Congress Probes Justice Department Efforts to Curb Voter Suppression
Feature Story by Aisha Forte - 3/11/2008
In light of the expected record turnout for the 2008 general election, Congress is examining concerns about potential voter suppression.
On February 26, the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing on what the Department of Justice was doing in response to the possibility. Voter suppression refers to tactics used by one party that potentially reduce the total vote count of the opposing party.
Asheesh Agarwal, deputy assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, testified that the department has been actively working to enforce the provisions outlined in the Voting Rights Act. He cited examples of department officials challenging county election systems in Port Chester, NY and Osceola County, FL.
There were widespread allegations of voter suppression in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Many of these claims involved the use of so-called "voter caging."
Voter caging involves sending non-forwardable or registered mail to targeted groups of voters and then compiling "caging lists" of voters whose mail is returned for any reason. The caging lists are then used to challenge the validity of those voters' registrations.
The Republican Party was accused of voter caging that targeted minority neighborhoods in Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the 2004 elections.
Committee members noted that Agarwal's testimony did not address the issues of voter suppression and voter caging.
Many voting rights advocates say that the department has not done enough to combat these tactics, even though these investigations are within the agency's mandate. J. Gerald Hebert, executive director of litigation at the Campaign Legal Center, and Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington Bureau of the NAACP, testified that the Department of Justice not only did not address voter suppression cases surrounding voter caging, but they also shifted their focus to cases of alleged voter fraud.
"Vote suppression and racially targeted vote caging schemes threaten the integrity of our elections and undermine our democracy" said Hebert.
"The number of voter suppression cases brought by the current Department of Justice does not even begin to reflect the number of complaints that we receive from folks across the nation who feel their rights have been violated" said Shelton.
Voting advocates have long argued that voter fraud investigations – which many experts argue occur infrequently – should not interfere with the department's voter engagement mandate.
Dr. Lorraine C. Minnite, assistant professor of political science at Barnard College, explained her research into the prevalence of voter fraud and the effect that voter fraud investigations have on access to voting. "The short answer is that voter fraud is rare, and the cure is worse than the disease," said Dr. Minnite.
Chairman John Conyers, D. Mich. and Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D. N.Y., requested a written response from the Department of Justice as to why there were no reports released by the department regarding the 2004 voter caging allegations. They also asked that the department submit a written plan outlining what they will do to prevent voter suppression in the upcoming November election.
