Voter suppression efforts mired election
By Karen Juanita Carrillo
The Amsterdam News
Updated Nov 27, 2004, 10:01 am  (NNPA) - Blacks faced the expected right-to-vote hurdles during the 2004 presidential election.

Reports from across the country found that those attempting to cast votes at Black and Latino area polling sites on Election Day, Nov. 2, faced misleading phone calls, threats that they could face arrest while trying to cast a ballot, proof of identity demands, and attempts to have their votes disqualified.

Democrats claimed the challenges were Republican Party attempts to cause just enough chaos on Election Day to make voting lines grow unbearably long and make people become too discouraged?and too frightened?to vote.

This past summer, John Pappageorge, a Republican state representative in Illinois, was overheard saying, ?If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we?re going to have a tough time in this election.? The statement caused an outcry, because Detroit is still largely Black and votes Democratic. Mr. Pappageorge denied the statement was as it sounds, claiming he was only talking about dealing with the Black vote on a local issue concerning medical marijuana.

But many Illinois voters and Democratic Party representatives didn?t think his explanation sounded valid, and vowed to fight any hints of intimidation.

?With election day a week away,? Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Terry McAuliffe said on Friday, Oct. 29, ?We have already seen a disturbing number of incidents in which Republican operatives are working to chill voter turnout.? He noted that Blacks were being harassed while trying to cast early votes in Arkansas, and he spoke of phone calls received by Democratic Party-aligned voters in Florida telling them to send their absentee ballots in only after Election Day,? Mr. McAuliffe said. ?If he (Pres. Bush) truly believes in voting rights, he should call on the members of his party to put an end to their systematic effort to suppress voter turnout.?

But Pres. Bush made no such appeal, and problems with the early voting attempts many states allowed only continued. First, Black elders who were part of the Orlando, Fla. League of Voters received a series of upsetting visits from Florida police authorities. Initially, the police said they had to visit these voters to ensure no absentee voter fraud was due to take place. Ultimately, the authorities confessed there was no valid reason for the visits, yet these older Black voters faced the sort of voter intimidation last seen by state police forces in the 1960s.

Next, voting in Florida in mid-October saw the loss of 58,000 absentee ballots in the heavily Democratic Broward County and some hundreds of ballots were lost in Palm Beach County. The state also had numerous computer problems with its new touch-screen voting machines.

The state of Colorado saw a Florida 2000-like felon-voting purge, this time done by Sec. of State Donetta Davidson. Colorado was, this year, more successful at illegally purging voters than Florida Sec. of State Glenda Hood or Ohio Sec. of State Kenneth Blackwell, who are all Republicans.

Ms. Hood had already been severely criticized for conducting a ?felon voter? purge similar to the one conducted in 2000 under the state?s previous Sec. of State Kathryn Harris. Ms. Hood?s purge had spent $5.4 million in state revenue to target 47,000 ?felons,? but local media outlets quickly determined that, as in 2000, many of the names on the list were of people who had never been incarcerated, but were devout Democratic party voters. The purge was then quickly disposed of.

In Michigan, voters received misleading phone calls urging a vote for Democratic Party nominee John Kerry because, ?We need John Kerry in order to make gay marriage legal ... Without John Kerry, George Bush will stop gay marriage. That?s why we need Kerry. So Tuesday, stand up for gay marriage by supporting John Kerry.? Both Kerry and Edwards were among the few Democratic Party presidential hopefuls who declared they would not support gay marriages.

An advertisement used to target Black audiences in the Midwest claimed Sen. Kerry may be a liberal, but he?s never done anything positive for the Black community. The ad featured the line: ?Maybe Kerry thought the more of us who are unemployed and hurting the more likely we would vote Democratic!?

So far, Blacks in Ohio recorded the only seeming victory against Republican Party coercion attempts. Many Ohio voters were sent completely false, official-looking letters which stated that, if they had been registered to vote by an organization like the NAACP, they would, unfortunately, not be able to cast a ballot in the Nov. 2 elections because they were ?illegally registered to vote.?

But Ohio voters were at least saved from having to be accosted by Republican or Democratic party challenges when a last minute ruling by Cincinnati District Judge Susan Dlott and Akron District Judge John Adams barred representatives from either party from stationing themselves inside polling precincts.

A lawsuit filed by a Black couple had questioned Republican Party plans to send 3,600 ?challengers? to predominately Black voting precincts in cities like Cleveland and Dayton. Republican ?challengers??or monitors?were due to be paid $100 for a full day of work asking for voter proof of citizenship, proof that a voter is over 18, and a display of valid voter registration papers.