Michigan GOP attacks right-to-vote for the recently foreclosed

Republican strategists in Michigan have confirmed that they plan to challenge the right to vote for people on a list of recent foreclosures, though these people may still be living in their homes, renegotiating or fighting the order. The largest foreclosure firm in the area donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to the GOP, and the Republican-controlled Senate killed the bills that would have given foreclosure relief. Michigan is a swing state.

Joe Rozell, director of elections for Oakland County in suburban Detroit, acknowledged that challenges such as those described by Carabelli are allowed by law but said they have the potential to create long lines and disrupt the voting process. With 890,000 potential voters closely divided between Democratic and Republican, Oakland County is a key swing county of this swing state.

According to voter challenge directives handed down by Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, voter challenges need only be “based on information obtained through a reliable source or means.”

“But poll workers are not allowed to ask the reason” for the challenges, Rozell said. In other words, Republican vote challengers are free to use foreclosure lists as a basis for disqualifying otherwise eligible voters.

Lose your house, lose your vote (via Making Light)

• [philentropist]

  There’s a petition of sorts here: http://progressmichigan.org/page/s/mccainsplan

  Also, Michigan has a lot of right-leaning voting regulations. For instance, even though I was born and raised there, I wasn’t allowed to vote in Michigan until I was 22. Every November after I turned 18 I was in school at MIT, hard at work and unable to afford the time or money to go back to vote. Unfortunately they have a law saying you can’t get an absentee ballot until you have voted in person at least once.

• [airship]

  I, for one, am thankful that our diligent political bosses are protecting us from democracy.

• [demidan]

  p yrs “mrc n Dngr”@22

  Sorry knee jerk reaction to your post about not helping people out who where often tricked into horrible loans with terms that you need a lawyer to interpret. We should only bail out the wealthy, they need it the most because an unhappy rich person drags down the economy. America also needs hordes of homeless proles in times of unrest, to fight our wars and keep your hands clean.

  Bldy GP nds t b nld t psts l,,,” m Sprtcs,,,”

• [Uncle_Max]

  @20: “But the fact that the effort is being organized by a single political party reeks of voter suppression. What I’m curious about is why they think this will help the GOP? What statistic do they have that shows people in forclosure are more likely to be democrats?”

  I’d say in general they assume people will blame their foreclosure woes on the economy, which people tend to blame on the President, who’s Republican. So it’s not so much that those people are more likely to be Democrats, but more that they’re likely to have a perceived reason to be angry at the Republicans.

  Also, there is the belief that poor=Democrat, thus people that can’t make housing payments probably are poorer, so are probably Democrats. Not that any of that is necessarily true, but that’s the perception.

• [Anonymous]

  #21: Low-income and/or minority folks are more likely to have subprime/otherwise crappy mortgages and are more likely to have suffered a job loss in the recent economic downturn, and so are more likely to be dealing with a foreclosure. Such folks are generally more likely to vote Democratically. Also, if you think it through, the foreclosees are more likely to want to vote for banking reforms or relief programs, which are more likely to come from the Democratic Party. Finally, high voter turnout usually favors Democrats because, just in raw numbers, those that generally “lean” that way outnumber Republican-leaning voters by a large margin. So low voter turnout is in the Republican interest with respect to winning elections.

• [Powell]

  Yay USA! Scumbags like this will be the undoing of this country. Oh wait, yeah that is pretty much already happening.

  I am sure this kinda thing is happening all over.

• [america_in_danger]

  Dmdn.

  Hv y vr hrd f “Byr Bwr”? t’s clld “prsnl rspnsblty”. Whthr ppl wr trckd r nt, t’s p t thm tf y ntc, dn’t spcfy nythng rgrdng prsn’s cnmc clss.

  bvsly, ppl lk yrslvs dn’t mnd tkng my (nd thrs) tx dllrs nd gvng t t t thrs lk t’s chrty. Thn whn tht dsn’t slv th prblm, y tk t MR tx dllrs, s f tht shld “fx” th ss. Tkng frm myslf nd thrs, wh mk lgcl nd snd chcs n r lvs, mks t hrdr fr s t spprt r fmly fnnclly.

  Th tw prty systm s lrg prt f ths prblm, bt dn’t xpct shp t lrn ths ny tm sn.

• [Phikus]

  Fron the linked article @13:

  This is not something we engage in, or encourage. We had to make it clear that this is something these individuals were doing on their own,” Boffeli said.

