GOP seeks to contest voters from foreclosed homes
By Cernig Wednesday Sep 10, 2008 8:00pm
I think this might just backfire.
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.
“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.
State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”
The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”
The article cited, in the Michigan Messenger, says a full sixty per cent of sub-prime loans in Michigan went to African American families and that thus they bear a far higher rate of foreclosures. Legal experts think the GOP hasn't got a real case (especially in Michigan where the law allows voters to vote from their last known address) but that doesn't take away from the breathtaking nastiness of even thinking about such a move.
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 [said,] “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.”
And then there's the massive conflict of interest:
The Macomb GOP’s plans are another indication of how John McCain’s campaign stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures in the state. McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.
GOP officials elsewhere in Michigan, as well as Ohio, have said they are looking to challenge voter registration based on foreclosure lists - which points to an orchestrated attempt by the McCain campaign to steal the votes of victims of the credit crunch, especially black American victims. This while banks are offered corporate-socialist bailout after bailout and John McCain the 5 Million Dollar Man suggests that common people should miss a holiday or get an extra job to ensure they keep up their payments on a sub-prime loan.
"Welcome to today's Republican Party - FU, you whiners!" (John McCain approved this message)
Crossposted from Newshoggers
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I want this up front and center on the news, in local papers, in any national papers, and on all blogs... it's outrageous!! And it better no be effin' legal either!
Talk about adding insult to injury! I am sure the mainstream media will ignore this as usual to focus on the latest McCain/Rove talking points.
Hell, I'm not sure even KKKarl Rove could have had this wet dream!
F*cking Rethug pigs!
There are obviously right wing think-tanks set up specifically to come up with every possible way to influence the ballot and this is another example.
Wowza... this needs to be a national story... hello? MSNBC??? Helloooooo?
Being a resident of Michigan, if this were to somehow pass it would negate just about every liberal hub (Flint, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Saginaw, etc.) in the state.
What a fuckin' lowbrow move.
fastfeat @ 3:
This is CLASSIC KKKArl.
Celebrate Devil's Night at his house.
Earlier today was the report that one state was lowering the position of a contestable Senate race to the bottom of the ballot so as to confuse voters and hope they don't vote for the Democrat's party candidate who is favored. AND NOW THIS!
The GOP trying to steal elections and place more Republicans in Congress, they're such pigs!
One word..... Fuckers!
This is PURE ROVE dirty politics.
SEND ROVE's PARTY BACK TO THEIR HOLES IN THE GROUND.
Pretty rotten, but hard to connect to the claim that blacks are targeted in this case. Macomb County is lilly-white.
Ah....
good old fashioned corruption. Now all we need is a rock shaped like a tea kettle and here we go.
Simply amazing to what depths of Rovian slime these sub-humans will dive to, bottomless and cold as a corpse.
Incidentally, I wonder how much of this has to do with the fact that the GOP is desperate due to inability to win this race fairly.
This skeezy shit smells of desperation.
Wow. Talk about doubly victimizing poor folks.
First they can't make their payments and lose their homes. Next they are basically stripped of their rights as US citizens. So much for McSame being for the common man. It's a politically canny, inhumanely cruel move, worthy of Rove and the late Lee Atwater. Middle class Americans, are you listening? Do you still believe the GOP is for you -- or against you?
Bill The Thinker @ 10:
Ah, you think a man like John McCain could get laid? Maybe on a gay GILF site. Not otherwise....
God This is the most heartless thing I've ever seen. Typically republican.
Anais @ 16:
Political class is dead in the United States. I think it died in 1829.
The level of raw abusive cruelty displayed by Republicans in their one pointed quest for greed and power is unfuckingbelievable.
Man, that picture lol.
Salt in the wound.
surf (hussein) jac @ 9:
Now why must you insult perfectly good porcines by comparing them to the GOP?
Well Michigan, it looks like it’s your turn to get fu(ked. When the Democrats get their majority come November, they need to put a stop to this crap.
I live in NC, and see a bunch of McMansions that have been foreclosed. Maybe we can turn up at those polling stations and contest the votes. And, yes I do believe the people who lived there would be dumb enough to continue to vote Republican.
i get it now . . . when the mcpalins say "change", they really mean "change back", to the days when only property owners could vote!
Why do Republicans hate Americans?
Roket @ 24:
All that'll mean is that the letter of the party representatives doing the gerrymandering will have changed, not the substance of it or the manner in which it is done.
