Vote Caging Bars Voters from Polls for Partisan Advantage

While Griffin called the vote caging allegations by Palast “ridiculous,” challenge lists as a Republican tactic is nothing new, Kiel said. The tactic was not only used in Ohio, but “in 1982, a federal judge in New Jersey issued a consent decree banning the targeting of racial minorities with challenge lists; Democrats have since alleged numerous times that Republicans have broken that decree.”

“Caging warrants the attention [of] the highest levels of government and concerned citizens – since it has been notoriously used to suppress minority votes in the past,” wrote Johnston.

In Other News:

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood asked to delay the new requirement for voters to re-register with party affiliation to 2009, according to the Associated Press. U.S. District Judge W. Allen Pepper recently ruled to require party registration and voter ID to vote in the March 2008 primaries. Hood said it would take at least a year to re-register all of the state's 1.7 million voters, and early implementation of the law could lead to voter disenfranchisement.

Hood also asked Pepper for clarification of the voter ID mandate. Former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Fred Banks Jr. filed documents with the NAACP, saying voter ID "'could harm participation of many voters who are elderly and poor - a disproportionate number of whom are African-American.'"

“Banks said voter ID is not necessary to enforce problems Pepper found with the Democratic primaries.”

A bill barring against voter deception passed the House on Monday. The measure would make it a Federal crime to knowingly provide false information in order to disenfranchise another person in a Federal election with up to five years in prison and $250,000 fines, the Associated Press reported.

“The measure also would require the attorney general to provide voters with accurate election information when allegations of deceptive practices are confirmed, and to report to Congress on allegations of deceptions after each federal election.”

Erin Ferns is a Research and Policy Analyst with Project Vote’s Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD).

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