http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/218095.php.....
With that in mind, it's worth paying attention to a little-noted development this week in Michigan. The Obama campaign filed suit in state court to block the GOP's "Lose your home, lose your vote" scheme, a plan to challenge the eligibility of voters whose homes have entered foreclosure - despite the fact that many remain resident in those homes.
It's a typical GOP disenfranchisement campaign, and it's nice to see the Obama folks taking a proactive position.
But the really interesting part of the filing is the effort by the Obama campaign to demonstrate, in a court of law, that this behavior is "part of a broader state and nationwide campaign by the Republican Party to suppress the vote." And, upping the ante, the filing alleges that "Defendant Republicans have a long history of engaging in coordinated, systematic campaigns to suppress and deny the right to vote of American
citizens. Those campaigns are often targeted at various racial groups, language minorities, or individuals of low or modest economic circumstances whom Defendant Republicans believe are unlikely to support them in political campaigns."The filing is aimed at a particularly egregious and politically ill-advised initiative.
Not only are the Republican claims here tendentious, but they're targeted at a sympathetic group - largely white, financially-struggling voters, caught up in the economic crisis. But the suit invites the court to go a step further - to recognize a persistent pattern of egregious misconduct; to find that this is a local instance of a state and national campaign; and in so doing, to link this initiative with other, less politically toxic drives.
The court is more likely to rule narrowly than to recognize those claims in its decision.
But by intervening directly in a local case, the Obama campaign is signaling that a national campaign to disenfranchise voters will receive a national response. And by reframing a technical debate over local election laws as a broader discussion of fundamental rights, the Obama campaign has already won.
The GOP has long employed the chimerical notion of "voter fraud," and preyed upon unpopular groups
like students, non-Anglophone Americans and ex-felons. But they made a strategic miscalculation by going after homeowners suffering foreclosures. And by linking this effort at disenfranchisement to the others, the Obama campaign is going to make them pay.(The filing is here
http://www.courthousenews.com/2008/09/17/ObamavMich.pdf)
It seems they really do get what's been going on and are paying attention to it. I though only us in the left blogosphere were paying attention to these tactics, but they seem to be aware and are making the effort to confront it. Thank God!
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