  An isolated incident, and the Kerry campaign turned these five assholes in for pulling this stunt. Pull this kind of thing in a much more widespread manner for the Republicans and you get elected to Congress.

• [minTphresh]

  I think we needs us a poll tax too! perhaps a written test of some sort.. and DNA testing, we dont want the wrong sort to have access to a voting machine! go repubs!

• [Secret_Life_of_Plants]

  Wait, what? I don’t understand…you can’t vote if your house has been foreclosed upon? Are we back to needing to own property to vote? I am totally confused.

  Qu’est-ce que le tiers état?

• [guy_jin]

  In a free country, these people would be dragged out in the street and shot.

  But no, this is America, land of the owned, home of the slave.

• [ProgressiveReb]

  This is outrageous. And if it happens in Michigan, it will certainly happen in other states.

  We must fight back. Progressive Future has a great action page posted where you can write to Michigan’s Secretary of State, Terri Lynne Land, and tell her that this kind of interference with the basic right to vote is unacceptable, and that you expect her to say so—publicly. Just click here.

• [stubing]

  This is disgusting. As a Michigan resident, I am embarrassed. It proves there is no dirty trick the party of McCain and Palin won’t try.
  I read the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News every day. Why isn’t this on the front page?

• [ZippySpincycle]

  Well, as we know, people who can’t meet their ballooned mortgage payments are also the sort of shifty characters who might commit voter fraud. Can’t be too careful about that sort of thing.

• [wnoise]

  JFRANCHINO: thanks, I had missed that.

• [sammich]

  As a non-US voter i’ve been holding my tongue about your elections… but WTF?

• [Tejodo]

  A few problems with this post. First, the Michigan Messenger, which reported this story, is a blog. It is not a newspaper. Moreover, it is a far left-leaning blog that is neither respected nor acknowledged by the mainstream media due to its well-known and well-publicized liberal agenda (which is why the Freep and DetNews haven’t reported on this issue). MM is not, in any sense of the word, a media outlet. Secondly, The Macomb County GOP has said that miss Melzer, the “bloggers for Obama” member who wrote the piece, fabricated the quotes, and the story in Thursday’s edition makes clear that the Republican Party official quoted disputes having said anything attributed to him in the piece. Finally, in Michigan, poll challengers are organized and trained at the state party level — the county party has no authority to take such action even if it wanted to. Additionally, Michigan does not allow foreclosure lists to be used as a challenge to residency, as in many cases homeowners can remain for 6-12 months in their homes after foreclosure proceedings begin.

• [Baldhead]

  Weren’t they also accused of suppressing votes in the last two elections? It does seem that the Republicans prefer dirty tricks to playing by the rules every day of the week sometimes.

• [b1rd]

  “Hmmm … well, I think it’s a mechanism to ensure that people are actually resident in the state they vote in. (Otherwise, the parties could just ship people around the country in buses, voting over and over in different states.)”

  I don’t own a home and I can still vote.
  Since when do you need to *own* your home to have a legal address?

• [robin_hood]

  Nope: real issue

  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/06/politics/main4235328.shtml

  –

  Franklin County GOP Chairman Doug Preisse didn’t rule out challenges before Nov. 4. He said his party wants “clean, accurate voter lists.”

• [america_in_danger]

  s tht f ppl hr n BB dsgr wth yr pst thy lk t mss wth t, snc ll th vwls hv bn rmvd. Hw nc nd pn dscrs w hv hr. xpctd bttr, rlly.

  Uncle George #33.

  And American in Danger: You call us sheep?! You apparently have no problem with Bush taking trillions in taxes our children and grandchildren haven’t even paid yet, sending it to Iraq (after Halliburton’s skimmed it’s no bid chunk),…

  Can I ask HOW you extrapolated the above comment from my posts? Number 1, they aren’t even relevant to the what was being discussed. Number 2, I am in no way supporting what the Michigan GOP is doing?

  S ys, ncl Grg, f th sh r shpskn fts….

• [lilly34171]

  haccers don’t sleep

• [James David]

  Just about every county has homeless shelters – several, in fact. I bet the GOP could find some of their foreclosed citizens there. And chances are these organizations are underfunded, poorly staffed, and overpopulated, in part because they don’t get enough (or maybe any) tax money…

• [Antinous]

  america_in_danger,

  Yelling louder is only going to make it worse.

