Seniors In Public Housing: GOP Group Misled Them Into Changing Their Voter Registration

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- Daily Kos, Feb. 3, 2022.

When it comes to voting here in the United States, we know that far too many people don’t have fair access. Lack of access can sometimes be literal—living with a disability that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to enter your local polling station—or harder to pin down, like not being able to get time off of work before polling hours close. It can also be a challenge for folks to stand in long lines because of health concerns, caretaking responsibilities, or frankly, emotional energy. On top of all of these barriers, many folks struggle to access the appropriate forms of identification to vote (thanks, Republicans), which is especially the case for people of color, and especially Native communities.

All of this serves as background to an underdiscussed but ongoing voting access issue: Vulnerable people are sometimes targeted with the aim to have them change their voting registration. This means that if you’re privileged enough to actually register to vote and want to vote, you still apparently have to keep your wits about you to make sure you’re not taken advantage of. The latest possible example of this comes out of a public housing building in Florida, where seniors feel they were duped into changing their voter registration status to Republican, as reported by local outlet WPLG.

Armando Selva told the outlet that people wearing Republican Party of Florida hats were in the hallways of Haley Sofge Towers, a public housing residence in the Miami area, knocking on doors and holding clipboards. Selva said he was immediately suspicious, and remembered them telling him they were there to make “renewals” on voter registration, and asking him if he wanted to “renew” his status. Sadly, not all residents were suspicious from the start.
One senior resident, Juan Carlos Salazar, alleged to the outlet that he “didn’t do anything,” but that he realized his party had been changed to Republican when he received his new registration in the mail.

As of now, Democratic State Sen. Annette Taddeo, who serves as vice chair of Florida’s Ethics and Elections Committee, has introduced an amendment to an elections bill that would heavily penalize those who fill in the voter paperwork for others. That particular amendment has been withdrawn for now, but the topic is certainly an ongoing and important one. Elders are particularly vulnerable to this sort of manipulation, as are folks who don’t speak English as a first language, people who might live with certain intellectual or processing disabilities, and folks who don’t have access to things like the internet in order to do their own research on what groups or individuals are approaching them...

- More,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/3/2078388/-Seniors-in-public-housing-building-say-Republican-group-misled-them-into-changing-voter-registration