Can someone please explain "Caging"?

[Limelight]

As a minority I've heard a bit about the idea of vote caging, but can't really wrap my mind around how it works. I posted this bit on another thread asking someone to help me, but no response. Hopefully someone can explain it so I get what would be illegal about this:

Ok, the article defines caging as "Vote caging is an illegal tactic to suppress minorities from voting by having their names purged from voter rolls when they fail to respond to registered mail sent to their homes. The Republican National Committee signed a consent decree in 1986 stating they would not engage in the practice after they were caught suppressing votes in 1981 and 1986."

For a second it didn't make any sense cuz I was thinking if people don't confirm their address this official mailing to do so why shouldn't people be suspicious. Then it hit me... "Wait, who is it that's sending these "registered mail" messages? Is it the state or country that frankly I would agree has the right to demand that potential voters confirm their address or is it the RNC?

Now if it's the state I say this is much ado about nothing. Write your actual damn address down correctly and you have no issues. But see if it's the RNC that's sending out these letters then coming back to the state or country and saying "Oh, they wouldn't confirm to us they're living at such and such so they shouldn't be able to vote"... Now that's bullshit.

Hell I've been registered for a long ass time, but if someone one from the RNC sent me a letter to confirm my address like I have to confirm shit to them I'd do that old trick where you fold the paper in half and rub it together for a long time to make it soft. That way I wouldn't get a paper cut on my behind after I took a dump and used the letter to wipe my ass with. Is that what caging is? The Republicons sending out mail demanding voters confirm to them their addresses are real when in fact the voter has absolutely no legal obligation to explain or confirm a damn thing to anyone but the state or county?

Somebody help me out here... :shrug:
----------------------------------------

So that was my original thinking. Seems like an official governmental body would be ok asking for confirmation of address but a political party no matter which one would be out of line doing it. Is that what they mean by caging?

[EFerrari]

1. Excellent question! Kicking for a good response.

:)

[Disturbed]

6. RNC caught red handed 'caging' voters

RE: RNC caught red handed 'caging' voters. As opposed to this (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/011255.php) careful review of the facts shows that ...

http://www.bismarcktribune.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=62

[EFerrari]

9. Thanks!

[bobbolink]

2. Well, is *this* OK with you?

I can't give you all the particulars, but this has happened with military votes, and they are usually by race, as I understand.

Knowing that the service person isn't "home", it is sent to the home address, so that SERVICEPERSON is erased from voting rolls.

They had their "actual damn address" correct.

You might think about not blaming the victim, until you learn what it's about.

[morningglory]

28. They send mail to all the registered Dem's, Lots of Dem's live in apartments

and move frequently. If the mail comes back "addressee unknown" or whatever, then when the person shows up to vote, they can say they had given a fake address when they registered. My niece had just moved to a new apartment, went back to get her last few things and her mail, and she had received a voter registration card. In 2000.

[maddezmom]

3. couple of ref links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caging_list
http://slate.com/id/2167284/

[mod mom]

4. CAGING:

Vote caging is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren't living at (because they are, say, at college or at war). The Republican National Committee reportedly stopped the practice following a consent decree in a 1986 case. Google the term and you'll quickly arrive at the Wizard of Oz of caging, Greg Palast, investigative reporter and author of the wickedly funny Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans—Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Palast started reporting allegations of Republican vote caging for the BBC's Newsnight in 2004. He's been almost alone on the story since then. Palast contends, both in Armed Madhouse and widely through the liberal blogosphere, that vote caging, an illegal voter-suppression scheme, happened in Florida in 2004 this way:

The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to voters' homes. Letters returned ("caged") were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and—you got to love this—American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.
Why weren't these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation—and the soldiers were overseas.

Palast supplies evidence linking Tim Griffin, then-research director for the RNC, to this caging plot; specifically, a series of confidential e-mails to Republican Party muckety-mucks with the suggestive heading "RE: caging." The e-mails were accidentally sent to a George Bush parody site. They also contained suggestively named spreadsheets, headed "caging" as well. The names on the lists are what Palast's researchers deemed to be homeless men and soldiers deployed in Iraq. Here are the e-mails.

