[Voterescue] Republican war on low-income minority votes: propagating the myth of voter fraud

[margaret]

Words have meaning, which is why I prefer to use the words "election  
fraud" instead of vote/voter fraud because they point to the real  
culprit!
--Margaret

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The Republican War on Voting
By Art Levine, The American Prospect. Posted April 4, 2008.

The Republican Party is trying to suppress low-income minority votes  
by propagating the myth of voter fraud

One week before the close of voter registration in Kentucky last  
fall, in an election that culminated with the victory of Democratic  
gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear, Johanna Sharrard, a fresh- 
faced 26-year-old national organizer for the low-income advocacy  
group ACORN, gathered her canvassers in a run-down Louisville office  
and told them some good news: "We got 396 people yesterday -- that's  
really great!" Then she added what could have seemed a jarringly  
discordant note: "We know it's getting harder to reach people with  
the cards in this area. It's really important that you guys are not  
slipping up and turning to filling out your own applications or other  
fraudulent activity. Just yesterday we had to let another person go  
because she did not follow protocols." Sharrard continued sternly,  
"What's important is that we get 15,000 new voters. We're not out  
there to get 10,000 new voters and 5,000 false applications."

Indeed, the voter registration waged by ACORN (the Association of  
Community Organizations for Reform Now) in Kentucky was also an  
effort to test the group's new system for rooting out any fraud. The  
organization is readying itself for the challenges to voter  
participation that the poor and minorities -- and Democrats -- are  
sure to face in 2008.

Sharrard's cautionary tone was a response to the Republican Party's  
ongoing nationwide campaign to suppress the low-income minority vote  
by propagating the myth of voter fraud. Using various tactics --  
including media smears, bogus lawsuits, restrictive new voting laws  
and policies, and flimsy prosecutions -- Republican operatives,  
election officials, and the GOP-controlled Justice Department have  
limited voting access and gone after voter-registration groups such  
as ACORN. Which should come as no surprise: In building support for  
initiatives raising the minimum wage and kindred ballot measures,  
ACORN has registered, in partnership with Project Vote, 1.6 million  
largely Democratic-leaning voters since 2004. All told, non-profit  
groups registered over three million new voters in 2004, about the  
same time that Republican and Justice Department efforts to publicize  
voter fraud and limit voting access became more widespread. And  
attacking ACORN has been a central element of a systematic GOP  
disenfranchisement agenda to undermine Democratic prospects before  
each Election Day.


full article:

http://www.alternet.org/democracy/81016/




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It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong .-- Voltaire