And 60 percent of those foreclosed homes are of African-Americans, so says the Michigan Messenger:
“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.”
One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.
“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said 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. “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.”
[...]The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth.
Apparently the Republicans have since took it back because they have other tried and true ways of getting the undesirables out of the voting process.
Oh, god. I’m just expecting a virtual conflagration of this bullshit this year. Trying to disenfranchise people for frivolous reasons should be a felony.
They’re gearing up to steal the election again.
And I’m serious – the right to vote is supposed to be a foundational right (although it wasn’t, obviously). Exploiting the law to take that right away needs to stop.
jesus fuck. -spits- yeah, they’ll try anything they can get away with.
This is outrageous. And if it happens in Michigan, it will certainly happen in other states.
We must fight back. Progressive Future has a great action page posted where you can write to Michigan’s Secretary of State, Terri Lynne Land, and tell her that this kind of interference with the basic right to vote is unacceptable, and that you expect her to say so—publicly. Just click here.
I live in Michigan and I can tell you that Macomb County is a very conservative cookie cutter auto industry town. It has the lowest pay ratio women/men where women make .67 cents to the mans dollar there!! I am not surprised that a place like Macomb County would do this. Michigan and Metro Detroit (Macomb is in Metro Detroit) have some of the highest foreclosures in the nation. Also, because Metropolitan Detroit is so very divided by race, class and gender – this county only perpetuates that. You know the NIMBY (not in my back yard) saying, well Macomb County has this stigma hanging over their heads very much so. They continue to perpetuate the divisional consciousness in this metropolitan region by doing something like this. This is why the region is not as vibrant as many other metro areas in the USA. Then Michigan’s economy is the worst in the nation. Metro Detroit’s unemployment rate is around 9% while the City of Detroit’s unemployment is around 16%. If Michigan is to be healthy Detroit and the Metro area need to be healthy. When I read about something like this I am saddened to know that there are people out there who want to keep dividing this region.
Seriously, Lisa, what with McCain’s latest desire to have the US Constitution read as it was written by the Founding Fathers… I still can’t believe people support him.
Thanks for the link, ProgressiveReb!
Cecilia, I had no idea about the pay ratio! I knew that Michigan had one of the highest unemployment rates in the US, but it’s disheartening to find out that so many people are dedicated to dividing the population in Michigan… :(
Just wanted to give everyone more of the facts here…
“At the open hearing held on October 24, attended by several Macomb County NOW members, President Diane Russell pointed out in a statement supporting the measure as an appropriate first step to bring county employees above the poverty level, that the poverty rate is highest for families headed by single women and that a report recently released by the Michigan Women’s Commission showed that women in Macomb County earn 62.55 cents for every dollar earned by men. This rate is below the rate for Michigan which is 67 cents, and significantly below the national average of 76 cents.”
Source: http://www.michnow.org/public_html/news.htm
UppityBrownWoman-There are tons of people dedicated to dividing the population but I don’t want to chalk it up to say that everyone is out there to divide. There are people who are really hard at work to unite city/suburb, rich/poor, black/white, lower/middle/upper class and so on.
Thanks for the information + link, Cecilia!
Before you know it, they’ll want to bring back poll taxes and literacy tests, too. White male landowners for the win!
Moving out of this country is looking better and better every day.
10 Cheers for Cecelia, under reply #5. I DITTO every sentiment. Macomb Co politics and backwards ultra conservative Republican-eliteism is killing our community! I was raised here and now live here but, I also lived in Europe and CA. I’ve travelled extensively. Coming back to MI is culture-shock. The narrow-mindedness, the stereotyping, the all-out discrimininatory attitude and lack of tolerance for anything but a Republican viewpoint, the top-down management style, is not conducive to advancing the human spirit. Only when the “powers to be” get their heads out of the sand, and live from tolerance, acceptance, mutual respect for all people of all walks of life, and stop living from self-righteousness and fear, will our area change. Read “A New Earth” for starters. The proverbial Glass Ceiling is so low here…….we need to come from inclusion, not exclusion. We need to embrace each other and empower our strengths, not use differences and ignorance to divide. I quote, “The state of the world is a reflection of our state of mind.” If our area embraced a more open, accepting, worldly philosophical view based on hope and pursuing our natural, individual potentials, aand drop the knee-jerk reaction to being afraid of “different” people and beliefs, all of us would benefit. Our area could be a leader, an example to the world. Small-mindedness yields small-minded goals. As another quote states, “In the East they contemplate the forest. In the West they count the trees.” Let’s start contemplating the forest.