Monday, October 20, 2008

The Battle against Voter Suppression

Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Nicholas Jahr's Voter Registration Flashpoints reports on the battle against voter suppression, which seems to be going well in at least some places (like Ohio).

As we head into the final stretch of the election season, alarming reports of dysfunctional voter registration, purges of the rolls, and possible voter suppression are surfacing weekly, if not daily. The National Campaign for Fair Elections' hotline (866.OUR.VOTE / 866.687.8683) is already receiving roughly a thousand calls a day; while the majority of these are requests for information, some concern problems with registration. The New York Times reports that tens of thousands of voters may have been illegally purged from the rolls in swing states. Other news sources speculate there are 600,000 voters at risk of disenfranchisement in Ohio alone. What goes unreported upon amid all this turmoil is how effective the response has been, and what can still be done.

Their report looks at battles in Montana, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida.

1 comment:

Nancy Jane Moore said...

I have a post up on In This Moment comparing the Republican's voter fraud nonsense to the poll tax, literacy tests, and other efforts to limit voting. Funny that most years there's a lot of whining about how people don't vote, but let someone try to increase turnout and you get these nasty tricks.