[...] Historically, the nation's most notorious episodes of voter intimidation were perpetrated by Democrats after Reconstruction, when poll taxes and literacy tests were discriminatorily applied to keep blacks in the South from exercising the franchise. But just as Republicans picked up the "Dixiecrat" voter in the 1980s, they now seem to have adopted the election tactics of the old South as well.
Republicans claim they are just trying to stop voter fraud, which they expect to be rampant due to aggressive Democratic "get out the vote" efforts. They are targeting heavily Democratic precincts—which also happen to be heavily black precincts—because that's where the Democrats targeted their voter registration drives and because—well, because they are Republicans, after all (the Democrats are free to police potential fraud in heavily Republican precincts). And there's nothing racially discriminatory about the use of partisan poll-watchers. The laws of many states—such as Ohio—explicitly allow for them and even register them according to party affiliation.
Southern Democrats could have defended the poll tax and literacy test in similar terms. There nothing necessarily racially discriminatory about a poll tax or literacy test, and there are good, race-neutral arguments for both. Administering all those polls is expensive, and what better way to defray the burden on the public fisc than to require the people using the costly service to help pay for it? And literacy tests simply ensure that people casting a ballot can read the voter information pamphlet. The historical injustices done through such "race neutral" practices have taught us that a practice or law that is neutral on its face can be discriminatory as applied. Just as Southern Democrats selectively challenged black voters with literacy tests while ignoring thousands of illiterate white voters, now Northern Republicans selectively target black precincts for voter challenges.
It's probably true that the Republicans are not targeting heavily black precincts because they're heavily black; they are targeting them because they're heavily Democratic. But let's not be naive: They are also targeting black precincts because they expect to find voters and polling officials who are relatively poor and socially powerless and hence easier to bully and intimidate. This may not be racism in its purest form—animus based on nothing other than race—but it's close enough to make decent people want to take a shower. Note to Karl Rove: If the GOP wants to shake its image as the home of modern racism, this is not the way to go about it.
On Nov. 1 two Federal District judges forbade partisan "watchers" from challenging voter qualifications in Ohio polling places. The GOP immediately appealed the orders, and the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, paving the way for the partisan "watchers." And Republicans plan to selectively "watch" the polls and challenge voters in other battleground states as well. [...]
| That's the end of Richard Thompson Ford's Slate article "Intimidation Nation," but you should go back and read the rest.
posted in articles on November 3, 2004 1:27 AM | t (0)
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