Alabama GOP Threats Halt Historic Voter Registration Drive

[Wetzelbill]

Alabama GOP Threats Halt Historic Voter Registration Drive
By: Cernig

Down in Alabama, you don’t lose your vote if convicted of a felony unless it’s for a crime of “moral turpitude’ - and simple drug possession doesn’t fall into that category. Which means somewhere around 50,000 Alabamans are allowed to vote and maybe don’t know it - including about 6 - 7,000 still in prison.

The Ordinary People’s Society and their national partner the Drug Policy Alliance had been working in the prisons, registering voters with the full support of the Alabama Department of Corrections - until…

Alabama Prisons Commissioner Richard Allen stopped a voter registration drive for inmates Thursday under pressure from the Alabama Republican Party.

In a letter to state Republican Party Chairman Mike Hubbard, Allen said individuals conducting the program “were not doing anything for the inmates that they could not do themselves by simply contacting the Secretary of State’s Office for the voter registration postcard.”

Still, Allen said he decided to stop the drive because of a section in the state code that prohibits using state-owned property to promote or advance candidates for election.

“While it is not clear that assisting voters to register would violate those provisions, I cannot expose departmental employees to that possibility,” he wrote.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/21/alabama-gop-threats-halt-historic-voter-registration-drive/

[WhiteTara]

1. yet another tactic

they will stop at nothing and will stoop to any low.

read this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4048879

[liberal N proud]

2. Why does the fucking GOP fear the voters?

They always have.

They spend more time figuring out ways to keep people from voting than developing workable solutions to todays problems.


One reason is because they know that if everyone who was eligible to vote was allowed to vote, the GOP would be history.

[Selatius]

3. This smacks of Jim Crow.

I wonder aloud if it could be that they think the prison population is "too Black" to register them without the risk of them voting Democratic if they do.

[Wetzelbill]

4. That's exactly it

They know the prison population disproportionately consists of minorities who would mostly vote for Dems, like minority groups do.

[Wetzelbill]

5. kick