-snip
http://www.slate.com/id/2167284

DOJ's actions are particularly difficult to defend, given the mounting evidence that claims of voting fraud have been greatly exaggerated by some on the right. As Professor Lori Minnite writes in a recent report entitled The Politics of Voting Fraud: "The claim that voter fraud threatens the integrity of American elections is itself a fraud." Professor Minnite's argument finds further support in the meager results of the DOJ's aggressive anti-fraud campaign, and the report of Tova Wang and Job Serebrov -- originally prepared for, but not released by, the EAC -- finding "widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud."

The fact that air is quickly escaping from the voter-fraud balloon is confirmed by the abrupt disappearance of the American Center for Voting Rights. Formerly led by Mark P. "Thor" Hearne, who had served as National Elections Counsel to Bush-Cheney 2004, ACVR issued a lengthy and misleading report in 2005. As described here, this report sought to create the impression that fraud was rampant, especially in communities of color, based mostly on unconfirmed and specious media reports. But as Rick Hasen has recently observed, ACVR has now vanished as quickly as it appeared after the 2004 election.

There is also increasing evidence that the means most commonly suggested to target alleged voter fraud -- restrictive identification requirements -- are likely to have a disparate impact on certain classes of likely Democratic voters, especially racial minorities. That evidence includes this report from M.V. Hood and Charles Bullock, finding that African Americans, Latinos, and the elderly are less likely to have DMV-issued photo ID in Georgia. It also includes this one from the Brennan Center, finding that minorities, elderly people, and the poor are disproportionately represented among the more than 21 million U.S. citizens who lack government-issued ID.

-snip
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/blogs/tokaji/

[emlev]

5. If you have TV, that's what "Now" is about tonight on PBS

If you don't have TV, I believe it'll be available online fairly soon, as Moyers's other shows have been.

[emlev]

7. Greg Palast about to be on the radio, here's the link to stream it

The Peter B. Collins Show, today guest-hosted by DU's "BRADBLOG."

Palast is the first one who brought the vote caging issue into the public eye, and will be featured on NOW tonight. But you can hear him in just a few minutes on the radio.

If you can't listen now, it'll be archived later at BRAD BLOG.

[chknltl]

8. Here is a nice fairly recent link

http://www.gregpalast.com/raging-caging-what-the-heck-is-vote-caging-and-why-should-we-care/

[Robbien]

10. You will know if you have been caged when

you get to the voting place and they challenge your right to vote. You will be handed a provisional ballot. A provisional ballot which will later be thrown in the wastebasket and not be counted.

They choose your name to challenge by the caging method of address confirmation.

[EFerrari]

11. And it appears that the Republics especially targeted black

servicemen last time.

Support the troops!

[Robbien]

19. GOPers successfully caged over 7 mil of voters

all who had addresses in less expensive sections of certain key areas. Yes, they were targeting blacks, but would also be happy enough roping in any other race in those poorer areas also. They felt that anyone who didn't have bulging wallets were unlikely to vote for their candidates. Or at least that is what I heard from listening to Palast.

[EFerrari]

21. It's not on here yet and I'm looking forward to his report

although, it strikes me that we've known this for SOME EFFEN TIME.

[Robbien]

23. now that's the effen truth

:D

I listened to Palast on THISISHELL radio program a couple of weeks back. Thisishell is a great Saturday morning program which has about 4 or 5 guest interviews during the four hour program. I am addicted to the show.

[EFerrari]

24. (Even ex Catholics have trouble with the f bomb)

:hi:

[BrotherBuzz]

15. Servicemen who vote absentee, overseas, will never know their ballot...

was challenged and tossed.

[SoCalDem]

12. It's basically what data-base managers do every day

You mail out something that "must be responded to", or the name gets removed from the list.

Marketers usually include a contest entry, a numbered coupon, or some other reason why a person WOULD respond, so they work well.

You make sure it's NON-transferrable and NON-forwardable.

The mailings that are "returned to sender" are deemed to be "useless" and are removed from the database.

For the "cagey republicans", they carefully select segments of the population who are known to move often, or who may share addresses, or are in a military area, where people are often deployed.