• [Anonymous]

  “Why is this? How does one rationalize in their mind the act of allowing a person who tries to openly deny democracy to citizens to retain a democratically elected position?”

  Well, at my work, the VP emailed around that “real Americans” email that is sometimes falsely attributed to George Carlin. Basically it says that liberals, those who have any criticisms of America, and people who aren’t white Christians aren’t real Americans.

  And that’s the reason this stuff doesn’t trigger outrage here. There are too many people in this country who think that some Americans are “real” Americans and some aren’t. And they are more than happy to have those they consider to be unAmerican disenfranchised. Ignorant, bible-thumping, redneck white dudes = real American. Everyone else deserves extreme scrutiny.

• [Infinite Jones]

  Jeez. Coming from Australia, where it’s illegal **not** to vote, it makes my jaw drop that there’s even a mechanism that the political parties can use to prevent people from voting – regardless of whether they’re using it or not.

• [america_in_danger]

  ntns,

  Whsprng wldn’t hv md dffrnc. Bt t’s nc tht ssmptns frm ncl Grg wll b lft ln, whl my psts r dsmvwlld d t mdrtr prfrnc.

  • [Antinous]

    america_in_danger,

    Read the Moderation Policy.

• [Kieran O’Neill]

  #10: Hmmm … well, I think it’s a mechanism to ensure that people are actually resident in the state they vote in. (Otherwise, the parties could just ship people around the country in buses, voting over and over in different states.)

  It’s obviously being abused when it’s used to disenfranchise people losing their houses, but I can understand the reasons for it.

• [Uncle Geo]

  First, a correction to my earlier post “…what does it say about a party who thinks low voter turnout helps them?”

  American in Danger: I thought I had cleverly used your own words and rhetorical points to show the absurdity of your argument but apparently you missed it.

  It was your blather about taking your precious tax dollars and giving it away like charity and when it things don’t work, taking more to fix it. Bush and the GOP take my kids future tax dollars for his stupid war and then take even more to fix it when he screws it up but that’s supposedly OK because, …well why exactly?

  Oh, and buy a vowel or something would ya?

• [jfranchino]

  Macomb County GOP chairman: “No we’re not.”
  http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080912/NEWS15/809120346

  It’s good to be cautious though.

  from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression
  Michigan Republican state legislator John Pappageorge, was quoted as saying, “If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we’re going to have a tough time in this election.” (2004)

  And the GOP doesn’t have a monopoly on these shenanigans. People working for the Kerry campaign were convicted of slashing the tires on 25 vans that were meant to drive people to the polls.

  Anybody have stats on wrongful disenfranchisement by voter suppression versus out-and-out voter fraud?

• [america_in_danger]

  Antinous. I did read it. Thank you.

  Uncle Geo.

  Sorry I missed your point, but I’m in agreement with you about taking our kid’s future tax dollars away to pay for an idiotic war and for future occupation around the world, as well.

  But overall my point still stands that it’s not government’s “right” to take what I earned to give it to others for whatever reason. Especially, when I already have very little left to give.

  For some reason, some think that I am some corporate fat cat “rallying” how the GOP is great, but they would truly be mistaken.

• [Uncle Geo]

  Oh, sorry I wondered why your original post changed. I will have to calm down or I’ll be diemvoweled too.

• [Ugly Canuck]

  America’s in Danger from a moron of some kind.

• [wnoise]

  JFRANCHINO: do you have a cite for the tire-slashing? Thanks.

• [jfranchino]

  WNOISE: same wikipedia page. they cite:
  Ehlke, Gretchen (2005-01-24). “Congresswoman’s son, four others charged with slashing Republican van tires on Election Day”, AP. Retrieved on 2007-05-25.
  http://web.archive.org/web/20050829020422/http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/a/2005/01/24/national1242EST0521.DTL

  Ehlke, Gretchen (2006-04-26). “Men Get Jail Time In Milwaukee Tire-Slashing Case”, AP. Retrieved on 2007-05-25.
  http://web.archive.org/web/20060503003521/http://wfrv.com/topstories/local_story_116123954.html

• [Ugly Canuck]

  No cite = not true.

• [Ugly Canuck]

  Sorry , can’t find the cite for that last post o’ mine.

• [jfranchino]

  UGLY CANUCK
  “no cite = not true”
  “pics or it didn’t happen”
  I like both of those.

