JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — For weeks now, James Jones has been extra courteous in traffic and at the gas station because he has an Obama sticker on the back of his truck. “Something like that might make a difference for Barack Obama,” Mr. Jones explained. “I’m not taking a chance.”Mr. Jones, a black warehouse worker, bought campaign signs for his yard and made sure his family had valid voter registration cards. He and his wife cast their votes 10 days early to avoid last-minute problems at the polls. So imagine Mr. Jones’s disappointment this week when he got word of a rumor making its way around his humble southeastern part of town — that early voting is nothing more than a new disenfranchisement scam, that early votes are likely to be lost and never counted…
Wounds have not healed here in Duval County since the mangled presidential election of 2000, when more than 26,000 ballots were discarded as invalid for being improperly punched. Nearly 40 percent of the votes were thrown out in the predominantly Democratic-leaning African-American communities around Jacksonville, a reality that has caused suspicions of racial bias to linger, even though intentional disenfranchisement was never proved.
Now, in a show of early election enthusiasm, more than 84,200 people have already voted in Duval County, surpassing the number of early votes cast in the last presidential election. Added to 33,800 absentee ballots collected so far, the numbers show that 22 percent of registered voters cast their ballots as of Oct. 27, county election officials said.
But amid excitement over Mr. Obama’s historic candidacy and the chance that the country might choose an African-American president within a matter of days, there is an unmistakable sense of anxiety among blacks here that something will go wrong, that victory will slip away. “They’re going to throw out votes,” said Larone Wesley, a 53-year-old black Vietnam veteran. “I can’t say exactly how, but they are going to accomplish that quite naturally. I’m so afraid for my friend Obama. I look at this through the eyes of the ’60s, and I feel there ain’t no way they’re going to let him make it”…
In 2000, I had trouble actually believing that voter intimidation and electioneering was actually happening in Florida, Ohio, other places. I thought we were beyond that in America. Surely it didn’t happen in the North. But it did happen – probably a lot more than we know. And with the U.S. Attorney scandal, it became abundantly clear that it was a widespread, organized plan.
I’m with Sharon on this one. It makes me so angry that this could happen now. How can this happen? We should all be equal under the law, but this shows that we aren’t even still. It’s outrageous.
There are multiple attempts in at least 9 states, probably more, to push voter intimidation or suppression. In those that have wound up in courts, the courts have often sided with the voters.
In one NM case, reported today on TPM, a lawyer connected with the NM Republican party hired a detective to show up at homes of Hispanic voters to question them about their right to vote. After hearing about it, a former head of the Voting Rights Division of the DoJ wrote to the department asking them to investigate. Five days later, he had had no response.
After this story appeared on TPM, someone from DoJ called to say they were aware of the problem and were looking into it. That does not sound promising of anything happening in time to do any good. It makes me sick.