[ Purging Democratic voters from the rolls has now gone
nationwide, at least in states where voting is controlled by
Republicans]
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LOOK OUT: HOW THE GOP’S NEWEST ANTI-VOTING SCAM WORKS  
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Thom Hartmann
September 14, 2022
The Hartmann Report
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_ Purging Democratic voters from the rolls has now gone nationwide,
at least in states where voting is controlled by Republicans _

, Image by Vkastro from Pixabay

 

Get ready. If you’re a Democratic voter, there’s a chance you’ll
show up to vote this November and discover you can’t because
you’re no longer registered. Millions will be blindsided this way,
and it could turn elections toward Republicans across the nation.

AMERICA HATES GOP POLICIES OF BANNING ABORTION, GIFTING THE MORBIDLY
RICH WITH TRILLIONS IN TAX CUTS, DENYING CLIMATE CHANGE AND BLOCKING
ANY REMEDIES TO IT, AND FILLING OUR CITIES WITH GUNS. SO, REPUBLICANS
KNOW, THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN WIN IN MANY PLACES IS TO SIMPLY PREVENT
PEOPLE FROM VOTING.

As Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich said
[[link removed]] back in 1980, “Quite
frankly, our leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populace
goes down.“

THUS, REPUBLICANS ARE COMING FOR YOUR VOTE WITH A FEROCITY NOT SEEN
SINCE SOUTHERN EFFORTS DURING RECONSTRUCTION. IN ADDITION TO THEIR
HUNDREDS OF NEW LAWS AND RULES HAVING TO DO WITH VOTER ID, MOVING OR
CLOSING POLLING PLACES, AND GUTTING PEOPLE’S ABILITY TO GET ABSENTEE
BALLOTS, THEY’VE ADOPTED POLL-SCRUBBING TACTICS THAT HAVE ALREADY
SHOWN THEY CAN CUT DEMOCRATIC VOTES AND HAND ELECTIONS TO REPUBLICANS.

They’re doing it with a new sophistication, going way beyond simply
requiring voters to count jellybeans or recite the Constitution
verbatim. Now, with a big boost from five Republicans on the Supreme
Court, they’re using the scientific method to prevent
Democratic-leaning citizens from voting.

HERE’S HOW NEWEST SCAM WORKS, IN A NUTSHELL.

People who lose pay when they take time off work — largely
working-class and working-poor people — are less likely to vote
every cycle, particularly in elections that don’t seem crucial like
midterm elections.  After all, it costs them money to take time off
work to vote and over a century of white people imposing poll taxes on
Black people proved that making voting expensive reduces voter turnout
among working-class people.

FORCING PEOPLE TO PAY TO VOTE IS CALLED A POLL TAX. IT SHOULD BE
ILLEGAL, BUT SAM ALITO AND FOUR OTHER CORRUPT REPUBLICANS ON THE
SUPREME COURT RECENTLY GAVE A NEW WAY OF PREVENTING WORKING PEOPLE
FROM VOTING THEIR SEAL OF APPROVAL. IT IS, ARGUABLY, A NEW TYPE OF
POLL TAX BECAUSE IT ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY HITS WORKING-CLASS AND POOR
PEOPLE.

Poll taxes became a big thing in the wake of the collapse of
Reconstruction in the 1880s, with most states that used them offering
an “exception” to the tax for anybody who “declared” that
their ancestors had voted before the Civil War. Because prior to the
Civil War the voting populace was 100% white in the South, the effect
of that exception was that the poll tax fell entirely on the
newly-enfranchised Black voters.

_IF ONLY WE COULD BRING BACK THE POLL TAX_, REPUBLICANS
THOUGHT, _THINGS WOULD BE GOOD_! AFTER ALL, IT WAS ONLY ABOLISHED
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THE PASSAGE OF THE 24TH AMENDMENT IN 1964 AND 5 SOUTHERN
STATES CONTINUED
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USE POLL TAXES AGAINST BLACK VOTERS UNTIL THE NEW AMENDMENT WAS TESTED
BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT IN 1966.

IF THEY COULD ONLY FIGURE OUT A WAY TO USE THE “COST OF VOTING”
BORNE BY WORKING-CLASS PEOPLE TO KEEP THEM FROM VOTING OR — EVEN
BETTER! — KICK THEM OFF THE VOTING ROLLS ALTOGETHER, REPUBLICANS
COULD MORE EASILY WIN ELECTIONS.

One of their previous strategies to suppress the vote of poor and
working-class people had been to put so few voting machines and
polling places in Black and predominately-Democratic voting precincts
that lines to vote could run two, three, or even ten hours long. It
was successful for years in cutting back poor and working-class voting
participation.

But over the last decade or two there’s been a lot of push-back
against this widespread practice as those long lines were getting
publicity; there had to be a way to pull it off that was less visible,
less likely to be called out, less likely to arouse outrage in the
media.