Good Reporting.
SFnomad @ 27:
It's not that they hate them, it's that rich folk usually don't give a damn about poor folk.
General_Rennenkampf @ 15:
It is voter supression, pure and simple based on the self centered GOP version of "fairness," namely if it benefits us personally, that's fair.
This was actually a compromise plan. Gov. Palin wanted to put a $150 bounty on homeless people, but you would have to produce the front left paw as evidence.
bmw 528 @ 31:
So? Think that's new? The Founders started that as soon as the ink on the Constitution was dry. After all, gerrymandering as a term came from the name of the Constitutional Convention delegate Elbridge Gerry.
All today is is shinier, more efficient (when they work) toys with which to do the skeezy shit with.
The same sleazy playbook that they used against Gore and Kerry is now back in vogue, and they are using it against Obama to again steal an election. These dirty bastards must be exposed far and wide for the sleazy crooks that they are.
If these people can't afford their house payments that causes their homes to be foreclosed, they certainly won't have money to hire an attorney to fight to protect their voting rights..
I just can't believe how sleazy these people are. They don't care about Americans. They only care about holding on to power, control, money, and influence.
nwmuse @ 35:
Aristocrats....
want to keep their power....
my smelling salts, my smelling salts....
Actually, this was probably Rove's idea. Douchebag.
This pisses me off to no end. The problem is that it may be contested, but I'd be ever so willing to bet that the repugs will try the tactic anyway. This sucks.
IdiotShrub @ 34:
Greg Palast is working on it. He claims he can get it on the air, if he can get it produced.
So what is being done to combat this other than complaining? Has anyone taken this to court or filed a claim under the Voting Rights Act?
Let me get this right. The GOP says that if you've lost your home, you're not entitled to Vote?
Even though they've lived there for at least a year? More likely a lifetime.
Well, now I've seen everything.
I never thought I'd see this kind of politics in this country. If they win, I'm outta here.
IdiotShrub @ 34:
Good luck with that since the real players behind the scenes own almost all the media outlet's. They love to dance onstage with pure evil slime like MC Rove. Yea David Gregory I'm calling you out, you ass licking little puke.
innocent bystander @ 26:
Absolutely.
mudshark @ 40:
I just didn't think it would take this long to revive.
That it took 40-odd years for the same crew to start this shit again is no surprise, unfortunately. And this crew is and was just as willing to target poor whites as blacks of any economic levels, and Indians for that matter (Montezuma-type Indians, not Ghandi-type Indians).
SFnomad @ 27:
Because they demand too much money to clean their (many) houses and pick their cotton.
General_Rennenkampf @ 43:
I thought we had grown past all that type of bullshit General. I like to think we as a people move forward.
I'm getting that loathsome feeling again.
sick
Ken @ 22:
Knife in the back.
fastfeat @ 47:
Boot In The FACE!
mudshark @ 45:
Moving forward is a myth people invent to comfort themselves. Its reference to reality is purely a happy co-incidence. You'd think after the Assyrians imploded 3000 years ago that empire-builders would have tried different methods of despotism, but a state on the Assyrian model in recent memory has existed. The Soviet Union.
American ethnic cleansing and all that happened over 100 years ago now. The Soviets rose and fell in one century, so all that's much fresher on people's minds. I firmly believe the only difference between our generation in 2008 and the Manifest Destiny one of 1848 is that of shinier toys and nobody to fight in North America itself.
General_Rennenkampf @ 33:
New? Not hardly. It's just the same old crooked sleaze rebranded by Darth Rove and his filthy fascists. Tammany Hall had nothing on these people.
General_Rennenkampf @ 49:
Well, some of us evolve and move forward. It's the dumbshits that are slowing us down. As for your Historical perspective, Thank You very much. Always appreciated.
Isn't there a huge amount of people effected by this housing crisis?
All Obama's lot have to do is run an ad with this, and they'll lock in a huge amount of voters around the country ...
why do they keep picking on michigan.
Further to the issue of vote suppression, I just saw an interesting comment on Democratic Underground, in the discussion thread for the story "Newsweek: GOP is working to keep eligible African-Americans from voting in several states".
In comment #54, norepubsin08 suggests:
"Once more, as I have said, I would love to see every liberal/progressive website, blog and organization declare October 1, 2008 NATIONAL CHECK IF I CAN VOTE DAY. That way if there are problems there is time to correct them. I would also put the Republican election officials on notice that we will be much more proactive and vigilant in protecting the integrity of the electoral process this time around."
