Tag: Voter Suppression

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Florida Voters are Reporting Nasty Tricks in Full Effect

I’m not able to confirm this with a Google News search, but voters in Fl are reporting that ballots evidently spilled out of the back of a truck and are just sitting in the road somewhere in Tampa. Again, I cannot confirm this, but I’m being told it was on the news this morning. Also, they’ve been setting up road blocks in some counties to make it difficult to get to the polls.

All of this is uncorroborated, but that’s what’s out there when I’m talking to people. And I mean, come on! This is Florida we’re talking about. That sort of thing wouldn’t happen there. Like Exile said last night, “And Boston isn’t really much of a college town.”

Reader MC reports in with the actual story from TampaBay.com.  This turns out to be not ballots but voter information cards from some campaign or another.  So, while this is an unfortunate breach of voter’s privacy, it appears to be niether a voter suppression tactic nor instigated by anyone in charge of counting votes.

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From Suppression to Enfranchisement in Ohio

I’m sure the Republicans will find a way to fuck things up for the less fortunate – after all, how can you pull yourself up by your bootstraps without Republicans to knock you down to your knees? – but an Ohio judge ruled yesterday that the homeless can register park benches as valid addresses when voting.  He also ruled that a vote cannot be discarded due to poll worker errors.

So it looks at the moment as though a whole lot more people will be getting to vote and have their sovereignty respected – in Ohio, anyway.

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Voter Purge: Ohio Edition

Just your daily update on what’s going on in the world of disenfranchisement: Ohio is questioning the ballots of 200,000 newly registered voters, siding with Republicans who questioned them.

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The Purging Has Begun

This election season’s round of voter role purging has begun early and in earnest.  Inside Higher Education is reporting today that Montomery County in Virginia, home of Virginia Tech, has sent out mailers which even defenders admit are misleading.  The mailers claim that a student registering to vote in Virginia might be throwing away their right to be claimed by their partents on tax forms and insurance.

Other reports from Ohio and other battleground states prove that the purging will be fierce this season.  On the other hand, there’s probgably never been a Democratic machine as well-organized on the ground as the Barack Obama volunteer team.  That means there is some pre-election push-back to be had in places like this.  The trouble comes in poorer communities whose access to information, particularly on the Internet, is at best limited.

So the battle is joined.  And we can all clearly see, the battle is hottest on the GOTV vs. voter suppression front.