BUT WHAT WOULD THAT BE, AND HOW TO PULL IT OFF?

THE ANSWER, IT TURNS OUT, WAS SIMPLE AND ELEGANT.

Ohio Republican Secretary of State John Husted figured out the magic
formula and took it all the way to the Supreme Court in 2018, where 5
corrupt Republicans gave it their seal of approval (in defiance of
federal law — the National Voter Registration Act of 1993
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and the 24th Amendment).

Husted knew that people paid by the hour were both _more_ likely to
be Democratic voters and, because voting cost them money,
were _less_ likely to vote in every election.

SO, HE REASONED, IF HE COULD SIMPLY USE THE _FAILURE_ TO VOTE IN
PREVIOUS ELECTIONS AS THE _TRIGGER_ TO PURGE THOSE WORKING-CLASS
CITIZENS FROM THE VOTING ROLLS, EVERYTHING WOULD WORK OUT BETTER FOR
REPUBLICANS BECAUSE IT WOULD MOSTLY TRAP WORKING-CLASS AND POOR
PEOPLE.

After all, people who are paid salaries — and, thus, don’t lose
pay when they take time off to vote — tend to vote in every
election; it’s a habit in part because it’s cost-free. And those
salaried people are more likely to be upper-middle class white people,
who make up the voting base of the Republican Party.

AS NOTED AT _DEBT.ORG
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“Republican candidates gain a significantly higher percentage of
votes from individuals with incomes over $50,000 per year, and the
advantage increases along with the income level, to a height of 63
percent of individuals earning $200,000 or more a year supporting
Republicans.

“This level is the direct inverse of individuals earning less than
$15,000 a year, who support Democrats at 63 percent and Republicans at
only 36 percent.”

It’s a safe bet that most all of those people earning less than
$15,000 a year — and a good-sized chunk of people earning under
$50,000 a year — are paid hourly, so it costs them money to take
time off work to vote.

It’s also a safe bet that the vast majority of those earning more
than $200,000 a year — and a good-sized chunk of people earning over
$50,000 a year — are paid salaries, so it costs them nothing to take
time off work to vote.

SO, HUSTED PROPOSED, LET’S JUST TARGET AND PURGE FROM THE VOTING
ROLLS ALL THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE INTERMITTENT VOTERS; AFTER ALL,
THEY’RE MORE LIKELY TO BE DEMOCRATS.  LEAVE THE SALARIED PEOPLE WHO
VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION ALONE; THEY’RE RELIABLE REPUBLICAN VOTERS.

To give a patina of legitimacy to this naked attempt to purge Ohio’s
voting rolls of Democratic voters, he added a second touch, borrowed
from the old GOP strategy of “caging.”

THIS STRATEGY GOES BACK 40+ YEARS. IN THE FIRST YEAR OF THE REAGAN
ADMINISTRATION, THE RNC BEGAN AN AGGRESSIVE “CAGING” PROGRAM TO
REMOVE BLACK PEOPLE FROM THE VOTER ROLLS NATIONWIDE. 

They did it by sending junk-mail-looking letters into Black
neighborhoods asking for address verification, and when the letters
weren’t returned they’d strip those people from the rolls.

THIS PROCESS OF ISOLATING “UNDESIRABLE” VOTERS IS CALLED “VOTER
CAGING.”

As _The Washington Post noted
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October 29, 2004 a week before the Bush/Kerry election:

“In 1981, the Republican National Committee sent letters to
predominantly black neighborhoods in New Jersey, and when 45,000
letters were returned as undeliverable, the committee compiled a
challenge list to remove those voters from the rolls. …

“In 1986, the RNC tried to have 31,000 voters, most of them Black,
removed from the rolls in Louisiana when a party mailer was returned.
…

“Undeliverable mail is the basis for this year’s challenges in
Ohio. Republicans also sent mail to about 130,000 voters in
Philadelphia, another heavily Black and Democratic stronghold.”

This is called caging, a term that comes out of the junk-mail business
where address-unknown mail returned by the Post Office was put in a
separate physical “cage” in the mailing warehouse so those names
could be removed from the mailing lists to avoid paying postage to
them in the future.  

Applied to voting, it simply involves purging or removing people from
the voting rolls when they fail to return the above-mentioned letters
or postcards or they’re returned as undeliverable.

Karl Rove and his protégé, Timothy Griffin, were apparently heavily
involved in caging efforts in Ohio in 2004, although when Congress
tried to look into it President Bush invoked Executive Privilege and
shut down the investigation, as noted by the William Mitchell Law
Review
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2008.

