Dems Introduce Bill to Prevent Voter Suppression TacticA new bill introduced by Democrats in the Senate today would make Republican attempts to challenge voters’ eligibility based on the time-tested technique of using returned mail illegal.
The voter suppression technique, which has come to be known as “caging,” has been practiced by Republicans for decades, but received additional attention for its role in the U.S. attorney firings scandal. Timothy Griffin, the former aide to Karl Rove who replaced one of the fired prosecutors in Arkansas, was forced to defend his role in an alleged 2004 caging scheme when he worked for the Republican National Committee. (We ran down the evidence that Griffin was involved in a 2004 scheme to block African-Americans in Florida from voting in a story this June.) Those questions, along with the circumstances of Griffin’s appointment, eventually led to his resignation.
The Caging Prohibition Act was co-sponsored by 12 Dem senators, including Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), John Kerry (D-MA), and presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-IL).
The bill would prohibit challenges to voters based solely on returned mail — so-called “caging” or challenge lists are made by sending mail marked “do not forward” out to voters. In 1982, a federal judge in New Jersey issued a consent decree banning the targeting of racial minorities with challenge lists, but that hasn’t stopped the practice. In 1990, for example, the Republican Party of North Carolina and Sen. Jesse Helms’ (R-NC) campaign sent 125,000 postcards to mostly black voters to compile a challenge list. Ohio in 2004 was yet another example. And in September, McClatchy reported that both Ohio and Florida had passed laws that would in effect streamline the Republican tactic.
