entries, report incidents etc. Unregistered users can freely participate in the discussion threads at the bottom of each page. As Jon Pincus (one of the creators of the Get FISA Right web movement and advisor to me on this wiki) said...

Almost all voter suppression relies to a large extent on information asymmetry. If voters know that they may have been purged from the database and it's still before the registration deadline, they can check and if necessary re-register. If college students know that they actually won't put their student loans at risk by registering, then they'll ignore the misleading information from the county. And once tens of thousands of people realized that their votes might not be counted in LA County, there was an outcry -- which meant that officials had to react rather than sweeping problems under the table.

So simple as it sounds, broad awareness of potential voter suppression efforts, both during the registration period and in the final rush to voting, could make a huge difference.

What You Can Do

• Visit the wiki and update it with your own expertise. Fact check, offer improvements. Scrub the formatting. This is a community resource.


• Tell people about it. Digg this blog entry, vote it up on Daily Kos, link to it! And do the same with the wiki itself.


• Be prepared to work hard. None of the excitement of this political season matters if people don't actually get to vote or have that vote counted.

Again, it's votersuppressionwiki.wetpaint.com.

Got ideas, suggestions, etc? Throw it in the wiki. Let's do it.

cross-posted to DailyKos, Jack & Jill Politics, baratunde.com and more coming soon

Follow Baratunde Thurston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/baratunde

Comments

[ACLH]

Voter Augmentation is Also Bad as is Suppression

We received a phone call and mail asking us to vote Republican on the "Pro-Life" issue. The mailing was from the Colorado Republican Committee. It said "Please Complete the Attached Vote-By-Mail Application" pre-addressed to the County Clerk in Colorado Springs, CO. We are registered Democrats living in New Mexico (never in Colorado). The phone call was to our NM area code and the mail was to our NM home address. The list of voter registration requirements (looks quite lenient) and info re 1st time voters were both on the mailing. I fear that this exhortation to register and vote in a neighboring state is a strategy to encourage cross-state and/or double state voting.

[ACLH]

We received a phone call and mail asking us to vote Republican on the "Pro-Life" issue. The mailing was from the Colorado Republican Committee. It said "Please Complete the Attached Vote-By-Mail Application" pre-addressed to the County Clerk in Colorado Springs, CO. We are registered Democrats living in New Mexico (never in Colorado). The phone call was to our NM area code and the mail was to our NM home address. The list of voter registration requirements (looks quite lenient) and info re 1st time voters were both on the mailing. I fear that this exhortation to register and vote in a neighboring state is a strategy to encourage cross-state and/or double-state voting.

[BDunne]

Great effort. As someone who has already registered over a thousand voters, I am fully aware of these tactics. I will print small cards with the wiki website address to distribute at upcoming events. Thank you!

[CompetenceMatters]

Thank you, thank you!

Your grassroots are showing. You are saving this country, and I will do my part, pass it on, pay it forward!

[joanb]

This is, indeed, a great idea. Let OpEdNews work with you to get the word out. We have also been working hard over the last several years to build up a network of concerned citizens committed to bringing about elections that are as fair, accurate, transparent and as inclusive as possible. As Election Integrity Editor, my goal is three-fold: to ensure that every legal voter is able to vote without unnecessary barriers or obstacles; that every vote is counted; and that every vote, when counted, is counted as cast. The last few elections have shown that we are 0 for 3 on that score. Without those three principles in place, our democracy is more a theory than a reality. Let's see what we can do about that!
Joan Brunwasser, Election Integrity Ed., OpEdNews

[blindhog]

The most dispicable thing I heard about the McBush operatives is that they are checking the addresses of people who have been foreclosed on so that they can't vote.

The very wealthy "nonregulated" crooks at the top made sure they stole the money of the unsuspecting poor and middleclass and now that these poor and middleclass don't even have a roof over their head, they are basically on the canvas, the Republican operatives are figuratively kicking them in the head.

