A Message for Republicans Who May Not Know What Their Leaders Are Doing

by: Glenn Smith

Thu Oct 23, 2008 at 11:04 AM CDT

Valid voter registration certificates are being wrongly and illegally rejected by the registrar. Meaningless typos, nicknames or spellings that don't match a spurious comparison to a driver license database, any excuse is being used to reject the voting applications of full U.S. citizens whose Constitution guaranteed them the right to vote. Why?  Because a few Republican officials fear these voters are about to vote against them. Rather than try to persuade them, to win their favor by adopting policies that might appeal to them, the GOP is, in Houston, in Texas, and around the country, conducting the most massive national voter disenfranchisement campaign in history.

Just today the the New York Times ran an editorial condemning the GOP attacks on the sacred right to vote.

Republicans have been pressing for sweeping voter purges in many states. They have also fought to make it harder to enroll new voters. Voting experts say there could be serious problems at the polls on Nov. 4.

It is an easy thing to stir the anger of progressive Texans over this issue. They are rightly outraged. But I have many Republican friends and family members who just don't know this is going on. Though we disagree on many, many, things, not one of them that I've spoken to condones the denial of a citizen's right to vote. That right is the very essence of democracy. That's so fundamental it sounds like a superficial truism that should need to further argument or justification.

Voter suppression is not new. Back in 1982, Republicans were embarrassed when a so-called "felons list" was sent by the GOP Secretary of State to local voter registrars with instructions to purge the names from voter rolls. The list was laughably inaccurate. A Democratic candidate for the House with no criminal record whatsoever turned up on the list. A humiliated SOS dropped the whole thing.

In the past, some have dressed up as police or border patrol to intimidate would-be voters at the polls. Unfounded challenges to voters have been raised at the polls. Minority voting precincts have been shortchanged on voting machines and ballots in hopes that long lines will discourage voting. Phone calls are made into Democratic precincts giving wrong voting locations in inaccurate instructions.

Next session, many Republican leaders hope to pass a bureaucratic, duplicative and unnecessary voter identification requirement whose only purpose is to make it harder for U.S. citizens to vote.

I don't think BOR has many GOP readers. So I hope you will take the time to pass this message or a message of your own to Republican friends, neighbors, family members and colleagues who might be among the uninformed on this issue.

Some details from the KHOU story below will shock them. I believe we need their help to protect the right to vote in Texas. We can yell at them, or make them allies on this issue. I think the latter will be far more effective. We don't need to use incendiary language to sanctimoniously prove our own commitment to voting rights. We need others to join us in the fight to protect that right.

With troubles at home and abroad -- and for some no end in sight --young Catherine Joor can't wait for this November.

"I've been looking forward to being able to vote for a very long time," Joor said.

But a funny thing happened to the high school senior as she made her way to the ballot box.

Harris County officials told her something she found shocking.

"I wasn't old enough to vote," said Joor.

Greenblatt: "How old are you going to be on Election Day?"

Joor: "18"

Greenblatt: "And yet they still rejected you because you weren't old enough?"

Joor: "Mmhm"

Greenblatt: "In their eyes?"

Joor: "Yes."

Greenblatt: "Does that make any sense?"

Joor: "Nope."

The daughter of two lawyers began her own campaign against the County Registrar.

"I argued with them and I asked them to check it again," Joor said.

The calls kept going.

"She said stay on the line and no one came back," she said. "This is a democracy and it should be easy for someone to do what they're allowed to."

The Republican voter registrar for Harris County said that it was just a mistake.

...the 11 News Defenders have discovered real problems are blocking qualified Americans from registering to vote.

"I'm shocked this is going on," said Frances Graham who is with Houston Votes.

Voting is a serious matter for Graham.

"My family has been in Texas since 1840. Many of them fought in the American Revolution," she said.

So this year, Graham worked with the registration organization Houston Votes. The former certified public accountant registered more than 130 new voters.

But she noticed a trend.

"A lot of the people that I had registered are being rejected," said Graham.

Graham then noticed another important detail.

"They're being rejected even though the application is very clear, and they had filled it out very legibly and they'd done a good job," she explained.

"There is a problem in Harris County," elections expert Lauri Van Hoose said.

Van Hoose was appointed to a state advisory committee on voting. She has testified for both Democratic and Republican backed legislation.

"People register to vote and they're not being put on the rolls," the elections expert said.

Van Hoose said that in Harris County there are "a high number of people being rejected due to inconsistent practices of reviewing applications."

Van Hoose knows this because she reviewed registration records from the tax assessor's office.

Greenblatt: "These aren't just numbers you're coming up with on your own?"

Van Hoose: "Right."

Greenblatt: "These are numbers based off his information?"

Van Hoose: "Right."

Van Hoose's conclusion is that the problem is bigger than we think.

"This is not one or two registrations," she said. "This is thousands of registrations."

Republicans might win an election by denying their fellow citizens the right to vote. But at what cost? This shouldn't be a partisan issue. This should be the one issue on which everyone in Texas and the nation can agree. If we stand idly by today while the right to vote is denied to some "other" we don't know, it is our own right that is lost.