(I hope I'm not violating any copyright laws here.)
I think NATIONAL CHECK IF I CAN VOTE DAY is a damn fine idea. I hope that C&L, and all the progressives out there in the blogosphere get in on this and spread the word.
Aight C&L, you just did it & i have to call you on it: there is not & can never be "corporate-socialism"
It is an oxymoron, certainly wealth & assets are being unfairly & unjustifiably redistributed from the lower class to their exploiters but this is the very antithesis of socialism.
This is my major pet peeve along with the insane Stalinism = Communism disinformation,
So yeah, i'm being the ideological language police, maybe a bit petty, maybe of topic, but things should be called by their true names.
mudshark @ 51:
IMHO, we're starting to move backwards as a whole, not entirely unprecendented, but rather disturbing. Bush creating his supervillain enemy out of what was basically about 15 or 20 guys who thought that it would be cool to send planes into buildings make buildings go boom for a guy that was an Aum Shinrikyo group leader has hardly helped the possibility of restoring a more purely Constitutional form of government.
euthyfro @ 55:
Stalin was undoubtedly socialist. He considered himself to be one.
If Stalin gets discounted as socialist, Christians get to discount Oliver Cromwell and Justinian, and Muslims get to ignore Timur-i-leng and Aurangzeb and China can just ignore Shi Huangdi.
Stalin just represented a mutation of Bolshevism into a more solidified form. Whether or not Bolshevism is full-on Marxism is a different issue.
Rimmer's Clone @ 52:
Exactly...and make sure they register to vote....
Lee Rayburn, on the Thom Hartmann show:
"Misleading" absentee ballot applications are being mailed out by the McCain campaign to registered Democratic voters in purple states. The return addresses are inaccurate, as well as other information. "Misleading, lying" mailers are going out in Florida and other purple states. It's a caging tactic.
Calls are coming in verifying that this is happening in small towns, as well as larger ones.
The host is trying to determine the scale of this subversion of our democracy.
Here we go again.
UPDATE: It's happening in Pennsylvania, too. The ballots have included multiple ballots, sender address is a new address while return address is from old city clerk's office... The I'm trying to type this as he says it, and it may not be clear, since I miss some. I apologize for that.
Fraud. Election fraud. Hopefully the local authorities can help, or the local Obama offices. Calling the media could help, too.
A caller: Robocalls asking if you're interested in an absentee ballot. Or, notifying the voter that the ballot will be mailed back postage paid to the National Republican Committee.
Another caller from Detroit. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida: That's where the absentee ballots are being sent to Obama voters. Add Missouri to that, per one of our commenters.
You can be sure McCain isn't doing this because he wants every vote counted.
UPDATE: A North Carolina caller got THREE of them. In the phone book there's a street address, but on the form, it's a P.O. Box, per the caller.
California caller from registrar's office: McCain should take the application for absentee and submit within 3 days. But the applications will most likely be held for the 3 days and "die". They'll most likely submit the Republican ones, and throw away the Democratic ones.
The return address for the request card goes to the wrong city clerk office address, per Rayburn.
Michigan caller: Wrong home address, and then, wrong city clerk address on the one he got. He donated to Obama, but not a Democrat, so he wonders if that's how they found him.
============IMPORTANT INFORMATION=============
Are you sure YOU can vote? To confirm your voter eligibility, click here and step through entering your name, email address, and then click Not Sure when the page comes up asking about your registration status. You do not have to be an Obama supporter to confirm your registration.
Here in Michigan we'll be voting from under the bridges, if we can, and if they don't fall down on top of us.
Thanks G-Dub, you dumb ass.
offog @ 54:
I like the idea!
Not wanting to sound bureaucratic, but I'm just not sure how to and who could administer in such a short time?
Anyone?
You have got to be fucking kidding me...
Please-say you are kidding...
This is despicable - not surprising...but still.
Sorry bastards.
ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!
cobsjo @ 59:
I heard part of this show today as well.
The gremlins, BIG, FAT ROVIAN GREMLINS, are still in the system.
General_Rennenkampf @ 56:
I don't know Mon General, I can't argue that this society has moved forward. Not with this current admin and the way the GOPers have behaved. But we(us) here are proof that some of us are moving forward. I understand where your coming from.
But I have to think the glass is half full. I need to think the glass is half full. Know what I mean?
