[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: The Poll Tax, Updated

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The Poll Tax, Updated

October 7, 2004
 


 

When members of Mi Familia Vota, a Latino group, were
registering voters recently on a Miami Beach sidewalk
outside a building where new citizens were being sworn in,
the Homeland Security Department ordered them to stop. The
department gave all kinds of suspect reasons, which a
federal court has since rejected, but it looked a lot as if
someone at Homeland Security just didn't want thousands of
new Latino voters on the Florida rolls. 

The suppression of minority votes is alive and well in
2004, driven by the sharp partisan divide across the
nation. Because many minority groups vote heavily
Democratic, some Republicans view keeping them from
registering and voting as a tactic for victory - one that
has a long history in American politics. It is rarely
talked about publicly, but John Pappageorge, a Republican
state legislator from Michigan, recently broke the taboo.
He was quoted in The Detroit Free Press as saying, "If we
do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a
tough time in this election cycle." Detroit's population is
more than 80 percent black. 

A recent report by the N.A.A.C.P. and People for the
American Way includes page after page of examples of how
this shabby business works. On Election Day, "ballot
security" teams head for minority neighborhoods. They
demand that voters produce identification when it is not
required, take photographs of voters and single out
immigrant voters for special scare tactics. 

Two years ago in the governor's race in Maryland, leaflets
appeared in Baltimore saying that before voters showed up
at the polls, they had to pay off all parking tickets and
overdue rent. The same year in Louisiana, fliers were
distributed in African-American areas to tell voters,
falsely, that if they did not want to vote on Election Day,
they could still vote three days later. 

What is particularly discouraging this year is the degree
to which government officials have been involved in such
efforts. In South Dakota's hard-fought statewide
Congressional race, poll workers turned away Native
American voters who could not provide photo identification,
which many of them do not have, even though the law clearly
says identification is not required. In one heavily Native
American county, the top elections official, who is white,
wrote out instructions saying no one could vote without
photo identification. In Texas, a white district attorney
threatened to prosecute students at Prairie View A&M, a
large, predominantly African-American campus, if they
registered to vote from the school, even though they are
entitled to by law. 

And in Florida, the secretary of state, Glenda Hood, had a
list prepared to purge felons from the voter rolls; the
list had many errors and would have turned away an untold
number of qualified black voters. She abandoned the list
only when news organizations sued to make it public, then
pointed out its many inaccuracies. 

In addition to these blatant forms of vote suppression,
elections officials have been adopting policies that appear
neutral on their face but often have the effect, and
perhaps the intent, of disproportionately disenfranchising
minorities. With huge registration drives under way among
minorities in swing states, some secretaries of state have
adopted bizarrely rigid rules for new registrations. 

In Florida, Ms. Hood is insisting that thousands of
registration forms on which a citizenship box is not
checked are invalid, even though elsewhere on the forms
each applicant has sworn that he or she is a citizen. In
Ohio, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell was insisting
until recently that any registration form that came in on
anything less than 80-pound paper stock had to be rejected.
The continued disenfranchisement of convicted felons in
many states also has an unmistakable racial component. 

The suppression of minority votes has continued because it
is perceived as a winning tactic, and because it is rarely
punished. This needs to change. 

Trying to prevent members of minorities from voting can be
a violation of federal and state law. Election officials,
poll watchers and voters should be on the lookout for vote
suppression, and should report it. And prosecutors should
look for criminal cases to pursue. A few high-profile
prosecutions of political operatives, and even elections
officials, would go a long way toward ending a disgraceful
American tradition. 

Making Votes Count: Editorials in this series remain online
at nytimes.com/makingvotescount. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/opinion/07thu2.html?ex=1098173639&ei=1&en=218a03a33011aa7a


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