On the Eve of the Elections
• Suppression of the Right to Vote
• Statements on Voter Registration Work
• Michigan Voter Purge Program Violates Federal Law
• Hate Propaganda on a Grand Scale
Suppression of the Right to Vote
The monopoly media has been filled with stories about "voter fraud," in the form of fraudulent registration cards with names like "Mickey Mouse." The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is among the organizations being targeted. At the same time, stories are also circulating on the potential for Republicans again stealing the vote through manipulation of computerized voting machines. Early voting in Florida indicates that machines are again switching Democratic votes to Republican candidates.
It is a well-known fact that voter fraud in the form of people pretending to be someone they are not -- Mickey Mouse for instance -- does not exist. ACORN is being targeted mainly because it organizes to defend rights and to divert from the far bigger fraud carried out by Democrats and Republicans. They are the ones that control and manipulate the voter lists in a manner that favors one or the other or both. They together utilize voter registration and voter identification laws to block large numbers of voters from voting. And in doing so, they are also contributing to the discrediting of politicians and elections.
The federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed after the 2000 elections fraud which brought George W. Bush to office. It was supposed to prevent fraudulent vote counts but in fact guarantees them. This is done by requiring that all voter rolls to be centralized in the hands of the Secretary of State in each state. These positions are partisan positions, held by a Democrat or Republican. Both engage in widescale voter fraud by blocking people from voting. Which party does the blocking and for what reason varies from state to state and election to election. The secretaries also act to ensure that the right to vote is not equal, by arbitrarily imposing various conditions.
For example, in 2004, in Ohio, the Secretary of State was a Republican who said he would "deliver the vote" for Bush. He imposed conditions that included demanding that registration forms be submitted on a certain weight paper or they were considered invalid. Now the secretary is a Democrat. Both parties are fighting about voter registration, both claiming to defend the voters. But neither party acts to guarantee that all eligible voters are registered and able to vote.
The existence of voter fraud committed by the parties using election registration is well documented. In Colorado, it is estimated that nearly one in five voters, 19.4 percent, have been removed from the voter rolls. The Secretary of State there is a Republican. In New Mexico in 2008, one in nine people who came to vote found their names had been removed from the voter rolls. Those removed included the County Elections Supervisor, who no longer has responsibility for the voter rolls -- the New Mexico Secretary of State, a Democrat, does. New Mexico is considered a swing state, leaning Democrat, so one would think they would act to defend at least Democratic voters. Not so. Native Americans that vote, for example, often vote for Democrats. Yet they are among those being removed, because the Democrats are trying to steal native lands for uranium mining and want them off the rolls.
Similarly, voter identification laws being passed by Republicans and Democrats also disenfranchise voters and render the vote unequal. This is done through requirements for government issued identification, like a passport or driver's license. It is estimated that one out of every ten people do not have such ID. For African Americans it is one in five. In Indiana, for example, an estimated 100,000 black voters will be blocked from voting by a law. Workers, especially immigrants, and the elderly also fall into this category in disproportionate numbers. People are being disenfranchised by being purged from voter lists, by voter ID laws, by inaccurate voting machines, by insufficient numbers of machines, etc. All of this is organized by the Republicans and Democrats, acting together and separately, but always against the right to vote.
Voter laws, like laws mandating similar ID requirements for those receiving Medicare or Medicaid, are being imposed not to stop fraud, but to impose civil death on large sections of the population. Civil death means the individual ceases to exist as far as the state is concerned, and thus ceases to get Medicare, cannot vote, cannot enter a federal building, or fly, or generally engage in the civil life of society.
In addition, all the discussion about voter registration neglects the key fact that the federal government refuses to institute a federal elections commission, not tied to either party in any way, to guarantee that all eligible voters are registered and that all voters nationwide have an equal right to vote. It is not possible for the Democrats and Republicans to provide a system that is equal and that guarantees the rights of all. The present and the past confirm this. The U.S. requires a federal elections commission which is controlled by the public, operates in the interests of the public and provides the equal right of all to elect and be elected with a guarantee.
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Statements on Voter Registration Work
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has just completed the largest, most successful nonpartisan voter registration drive in U.S. history. We helped 1.3 million low-income, minority and young voters across the country register to vote.
Unfortunately, just as in 2006, that success in bringing people into the democratic process, have been greeted with unfounded accusations to disparage our work and help maintain the status quo of an unbalanced electorate.
After a similar spate of charges against ACORN in 2006, we learned that then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had fired Republican U.S. Attorneys because they refused to prosecute ACORN and other voter assistance groups on trumped up fraud charges. This was the heart of the U.S. Attorney-gate scandal that led Karl Rove, Gonzales and other top Department of Justice officials to resign. Because the press didn't catch on until long after the election, it was part of a successful strategy to create an unfounded specter of voter fraud and to suppress voting (from October 10 statement).