These folks do not cease to exist, but if their names can be removed because they did not respond to a mailing they did not even know about, they get removed.

[chknltl]

13. Today on NOW (PBS -8 pm) Voter Caging

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/index.html
I found this on the Randi Rhodes blog. (I feel she has described this issue better than anyone else I have heard) David Iglesies, one of the fired attournoys, is interviewed on this topic. The show will be available online soon after the initial broadcast.

If Randi Rhodes is reccomending this, you can bet I'll be watching!

[MasonJar]

14. Unbelievably (unless one is familiar with the GOPers) one of the main groups

targeted was the soldiers who were no longer in the states (black ones, that is.)

[TomClash]

16. Caging example

Through a third party "caging agent" the Repukes send registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable because the voter can't or won't sign for it, they uses that as evidence to challenge the registration and often win.

Most of the recipients are poor and working class - more likely to be Dem voters. One less Dem vote. Another tactic in the class war.

[OzarkDem]

22. They targeted neighborhoods in cities near military bases

knowing that there would be many homes of soldiers serving overseas.

[TomClash]

26. Of course

Democrats with no money - what a surprise.

[Poiuyt]

27. Exactly. Caging isn't bad EXCEPT when they target specific neighborhoods

And the Republican National Committee would specifically target neighborhoods known to have a high percentage of minorities and low income residents.

[EFerrari]

29. And students. College students. n/t

[ProgressiveEconomist]

30. I disagree. Caging and even advance registration requirements ALWAYS hurt

the more mobile (poorer, urban, renters, minorities), who tend to vote Democratic rather than Republican. But IMO systematic mass targeted partisan caging is completely intolerable and should be made a felony.

IMO states should do their own even-handed minimally-biased updating of their central voter registration rolls, and refuse to accept mass challenges from partisan sources. But to maximize citizen participation in elections, registration rolls should remain open until closing time on Election Day.

Every extra layer of voting bureaucracy and every unnecessary deadline puts another barrier between citizens and the ballot box, and most often tends to restrict the electorate back toward the landed gentry who were the only ones who could vote in the late Eighteenth Century.

Some jurisdictions (for example MN) allow same-day registration and registration changes. Other jurisdictions (for example, ND) never have had any voter registration whatsoever. IMO, Spencer Overton and other legal scholars of voting are correct in advocating cost-benefit analysis to determine whether any bureaucratic barrier is necessary. How many legitimate national or state votes would be prevented for each improper national or state vote prevented?

[mmonk]

17. It's our new old way of checking voters.

[L. Coyote]

18. ID opposition and deprive them of their vote. n/t

[ProgressiveEconomist]

20. It 'works' for the GOP because poor urban renters are more likely than wealthy suburban

homeowners to --

(1) have to go to the post office to pick up a registered letter because nobody's home to sign for it when the mail arrives;

(2) move short distances within their neighborhoods since the last election, and thus not have exactly the same address as last time; and

(3) have voting-age household members who are away in the "all Volunteer" armed forces because jobs are few in the neighborhood.

Like "voter ID", "vote caging" is a very tricky, little-understood process that is sure to shave a few percentage points away from Democrats in any election. See another recent DU thread on caging at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1445050&mesg_id=1445715 . It has a link to a five-page pdf with a fairly complete summary of documented instances of "vote caging".

Would you make a special trip to the post office to retrieve a registered letter from "Operation Eagle Eye" or "RNC"?

The general principle of Republican VOTE SUPPRESSION:

Republicans know that every time ANY EXTRA STEP step is added to voting barriers disproportionately facing those who tend to vote Democratic--renters, the poor, minorities, those who've served time in prison, etc.-- a few percentage points more of the Democratic vote than of the Republican vote will be suppressed. That's how a minority of wealthy people hold on to power in a so-called "democracy".

And, after they have systematically suppressed disproportionately Democratic votes at great expense to themselves, they smugly editorialize against "them" for "not bothering to vote"!

[Limelight]

25. Good lookin' out...

Much clear picture to me now. Yeah, this is definitely a bullshit practice.:thumbsdown: