As we approach the 2012 election, every indication is that we will see an unprecedented use of voter challenges in an effort to suppress minority voting. True the Vote is a tea party based organization that aims to recruit one million poll watchers around the country this November, to challenge minority voters under the color of protecting the electoral process against vote impersonation fraud — notwithstanding overwhelming factual evidence showing that in-person voting voter impersonation fraud is all but non-existent.
True the Vote representatives say they want to make the experience of voting “like driving [while black, through a white suburbia neighborhood,] and seeing the police following you.
Organization leaders are allegedly prepared to promote extralegal, but not necessarily illegal, measures to exploit election laws in several 2012 battleground states to challenge minority Democratic voters. (click on the map for details)
Bullies at the Ballot Box, a new report released jointly by Demos and Common Cause, reviews election laws of ten battleground states — Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia — that might be exploited to suppress the vote.
Thirty-nine states allow private citizens to challenge voters at the polls. Of the thirty-nine states where anyone can challenge voters' eligibility to vote inside polling places, only fifteen of them require the challengers to prove that the person they’re challenging isn’t an eligible voter. Which means that in twenty-four states poll watchers can wage all kinds of frivolous extralegal, but not necessarily illegal, mischief to exploit election laws, with accusations — that a voter is an “illegal alien,” or that they are using a dead person’s identity to vote — to burden if not intimidate voters and slow traffic flow through buy polling places.
In states with "voter challenge" laws, the poll watcher's intended roll to guarantee fair elections can be abused and used for racial profiling for no other reason than having a Latino surname or dark skin color. In those states, people can make up a reason to challenge a voter’s rights without any evidence backing them up, and do so with impunity. A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice, “Voter Challengers” details that troublesome history while spelling out just how problematic such poll-watching activities can be, especially when administered by hyper-partisan and racially insensitive groups like True the Vote.
True the Vote, and their many allies, often cite voter fraud as the reason for militarizing the polls, but countless studies have shown that their claims of massive in-person voting voter fraud are nothing more than lies, as detailed in this News 21 investigation. That creates a real danger that voters and election officials will face misguided and overzealous True the Vote poll greeter and poll watcher volunteers, who will take the law into their own hands to target minority voters and election officials — outside and inside polling places.