List of Foreclosed Houses to Determine Eligibility of Voters

September 22nd, 2008

A list of foreclosed homes will determine the eligibility of voters in the ensuing elections and accordingly the Michigan GOP in the Michigan Messenger had announced plans. The news had been reported by Eartha Jane Melzer which said that a list of housing foreclosures would be used as the basis for a macro voter-caging operation. Chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, James Carabelli, was preparing to post ‘election challengers’ at election booths to verify the identity of the victims of house foreclosures on the basis of their residential addresses. Carabelli asserted that the list of foreclosed houses would ascertain that no one was voting from those addresses, the Messenger added.

Teresa James, author of the 2007report,’Caging Democracy: A 50-year History of Partisan Challenges to Minority Voters and an attorney for the voting rights organization Project Vote, lashed out at the proposed plans in a statement which voiced her resentment clearly. She thought that the Macomb County GOP’s plan intended to suppress the mandate of thousands of voters belonging to the low income group and the African- American community. She denounced it as a shameless attempt to gag threats of mass challenges. Teresa James clarified that a person did not lose the right to vote just because he had fallen behind on his mortgage dues. The procedure of foreclosures was a long drawn one and a foreclosure filing meant that the owner was lagging in his mortgage payments and had not necessarily moved out of his property. Even if the foreclosed properties were up for auction and have probably been sold off, the challenge to verify their identity would only slow down the poll process and moreover create an atmosphere of anger and frustration at places where the challenge would be conducted, James concluded.

Michigan Secretary of State had confirmed that challenges would be made only if the challenger “knows or has good reason to suspect” the voter’s eligibility and was based on “reliable source or means.” Republican challengers armed with a list of foreclosure notices would however have no evidence or authentic source to prove that the owners had abandoned their foreclosed properties and were no longer eligible to vote, the Secretary added.

Macomb County was one of the top Counties in the US, struggling under the foreclosure crisis and the African-Americans were the worst hit in the sub-prime lending fiasco, which the GOP plan wished to target in the forthcoming elections.