The core responsibility of local boards of elections has been and continues to be to determine which registration cards are duplicates, which are new registrants, and which are people that changed their addresses. Much of the impact that voter registration drives are designed to have -- enabling people to change their addresses so they are able to vote on Election Day -- is often considered of no value. In the end, after taking into account these change-of-address registration applications, nearly 1 million people we helped to register will be eligible to vote on Election Day because of our work.
While we would love it if the American system of voter registration were so simple and accessible that every voter registration application we collect translated to another voter successfully getting on the rolls, we all know that this is not the case in the United States. For all the talk this season about Project Vote and ACORN "registering" voters, it is important to note that nonprofits and community organizations do not have the final authority to register anyone. Only the government can register voters. What Project Vote and ACORN do is assist Americans in filling out registration applications and submitting them to election officials who make the final determination of their eligibility.
Project Vote and ACORN are proud that we collected 1.3 million applications in communities -- and among populations -- that have historically been left out of the process and neglected by other efforts. No one can dispute that America's electorate does not represent its eligible voting population. Nearly 50 years after the signing of the Voting Rights Act, and 15 years after the passage of the National Voter Registration Act, we still have an electorate in which Americans of color and young Americans are under-represented by significant margins.
Our government, unlike most western democracies, has shirked its responsibility to ensure that all eligible Americans can cast a ballot without unfair barriers and bureaucratic burdens.
As the NY Times editorialized:
"The answer is for government to do a better job of registering people to vote. That way there would be less need to rely on private registration drives, largely being conducted by well-meaning private organizations that use low-paid workers. Federal and state governments should do their own large-scale registration drives staffed by experienced election officials. Even better, Congress and the states should adopt election-day registration, which would make such drives unnecessary."
We could not agree more. But until the government assumes this responsibility, voter registration drives like ours have proven to be, by far, the most effective means currently available to reach underrepresented voters. This is a burden and responsibility that ACORN, Project Vote, and scores of other beleaguered nonprofit organizations across the country have assumed in the vacuum of real leadership and reform on this issue. It is thankless work that is difficult and arduous at the best of times, and in election cycles like this one -- full of partisan attacks and reckless rhetoric -- it sometimes seems impossible.
We look forward to the day when our efforts to help register voters are unnecessary, when our voter registration programs are obsolete. Until that day comes, however, Project Vote and ACORN will continue to work together to ensure all eligible Americans have their voices heard on Election Day.
(Please feel free to contact us at www.acorn.org if you would like our additional, more detailed analysis of the results of our voter registration drive.)
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Michigan Voter Purge Program Violates Federal Law
In a victory for voting rights, a judge today ruled that Michigan's voter removal program violates federal law and ordered the state to stop illegally purging voters from the rolls. The decision comes in a lawsuit filed last month by Advancement Project, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Michigan and the law firm of Pepper Hamilton LLP. "We are gratified that the judge ordered the state of Michigan to halt its unlawful purge program," said Bradley Heard, senior attorney with Advancement Project.
Judge Stephen J. Murphy of the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that one of Michigan's voter removal programs violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). In question was a Michigan state law requiring local clerks to nullify the registrations of newly-registered voters whenever their voter identification cards are returned by the post office as undeliverable [a newly-registered voter is not necessarily a new voter, but also includes those re-registering as a result of address change, name change, etc. -- TML Ed. note] Detroit elections officials report that nearly 30,000 voters per year in Detroit are removed from the rolls as a result of this state election law. The NVRA permits voters to remain on the voter rolls for at least two federal elections after voter registration cards are returned.
Judge Murphy ordered Michigan to "immediately discontinue their practice of canceling or rejecting a voter's registration based upon the return of the voter's original voter identification card as undeliverable."
[The suit was filed in part because of reports that voters would be purged from the voter rolls, using foreclosure lists. People whose homes have been foreclosed are among the ones most likely not to receive the cards in the mail. From January to September of 2008, more than 17,690 homes have been foreclosed on in Wayne County, where Detroit is located. It is Michigan's largest county with its largest African American population. In 2007, Wayne County led the nation in foreclosures for large metropolitan areas. -- TML Ed. note]
"As a result of the judge's decision, fewer Michigan voters will be illegally purged and wrongly disfranchised -- and that's good for everyone," said Meredith Bell-Platts, staff counsel with the ACLU Voting Rights Project. "Today's decision [counters] an electoral system that has been poisoned by illegal disfranchisement policies."