BECAUSE OF ALL THE NOISE AROUND THE 2004 ELECTION AND ROVE’S ALLEGED
CAGING EFFORTS, HUSTED REINVENTED IT IN A NEW AND HIGHLY SELECTIVE
FASHION THAT HE THOUGHT WOULD GAIN APPROVAL FROM THE 5 REPUBLICANS ON
THE SUPREME COURT:

_Start with the addresses of those voters who’d failed to vote in
previous (typically midterm) elections, and send the caging letters
only to them, using the excuse that Ohio was “just trying to verify
that they hadn’t moved.”_

USING THIS STRATEGY AND OTHERS, AS THE BRENNAN CENTER FOR
JUSTICE NOTED
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REPUBLICANS PURGED OVER 17 MILLION AMERICANS FROM VOTING ROLLS
NATIONWIDE JUST BETWEEN 2016 AND 2018.

The last time Brian Kemp faced Stacey Abrams for governor of Georgia,
for example, he purged 107,000 people
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the voting rolls just prior to the election, all of them registered
voters who failed to return a caging card.

He “won” by 50,000 votes, and is repeating his efforts again this
year through his Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger
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name, ironically, is correctly pronounced “Raff–ens–purger”).

RAFFENSPERGER RECENTLY SENT
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LETTERS TO 185,666 GEORGIANS WHILE STACEY ABRAMS IS FRANTICALLY TRYING
TO GET 100,000 VOTERS REGISTERED TO MAKE UP FOR THE PURGES.

When Democrats sued Husted in the 2018 case _Husted v. A. Philip
Randolph Institute
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Court Associate Justice Sam Alito opened his decision approving of the
new GOP voter purge strategy, quoting statistics that are meaningless
as his rationale for endorsing Husted’s strategy:

“It has been estimated that 24 million voter registrations in the
United States—about one in eight—are either invalid or
significantly inaccurate. And about 2.75 million people are said to be
registered to vote in more than one State.”

IT’S A COMPLETELY EMPTY ARGUMENT BECAUSE THOSE NUMBERS, WHILE
ACCURATE, DON’T MEAN THAT ANY OF THOSE INACCURATE, INVALID, OR
DUPLICATE VOTER REGISTRATIONS ARE EVER USED.

It’s rare that people who move from state to state bother to notify
the Secretary of State of the state they left that they no longer live
there, so of course there are many Americans registered to vote in
multiple states or at wrong addresses.

In the past 45 years, I’ve moved from Michigan to New Hampshire to
Germany to Georgia to Vermont to Oregon to Washington DC and back to
Oregon. I’ve never notified anybody that I’d left the state I
moved from. And there’s nothing wrong with that: it’s normal.

MOST PEOPLE DO THE SAME AS ME, AND THAT DOESN’T MEAN _ANY_ OF THEM
ARE FRAUDULENTLY VOTING: THIS IS A “PROBLEM” THAT DOES NOT NEED A
SOLUTION. STATES GENERALLY REMOVE PEOPLE FROM VOTING ROLLS WHEN
DRIVERS’ LICENSES EXPIRE AND ARE NOT RENEWED, OR PEOPLE STOP PAYING
STATE INCOME TAXES. IT’S SLIGHTLY SLOWER, BUT WORKS JUST FINE.

Nonetheless, Alito thought it was a fine excuse to give the legal
endorsement to Republican voter purging on an industrial scale.

IN HER DISSENT, JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR WROTE:

“It is unsurprising in light of the history of such purge programs
that numerous amici report that the Supplemental Process has
disproportionately affected minority, low-income, disabled, and
veteran voters.

“As one example, amici point to an investigation that revealed that
in Hamilton County, ‘African-American-majority neighborhoods in
downtown Cincinnati had 10% of their voters removed due to
inactivity’ since 2012, as compared to only 4% of voters in a
suburban, majority-white neighborhood.”

BUT THE FIVE REPUBLICANS ON THE COURT PREVAILED, AND OHIO’S
PURGER-IN-CHIEF JOHN HUSTED HAILED
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VICTORY AND THIS NEW WAY OF PURGING DEMOCRATIC-LEANING VOTERS AS A
“MODEL FOR OTHER [REPUBLICAN] STATES” TO FOLLOW.

Purging Democratic voters from the rolls has now gone nationwide, at
least in states where voting is controlled by Republicans.

Greg Palast estimates there will be at least 4 million fully legal and
appropriately registered voters purged just this year, although the
history Pew documented from 2016-1018 suggests the number may be over
ten million.

Thus, it’s critical this year to check your voter registration to
make sure you haven’t already become a victim of this vicious new
scheme that five Republicans on the Supreme Court have recently
legalized.  

_Thom Hartmann is a NY Times bestselling author of 34 books in 17
languages & nation's #1 progressive radio host. Psychotherapist,
international relief worker. Politics, history, spirituality,
psychology, science, anthropology, pre-history, culture, and the
natural world._

* Electoral Politics
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* voter suppression
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* Republican Party
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