The Republican Party made an agreement 30 years ago with the Democrat Party NOT to ensure voting integrity and NOT to pursue suspected vote fraud. Yes. You read it correctly. In fact, legally the GOP cannot ensure voting integrity, nor can it prevent vote fraud.[...] In 1981, during the gubernatorial election in New Jersey (NJ), a lawsuit was brought against the RNC, the NJ Republican State Committee (RSC), and three individuals (John A. Kelly, Ronald Kaufman, and Alex Hurtado), accusing them of violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 1971, 1973, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.[...] To settle the lawsuit, in 1982, the RNC and RSC entered into an agreement or Consent Decree, which is national in scope, limiting the RNC’s ability to engage or assist in voter fraud prevention unless the RNC obtains the court’s approval in advance. From here, the argument goes straight to the 1981 Consent Decree itself, which does include some provisions which conservatives and Republicans could justifiably be alarmed over. It specifically requires that the RNC: (a) comply with all applicable state and federal laws protecting the rights of duly qualified citizens to vote for the candidate(s) of their choice; (b) in the event that they produce or place any signs which are part of ballot security activities, cause said signs to disclose that they are authorized or sponsored by the party committees and any other committees participating with the party committees; (c) refrain from giving any directions to or permitting their agents or employees to remove or deface any lawfully printed and placed campaign materials or signs; (d) refrain from giving any directions to or permitting their employees to campaign within restricted polling areas or to interrogate prospective voters as to their qualifications to vote prior to their entry to a polling place; (e) refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting; and the conduct of such activities disproportionately in or directed toward districts that have a substantial proportion of racial or ethnic populations shall be considered relevant evidence of the existence of such a factor and purpose; (f) refrain from having private personnel deputized as law enforcement personnel in connection with ballot security activities. Obviously, most of this looks very, very bad from a Republican perspective. Indeed, some provisions (such as provision d) read as an outright order to ignore potential voter fraud entirely. And indeed, those provisions would be problematic, if the consent decree story stopped with the original document, or if, as one site puts it, this decision were “kept from the American people.” In point of fact, neither statement is the case, and while it is quite arguably a good thing that this story came to light because of the imprecise and vague nature of the decree itself, it is hardly a smoking gun suggesting that one party has carte blanche to commit voter fraud. Start with the context of the consent decree itself. In 1981, the RNC engaged in a process known as “Voter Caging,” which is dubiously legal and highly controversial, but still a method that some officials and partisans use to clean up voter rolls. The way voter caging works is that some entity (say, the RNC) will send mail to particular addresses throughout a state. If the mail is returned as “undeliverable,” the RNC (or whoever) would then challenge the person living at that address as an invalid voter, because their given address doesn’t actually work, and therefore is presumably not their legal address. This process is controversial (the liberal Brennan Center calls it “notoriously unreliable” because of flaws in the postal system), and is considered illegal if used primarily on minority voters due to the potential for discrimination. That allegation – of racism – is precisely what led to the original Consent Decree, which was enforced after the DNC alleged that the RNC was specifically using voter caging to purge minority voters from the rolls in New Jersey. Hence, the most important provision of the Decree (and the one that is being litigated to this day) was the requirement that the RNC… (e) refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting; and the conduct of such activities disproportionately in or directed towarddistricts that have a substantial proportion of racial or ethnic populations shall be considered relevant evidence of the existence of such a factor and purpose However, in spite of the restrictive original Consent Decree, attempts by the RNC to stop voter fraud – including caging – do still happen. In fact, Kansas Secretary of State (and former Kansas GOP Chair) Kris Kobach allegedly bragged about doing it as a local GOP official in 2007. If it were true that the RNC or its local affiliates could not try to clean up voter rolls or stop fraud at all, Kobach’s boast presumably would have been the subject of a court challenge, or would have immediately been reversed after such a challenge. Such a thing did not happen, so we must ask why not. The answer is that the Consent Decree itself has been modified since its original version. Specifically, in 1987, the court modified it to be less restrictive. Why? According to a petition by the RNC itself asking for the Consent Decree to be stripped entirely by the Third Circuit Court (filed this year), it was because back then, even the Democrats admitted voter fraud was a problem: In 1987, based on allegations arising out of the 1986 election for United States Senate in Louisiana, the RNC and DNC (but not the RSC and DSC) amended the consent decree, again with no admission of wrongdoing. The 1987 modification expressly recited that “the RNC and DNC recognize the importance of preventing and remedying vote fraud where it exits.” App. 0404 (1987 Decree Modification). The 1987 Decree stated that “the RNC may deploy persons on election day to perform normal poll watch functions,” but for all other “ballot security efforts” required the RNC to seek preclearance from the court “following 20 days notice to the DNC.” theblaze/stories/2012/12/05/is-it-true-that-the-rnc-cant-challenge-voter-fraud/
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 22:37:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015