Lost everything in the recession? Foreclosed? Homeless? Well, now you’ve lost your vote too – Republican ratfuckery in Michigan, from the Michigan Messenger via the estimable Attaturk:
The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Mich., a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the coming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.
“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed…
Carabelli is not the only Republican Party official to suggest the targeting of foreclosed voters. In Ohio, Doug Preisse, director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus) and the chair of the local GOP, told the Columbus Dispatch that he has not ruled out challenging voters before the election due to foreclosure-related address issues.
Now, why ever might they want to do that?
The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters.
There you go.
But of course being Republicans there’s always a particularly vicious and venal little twist:
…the McCain campaign’s Michigan headquarters is located in the office buildiing of Trott & Trott, a law firm that specialized in foreclosures, whose founder is a major Republican fund-raiser.
The dirty tricks have barely begun.