The Realist @ 6:
In my little redneck corner of Michigan I imagine they'll probably pull the same dirty trick. We've had unbelievable foreclosures in my county and the GOP is pretty strong with the upper-middle class small businessmen (our small town royalty). Makes me embarrassed to be from the Great Lakes State.
I'm putting up my Obama sign next week - right next to the IMPEACH sign in my front yard that I made to piss off my republican neighbors who still think George is "one heckuva guy". Its not much, just one little thing I can think about to make me smile when I'm having a hard day.
The republicans have been engineering poll tax proxies for years. Kathryn Harris is most successful of these strategies.
When you buy a pair of Nike sneakers you are buying a brand that identifies you as a hardened athlete. Sure you are 150 lbs overweight, flex only enough to grab that next nacho chip, the sneaker is made by an 8 yr old in a sealed of Chinese sweatshop. But you are buying the image of health and that makes you feel better (even though riding the mall escalator makes you wheeze).
When you vote republican, you are buying the brand of the free, the strong, the ones who saved you from 911. They talk to god and he listens to them. Sure the republican party is building a quasi-fascist state, legislating socialism for the 1% who actually benefit under republican government. And, yes, they are also building a stasi like apparatus whose judicial backbone takes a page or two from soviet Russia and Maoist china. Sure they are strip mining the health and welfare of its citizens to fill the pockets of their executive sponsors. And as they continue to censor protest and gain more control over the media the covenant of the free market is broken - we all know oil isn't free if you need some, just kill 100,000 people and go get it.
In the end, joe average, with nothing else to inspire him, votes for the best brand. Cause those latte sipping, god haters, just don't love america. Pelosi could do no more harm to america by impeaching bush than bush has already done. Democrats are weak and unprincipled. They play the middle so well that they look impotent.
With most of the local conventions behind him, obama made a big miscalculation by expending the political good will of his core base in favor of the elusive republican swing voters who somehow never, ever, ever vote democratic. Lots of us worked hard to see his name on the ballot. I made a mistake. I will try harder not to get fooled again by the soft squishy middle of the democratic party.
Many democrats will again stay home in November and the dem leadership will (again) wonder why.
mudshark @ 66:
I understand fully what you mean.
Unfortunately, I tend to view things through a different prism than most people of today. Many people today tend to view things as all-powerful and unlimited, but I've realized through study that everything sooner or later runs into limits. One of my personal tasks for my college years is to detect likely fault lines for those limitations in the US as a whole, and the world in general. Because I look at those fault-lines and the boiled-down results of them, it enables me to look at barbarities and measure them by their effectiveness. History does little for your soul that is good, but it is instructive.
I just sincerely hope we don't put John McCain and Sarah Palin in the White House. I'd take Obama and his sincerely deluded Veep over McCain and his utterly purposeless choice.
D-E-S-P-I-C-A-B-L-E!
Have a hand in the foreclosure mess AND use it to put a stranglehold on power.
LeeX @ 12:
Yeah, it's largely caucasian, but also solidly middle class union people with 1200 sqf homes. What used to be called Reagan Democrats. I hope this does get lots of airplay, because it is a classic dirty trick that in the light shows the true colors of the RNC.
General_Rennenkampf @ 69:
Yeah, I know what you mean. History inevitably repeats it's self. It's a long learning curve. Gee, I feel so much better now. Thanks Mon General.:) I think I'll go grab me a beer.
The Founding Fathers argued long and hard as to whether voring should be restricted to land owners or not and they decided against it.
What the GOP is trying to do is an outrage.
Be well Mon General. I hope you weather the storm safely.
mudshark @ 72:
I do what I can.
mudshark @ 74:
As I said, Ike is the least of my problems. My schedule for University getting the second crap in two weeks on it is the biggest of them.
nomobull @ 53:
it's their turn. first it was florida, then ohio, now it's electoral-vote rich michigan. pennsylvania, someday, if they lose their collective brain and the the yahoos in the midd;e of he state take over.
Obama supporters and registered Democrats were calling in from Ohio, Michigan, New Mexico, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Florida, describing how they had received Absentee Ballot Applications from John McCain. These applications referenced old addresses and wrong addresses for election offices.
McCain sent out 1 MILLION bad absentee ballots in Ohio and they want election officials to notify voters of the bad ballots within 48 hours.
Here's another interesting article:
Right.... Sure the Democrats are going to benefit from a McCain mailer.
And our wonderful democracy-loving unpoliticized Department of Justice is going to be on the case!