Black Box Voting

1st, only certain people could vote, then, some people only had 3/5 of a vote, next, came poll taxes, then, came literacy tests. Folks in Michigan who lost their homes haven't suffered enough, figures the Michigan GOP party.  They lose their vote, too! This will affect more than 62,000 households in the state.  Here comes Jim Crow to Michigan!

Lose your house, lose your vote  By Eartha Jane Melzer 9/10/08  Michigan Republicans plan to foreclose African American voters

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

...One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

Guess who was the biggest victim of the sub prime loans?

The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth....

You would think that after 2000, Florida would want to do everything it can to enfranchise voters.  But no.  Florida has decided to start enforcing the draconian "No Match No Vote" law that requires voters' personal information to match up with two different government databases. Given that Government databases contain errors, and often do not match each other, many voters will not match! Through no fault of their own. Florida is only one of four states doing this.  North Carolina eliminated this rule in 2007.  The "No Match No Vote" law will be enforced just weeks before the deadline to register to vote in Florida, right when about 20% of new voters are registered.

Florida's 'no match, no vote' enforcement could be too much, too late Mike Thomas  COMMENTARY September 11, 2008

...So here we go again, with Republican election officials making decisions that disproportionately will affect Democratic voters in a crucial election now rated as a tossup in the polls.

....The verification law, commonly called "no match, no vote," first was approved by the Legislature in 2005.

It requires that applicants put an identifying number on voter-registration forms -- usually a drivers-license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. That number then is checked against state or federal databases to confirm the person's identity.

It sounds simple enough. But that's not the case.