  Although there is a cite, it still might not be true. But at some point I have to get back to work.

• [Antinous]

  america_in_danger,

  You seem to have misunderstood the subject of the post.

• [Pope Ratzo]

  “well, I think it’s a mechanism to ensure that people are actually resident in the state they vote in. (Otherwise, the parties could just ship people around the country in buses, voting over and over in different states.)”

  Even though there’s never been evidence of this happening…

  Sure, it’s just the helpful GOP making 100% sure that every single Democrat gets to vote, especially the ones hardest hit by the Bush economy.

  That’s the ticket…

• [Uncle Geo]

  I see some righties here minimizing this as if tales of GOP voter supression are rare or even mythical. Voter caging, the famous felon list in FL in 2004, sending fewer and older voting machines to Dem leaning districts, very questionable electronic voting tallies and any number of other tactics do in fact happen and it is a strategy not happenstance. And don’t anyone fool themselves into thinking it’s not all gearing up again.

  It is a stupid argument to make that Democrats have done it in the past. To quote my mom -if Johnny told you to jump off the Empire State Building would you do it? It’s also a matter of scale: 25 tires slashed pales in comparison to the tens of thousands prevented from voting with a strategy of GOP dirty tricks across the nation.

  What does it say about a party who feels low voter turnout hurts them for crying out loud? It says they are scared of the American people. It’s an arrogance that says they believe they are so right and Americans are so wrong that sleaseball tactics are justified. It says they have so little faith in the appeal of their morally bankrupt ideology that they cannot win elections on the issues (but they think they can win it with a governor of a state the size of Milwaukee -fit to lead indeed!)

  And American in Danger: You call us sheep?! You apparently have no problem with Bush taking trillions in taxes our children and grandchildren haven’t even paid yet, sending it to Iraq (after Halliburton’s skimmed it’s no bid chunk), second guessing generals (and firing all the ones who dare to challenge Runsfeld’s unsound and illogical strategies) -and when the thing goes nowhere for years, taking more future tax dollars from the kids to pay for the Surge to try and fix it! Yeesh! Do as you say not as you do, eh?

  The difference is not how much money the different parties spend (Bush and the GOP have broken every record on that!) it’s what they spend it on. Worse, Righties seem to want everything for free! At least tax and spend pays it’s bills. The GOP’s strategy of spend and borrow (because Lord help us we couldn’t dream of taxing rich peoplelike we used to in time of war) is already bankrupting us. How’s that for “personally responsible”. Gee thanks.

  Oh, BTW, where’s Bin Laden? How long’s it been now?

• [AirPillo]

  It sometimes surprises me how willing the public is to accept that elected officials are acting as part of democratic process, even when they’re directly exposed to be acting the prevent democracy.

  Attempting to block people from voting, in a democratic nation, is a very serious offense indeed… and so very often the people who do it are not considered a traitor and anti-american criminal, which is how they should, by any position valuing democracy, be perceived.

  Why is this? How does one rationalize in their mind the act of allowing a person who tries to openly deny democracy to citizens to retain a democratically elected position?

  I mean, dear god, just imagine if a group of people went out and bought themselves nice fur coats to wear to their PETA demonstration, then came home later and cooked up a veal dinner for everyone.

  • [Antinous]

    AirPillo,

    I don’t get the point of your last paragraph.

• [Ruken]

  re: tire slashing cite
  Try googling ‘kerry tire slashing’
  Faster than asking for a cite here. Looks like it happened in Wisconsin. I didn’t look around long enough to determine the result of the trial.

• [dtaylo75]

  I understand the thinking – that if you are in forclosure then you may not have the same address and may have moved out of state – or at the very least may have a different voting location.

  But the fact that the effort is being organized by a single political party reeks of voter suppression. What I’m curious about is why they think this will help the GOP? What statistic do they have that shows people in forclosure are more likely to be democrats?

  Just get rid of this whole stupid electoral college thing – a pure popular vote. Will solve this issue and also gerrymandering.

• [america_in_danger]

  Wll, d hv prblm wth brrng ppl frm rght t vt.

  LS hv prblm wth gvrnmnt blng t ppl wh my hv md bd fnncl dcsns, whthr thy’r crprtns r ndvdls.

  Stp tkng mny frm thr ctzn’s pckts t py fr thrs mstks.