Jack & Jill Politics

Republicans are freakin’ that the lengthy contest between Obama & Clinton has resulted in millions of new voter registrations across the U.S. plus folks switching parties. This is part of the “enthusiasm gap” that led McCain to choose Palin and thus generate more GOP turnout.

So that’s strategy #1.

In a year when the GOP track record is weakening their brand, certain forces are working hard to remove voters from the rolls. Guessing that communities of color are being targeted for vote purging? You’re so smart — you guessed right! Tried and true strategy number 2 is in effect.

From Alternet Via DailyKos

Election officials in a handful of states appear to be ignoring the federal law dictating the way registered voters may be purged from voter rolls, civil rights attorneys say.

National voting rights groups have contacted officials in Kansas, Michigan and Louisiana in recent weeks because those states appear to be purging registered voters after election officials found duplicate names and birthdays of people on their voter lists and in out-of-state databases, such as driver’s license records.

[…]

Last year, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sued Louisiana over the purging of registrations of refugees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Many people who applied for a driver’s license in a neighboring state — to quickly acquire an ID after losing their belongings in the storms — also were registered to vote without their knowledge, NAACP attorneys said. Those new voter registrations resulted in 21,000 voters being removed from Louisiana voter rolls last August, the group said. While the NAACP suit was dismissed, Project Vote’s recent letter suggests the state’s voter list maintenance practices have not changed. Project Vote also wrote to the U.S. Department of Justice about the matter, as the agency oversees federal elections in most Southern states as a result of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

[…]

In Madison County, Mississippi, county supervisors this week rescinded a plan to send a mass mailing to voters, where returned postcards were to be used to purge voters over a two-year period. In this instance, Project Vote notified county officials that its timetable would violate the NVRA, and, according to local news reports, the county’s supervisors decided to abandon the plan and instead prepare for a high-turnout election in the fall.

“The mildest things confuse people and can ultimately disenfranchise people during elections,” Madison County Supervisor Karl Banks said in a Clarion Ledger report. “Here we are willing to disenfranchise people because they don’t send a card back?”