It reminds me of the video of the bully girls beating up on the poor girl snared in a trap of their own making.

Poor and middleclass Republicans, don't let this once great party fool you any longer. This is no longer the Grand Old Party of Eisenhower. He taxed the very rich at 90%, he built our interstate highway system that was the envy of the world, during his term unions and the middleclass fourished and grew. Bush and his want-to-be would make Eisenhower sick!!!!!!! Save yourself and vote Democatic, come join our party, we welcome you.

[sheikwil]

The Obama campaign is on top of them trying to use the foreclosure crap, they have already filed a lawsuit to keep them from doing that. The Republicans will stoop to anything regardless of how bad it makes them look, so we see that McCain will do anything to win, this goes further to show that he is a lyar and has no honor.

[kellygrrrl]

excellent!

I will pass this along to as many people as possible!!!

[demfriend]

Thank you. Four years ago, eight years ago votes were somehow changed, lost and voters were not allowed to vote for so many reasons as you listed above. Dead people have found a way to vote routinely which I believe isn't them coming from Heaven to select their candidate and we all know it. Some counties have had many more voters than people who live in them which also amazes me when it appears like nomads are all over the country going from place to place in massive numbers. Machines! Them damn machines we all find a way to curse them after the election as the numbers going in are not the numbers coming out and we all know the equation from our computer classes, GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. But if we are voting for someone and all of the people we talked to are voting for someone and the other guy wins our area we must be talking to a whole lot of liars or the infernal machine changed the votes on us. Hackers delight my nephew says about the Diebold machines. But Thank You, Thank You Thank YOU we do need all of the help we can get to make it more honest this year!

[LateDave]

Do not be deceived about the difference between vote fraud and vote suppression.

Fraud requires a lively and unethical "machine" that largely controls political affairs in a district. Ballot box stuffing, vote buying, and precinct report alteration can be performed by any conspiracy that has enough control to ignore or intimidate honest vote monitors and voters. It was rare for awhile. Johnson delivered Texas for Kennedy (before Nixon turned the bigoted South Republican), Mayor Daley the elder delivered Chicago for a generation, Boss Tweed ran New York from Tammany Hall, but only the "butterfly" foulup in Miami in 2000 and the blatant criminality in Ohio in 2004 are noteworthy here. Vote fraud, once associated with Democrats, has more recently become an equal-opportunity crime.

Vote suppression is different. Instead of positive votes added (ballot box stuffing), votes switched (vote buying), or alteration of results (voting machine tweaking), suppression prevents voters from voting at all, by fraudulent challenges to eligibility (the false lists of felons used to purge Florida's voter rolls in 2000), intimidation (as a young right-wing lawyer, Supreme Court Chief Justice Rehnquist legendarily challenged the English literacy of individual voters in Arizona), and now the mailing of "do not forward" letters to redlined voting districts all over the country to identify voters with unstable addresses. Unlike vote fraud, suppression is statistical and intrinsically bigoted: you only attempt to suppress in precincts you expect to lose, even though you have no idea how the suppressed voters would have voted.

[mie2cents]

Great post!
These are the type of information national, regional and local media should be reporting (on a daily basis). Please forward to all media formats (i.e., television, newspaper & radio).
Republicans, Independents, Liberatarians & Demcrats for Obama/Biden

[TexasDem0]

When there is no penalty for unconcealed and unashamed voter fraud, there is no incentive for the culpable to stop doing it. Under the guidance and protection of the most openly criminal administration in the history of the U.S., the problem has only gotten worse.

[TexasDem0]

P.S.
Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008 by Mark Crispin Miller
http://www.amazon.com/Loser-Take-All-Subversion-Democracy/dp/0978843142/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221766742&sr=1-1

[deeppeace]

Republicans in Michigan are plotting to disqualify voters whose homes were foreclosed. Most are African/American, hence likely Democrats. Don't let that happen!