The program has a very detrimental impact in minority, low-income and student communities across Michigan. These communities tend to be more transient and to live in multi-family housing. The plaintiffs in the case are the United States Student Association (USSA) and the ACLU of Michigan.
"Today's ruling is a clear victory for thousands of disenfranchised individuals who were illegally removed from the voter rolls. The ruling puts the Secretary of State on notice that she can no longer ignore federal law by illegally purging voters," said Kary L. Moss, ACLU of Michigan Executive Director. "The interests of every voter in Michigan should come first and we must guarantee that everyone who is eligible to vote on November 4 will be allowed to exercise this fundamental right."
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Hate Propaganda on a Grand Scale
In the midst of remarkably cynical election-time mud-slinging, the Obsession campaign is truly in a class of its own. Over the past weeks, 28 million copies of the anti-Muslim propaganda film "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" have been delivered to the doors of newspaper subscribers in swing states. The 2006 documentary, which has been a mainstay of David Horowitz's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week," describes "radical Islam" as a menace comparable to Adolf Hitler that, according to the film's website, "is threatening, with all the means at its disposal, to bow Western civilization under the yoke of its values."
For the groups behind the film's distribution, the goal seems pretty clear: Scare the holy hell out of millions of voters in swing states about a possible Muslim takeover of the U.S. It's hard to see the targeting of electoral battlegrounds as anything other than an attempt to help John McCain get elected -- perhaps by capitalizing on the widespread whispering campaign that Obama is a "secret Muslim."
And one has to admit that the Obsession campaign's marketing plan has been quite slick. After all, what better way to disseminate hate propaganda than under the unassuming guise of a documentary film delivered in Americans' daily newspapers? A plan that, sadly, many newspapers were all too happy to go along with for the sake of corporate profits. While a handful of newspapers -- the Greensboro, North Carolina News & Record, the Detroit Free Press, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- have taken the ethical stance of refusing to carry the DVD (the News & Record called it "fear-mongering and divisive"), some 70 papers, including the New York Times, have delivered it to their subscribers as a paid advertising supplement.
There has really just been one small glitch in the plan: The public doesn't seem to be buying it. Newspapers that carried the DVD have faced floods of complaints from readers, and the past week has seen protests and press conferences denouncing the film.
Portland, Oregon, September 29, 2008: Demonstration against Portland Oregonian for distributing the Obsession DVD. "Propaganda distributed via the Oregonian can only spread misinformation and instill fear and distrust of all Muslim Americans in our community," said Sho Dozono, (far left), business man and Japanese American Citizens League member. Like many others who objected to the DVD, Dozono canceled his subscription to the daily newspaper. He compared the Oregonian's decision to distribute the DVD to the newspaper's role during World War II in promoting anti-Japanese American sentiment. (Source: Pacific Citizen)
The problem, it would appear, is that many readers simply do not accept the notion their newspaper should provide a cover for hate propaganda. As one Durham, North Carolina, News & Observer reader put it, "I cannot believe that I was sent the hate-inflaming, fear-mongering video disk Obsession in my newspaper! What will you enclose next? KKK robes?"
The public, it turns out, is a much tougher sell than the corporate media. Major corporate media outlets have for years been citing the anti-Muslim pundits featured in Obsession as "experts."
For example: Steve Emerson has been invited regularly on NBC and described as an "anti-terror expert," despite the fact his research has been repudiated many times over. This is an "expert" who initially blamed the Oklahoma City bombing on Middle Eastern terrorists, and who is now going around claiming that the Bush State Department is collaborating with extremists.
And then there's Daniel Pipes. While he's repeatedly been cited by the media as an "expert" on Islam and the Middle East, he has warned that "the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims" entail "true dangers" for American Jews, and led a witch hunt against a public school official who was slated to run an Arabic-language charter school in New York City.
Just a month before a critical election, there are no signs that the anti-Muslim mud-slinging campaign is going away. In fact, the secretive nonprofit called the Clarion Fund behind the Obsession campaign just came out with a brand new DVD, "The Third Jihad," featuring Mark Steyn -- who, as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's new report documents, has warned of the "demographic decline" posed by Europe's emerging Muslim population, and suggests there are lessons for Europeans in the Balkan example of ethnic cleansing.
You can read all about Emerson, Pipes and Steyn in a new report that's just been released called "Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation." The report profiles 12 top anti-Muslim pundits, including prominent talkshow hosts Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.
The media's long record of failing to challenge (and often enabling) anti-Muslim smears should leave us quite worried about how this final leg of election '08 will play out: Will the media continue to provide a platform to the anti-Muslim smear machine, or will they uphold standards of responsible journalism?
* Isabel Macdonald is Communications Director for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).