LAST FRIDAY, Ohio Republicans attempted to crack down on voter registration errors by purging voter rolls of names and addresses that did not match GOP rosters. On the surface, maintaining the accuracy of voter rolls seems innocent enough.
The GOP's true aim is suspect, though, because of the manner in which it has proceeded to purge voter rolls in the past. Prior to previous elections, the GOP has targeted populations that traditionally vote Democratic. For instance, before the 2000 presidential election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired a company called Database Technologies, which does extensive work for the FBI, to remove felons from Florida voter rolls. Because a Florida statute prohibits felons from voting in elections, these citizens would be denied if they showed up at the polls. However, Database Technologies did not perform detailed cross-references between their databases and the voter rolls, invalidating many based on the fact that they had similar names to felons from other states. In the end, Database Technologies ended up purging 57,700 names from Florida voter rolls. Following the 2000 election, it became apparent that the great majority of those wiped from voter rolls were indeed not felons. In fact, they had received no warning that they would not be able to vote and many showed up at the polls anyway. They did share one common feature, though -- black skin.
According to The Washington Post, race was one factor that Database Technologies did choose to cross-reference. Black felons, who made up a disproportionate number of felons in Florida, were only cross-referenced with other blacks on the scrub list. Because the majority of blacks traditionally vote along Democratic Party lines, and due to the importance of Florida as a swing state in the 2000 election, including race as a cross-reference seems in retrospect to have had an advance purpose.
Perhaps it seems a bit hard to imagine -- poll taxes, literacy tests and other forms of intimidation once used to keep blacks away from the polls are supposed to be relics of the past. But University American Politics Prof. Lynn Sanders actually encountered disenfranchisement first-hand after moving to Virginia. Upon arriving at the polls one Election Day, Sanders, who is Caucasian, learned that her name was not on the list of registered voters. "My story isn't about a challenge per se, but a more typical sort of administrative error of the sort that I would speculate disenfranchises numerous Americans all over the country, especially among the kind of people likely to be Democrats," Sanders said. She realized that she was the only white female in the situation, but that the others "were brown-skinned people; they looked and sounded like they might be Mexican-American. They all said they had also recently registered and there was no record of their registrations."
Because of the situation in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, Americans are even more sensitive to the challenges of voter registrations this time around. The GOP's methods are a bit more subtle in Ohio than they were in Florida, though. Filing challenges that numbered over 35,000 in 65 counties, the GOP was forced to withdraw thousands because of computer error. Citing mail that they sent to the registered Democrats' addresses that was returned undeliverable, Ohio Republicans petitioned for these citizens' removal from voter rolls. Voters who had the status of their residencies challenged will receive notifications that they can attend hearings to confirm their legal addresses. But with less than one week until Election Day, the process of addressing the challenges could prove difficult for citizens and potentially flood Ohio courtrooms. Even if voters do not show up to the hearings to contest the challenges, Ohio jurisdictions will probably not throw out their voter registrations. In an interview with the Associated Press, Franklin County elections chief Matthew Damschroder, a Republican, said that doing so could interfere with citizens' federal right to vote.
Is the GOP once again targeting loyal Democrats? Based on recent challenges, it is tempting to say yes. In Sanders' view, challenges to voting are more likely to affect Democratic voters in most places. Although she considers her own story very typical, she emphasized the problem that this obstruction of justice poses "because it appeared to be a simple administrative error." We must take into consideration the attention that Ohio is receiving as a swing state in this year's presidential election. With the most recent state polls showing Sen. Kerry and President Bush in a dead heat, Ohio has even been called a bellwether for the outcome of the national election. Perhaps the GOP's approach to swinging the Ohio election should be something we're scrutinizing more closely.
Todd Rosenbaum's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at trosenbaum@cavalierdaily.com.
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