Saturday, October 27, 2018

Jim Crow By Postcard

Repugnants are constantly complaining about almost non-existent voter fraud.
Their complaining is a symptom of their paranoid insecurity about become a minority in the previously white-dominated 'Merica.  What they never talk about is their highly developed voter suppression tactics aimed at voters who are unlikely to vote for a Repugant, namely the young, ethnic and poor.

A prime example of what voter suppression means has come to light in Georgia.  An analysis of the voter roles in that red state show that the 340,134 voters purged from the voter rolls for moving out of state or to another county in the state by Secretary of State Brian Kemp, never actually moved.  These voters were purged for failing to return a postcard that looks like junk mail. If you miss an election in Georgia you get a card, and you must return it with an address filed in or loose your right to vote in the next election.  Kemp not only wrongly purged voters who did not move, but voters that moved inside their county of registration.

A careful review of other address records shows that these wrongly purged voters never moved.  But a careful review is not what Kemp, who is now a candidate for Governor, is interested in.  His interest is in reducing the possibility that his minority white base would be outvoted in the election.  Consultants for companies that do a lot of mailing such as American Express and EBay, say that post cards are the weakest form of eliciting a response from an addressee, and people of color are the least likely to respond. Call Kemp's rules a more subtle form of Jim Crow.