After watching the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where Democratic voting rights activist Stacey Abrams schools Republicans on systemic voter suppression in this country, I scrolled through my folders holding files related to this urgent matter. I re-read a number of the many reports published on the issue.
One, by Common Cause, speaks particularly to this moment of great danger to our democracy today:
DECEPTIVE PRACTICES 2.0: LEGAL AND POLICY RESPONSES
It was published in 2008!
From the Introduction:
In the last several election cycles, “deceptive practices” have been perpetrated in order to suppress voting and skew election results. Usually targeted at minorities and in minority neighborhoods, deceptive practices are the intentional dissemination of false or misleading information about the voting process with the intent to prevent an eligible voter from casting a ballot.
In the past, the worst practices involved flyers distributed in predominantly minority communities. The 2004 presidential election cycle provides some particularly vivid examples. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, fliers purportedly from the “Milwaukee Black Voters League” were distributed in minority neighborhoods claiming “If you’ve already voted in any election this year, you can’t vote in the presidential election; If anybody in your family has ever been found guilty of anything, you can’t vote in the presidential election; If you violate any of these laws, you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you.” In Pennsylvania, a letter with the McCandless Township seal on it falsely informed voters that, to cut down on long lines, Republicans would vote on November 2 and Democrats would vote on November 3—the day after the election. Similar fliers were distributed at Ross Park Mall in Allegheny County. In Ohio, a so-called “Urgent Advisory” memo on phony Board of Elections letterhead warned voters that if they were registered by the NAACP, America Coming Together, the Kerry campaign, or their local Congressional campaign, they were disqualified and would not be able to vote until the next election.
