"Voter caging"--the Democrat bogey man

I guess there are some stock ingredients for a Left-wing Conspiracy Pseudo-documentary: Impute guilt to any target person (especially a Republican) unwilling to talk with a Liberal reporter or to roll over for a Democrat "oversight" hearing; assert that some media cabal is silencing the story; impute nefarious motives to any activity--no matter how legal or fair or "neutral," which can be interpreted to harm a Liberal interest group (reminds me of the old joke/MSM headline: "Report: World to End-- Women and Poor hardest hit"); lastly, mention the name of (and/or show some link no matter how tenuous to) dunh, dunh, dunh, dunhhhh . . . Karl Rove.

With this in mind, it was interesting to watch this recent episode of NOW on PBS, "Voter Caging and Housing Works" causing a buzz in the blogosphere.

David Broncaccio introduces the story this way:

"Welcome to NOW. You're about to hear an important story that's been given far more attention overseas than by any news outlet here. It the story that involves both your right to vote and to have your vote counted.

Evidence has emerged in the last American presidential election the Republican Party organized efforts to suppress the votes of active duty military, low income and minority voters by challenging their registrations. One technique used to do that is something called "voter caging." The BBC first broke an exclusive piece of this story, and now the U.S. Congress is investigating whether 'voter caging' was part of a broader effort to suppress the vote of groups likely to support Democrats."

Let's take this line by line.

Prior to the 2004 election, Republican political strategists and attorneys perceived that long-simmering frustration on the part of Democrats, plus lax election laws, plus time-tested techniques for voter fraud, plus unprecedented efforts by the Left to "register voters" might be used to create--by any means necessary, just the margin necessary to carry John Kerry to victory. Legal brigades for both sides would be in place on election day, at least in the so-called "swing states" (ironically making the 2004 election the MOST scrutinized election in the history of the world--and Bush won).

One tool for Republican poll watchers would be lists of names of persons who ostensibly registered to vote but who were not receiving mail either by the name listed on their registration or at the address listed on their registration. One vote cast by a fraudulent voter disenfranchises a legal voter. So Republicans aimed to prevent that from happening.

"You're about to hear an important story that's been given far more attention overseas than by any news outlet here." There's a good reason that this story isn't being "reported" in the U.S.--it's not a "story." It can certainly be spun to sound like a story (and to bolster Democrat efforts to get something--anything!--on Gonzales and Dubya and Rove), but it's nothing to get in a lather about--unless you're wantin' to get in a lather.

"Evidence has emerged . . .". It's not easy to pull off the "super-secret" angle of this story when your own documentary contains footage of a Republican press conferences days before the 2004 election announcing this plan. D'oh! But apparently Liberal viewers (or bloggers inclined to believe vague assertions from Liberals who purport to have watched the documentary) are fairly gullible when it comes to accusations about Evil Republicans.

". . . in the last American presidential election the Republican Party organized efforts to suppress the votes of active duty military, low income and minority voters . . ." Of course the Republicans had specific victim-classes in mind. The pseudocumentary's lead character is one Greg Palast, who serves to connects the dots and has revealed the racist, anti-democratic (and of course Anti-Democratic!) Republican scheme. Palast posits that Republican efforts to identify potential fraudulent voters are really efforts to identify--and disenfranchise, Black Americans. Incidentally, Broncaccio and Palast make much of the fact that the letters sent to the newly registered persons were marked "Do Not Forward" . . . duh, of course they were. This process is designed to flag people who may not be entitled to vote, and whether a person is a resident at the address they're listing in their registration is one qualification for voting.

Looking at the lists in one county--Duvall County which is Jacksonville, FL, Greg Palast discerns a pattern. He tells Broncaccio, "Patterns began to emerge (1) that they were obviously voters and (2) they were obviously voters of a certain persuasion; they were, uh, black people which is, uh, really pretty stinky stuff because you cannot mass challenge people--voters in American voters, under the Voting Rights Act if race is a factor, you just can't do it, it's illegal." Okay.

For Republicans, the "pattern" is that the person in question was a new registrant--one of the millions "registered" in the largest-ever Democrat voter registration drive (disturbing details of said "drive" here), and failed to respond to a first-class mail and was merely placed on a list to be challenged to verify their identity when they showed up to vote. For Palast, the fact that many of the people thrown onto voter rolls by Democrat workers in Jacksonville, FL (which Broncaccio informs us has one of the largest black populations in the state) were black is evidence of racism.

Lastly, "the story that involves both your right to vote and to have your vote counted." Not quite. Palast says, "you don't lose your civil rights because you weren't around to collect a piece of junk mail." And he's right. I'm not sure there's any evidence that anyone did lose their civil rights or right to vote on such a basis. Being alert to make sure that all the laws are followed in allowing a person to vote--especially when there's a good chance such a person is not authorized to vote, is not "denying them the right to vote." When the person presents evidence that they are who they're claiming to be (any photo ID suffices) they can go ahead and get their ballot.

But Palast's cheap shot is even cheaper in light of the other legal protections for "the right to vote." As the result of changes in Federal election law (which mandated changes in the way states handled Federal elections) following the 2000 election, people must be allowed to cast a vote even if they're not on the voter rolls; it's called provisional voting. Those ballots are reviewed later by bi-partisan panels and then "cast" and counted if the person was improperly not on the voter registration rolls. "Move along, folks; there's no disenfranchisement to see here."

". . . and now the U.S. Congress is investigating whether 'voter caging' was part of a broader effort to suppress the vote of groups likely to support Democrats." From the NOW pseudocumentary:

"While Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to answer many questions about the controversy as he testified before the Senate this week, Iglesias told NOW he believes the White House is keeping documents from Congress to protect the Bush Administration. “That’s why there has been such a circling of the wagons around Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and Sarah Taylor. I believe there to be incriminating, possibly criminally incriminating evidence contained in those e-mails and other memoranda,” he said.

And this is a BIG part of this story . . . because there are suspicions that Karl Rove might have known about . . . perhaps initiated . . . no doubt celebrated!! . . . this program. (Yawn.)

Gee, sorry if Republicans are finally getting serious about prosecuting voter fraud. Sorry if enforcement of election laws is cramping Democrat activists' style. But maybe it should be no surprise that Democrats--who have long benefited from sloppy, chaotic, corruptible election processes (think Chicago), aren't interested in making sure that only valid votes be cast.