This is horrific. I'm writing letters now.

How can these people treat others' rights so casually? The GOP is amazing.

This sounds illegal. We need to contact the NAACP and see if there is a lawyer available to look into this.

Just wrote about this. Glad to see it here. I'm going to bet that the reason they are telling us that they're going to be challenging voters who live in foreclosed homes is to have a "chilling effect" (can that be used for anything other than the first amendment) on those citizens right to vote.

Who wants to come out and vote if they know it's a possibility that someone might publicly bring up that they're living under the threat of foreclosure (note: I don't think there's anything shameful about that, but I can see how someone might be embarrassed about foreclosure on their home)?

well, shoot, this nation was founded on a principle of voting being restricted to landowners... these republicans are just getting back to the roots of our nation's history. real strict constitutional constructivism... /snark

I am horrified that some government officials in this country think this tactic is a good idea. WTF is happening to democracy?

Good lord, get the ACLU on this stat.

Everyone, please check out this page: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/legismgt/elect/taskfc/voteridreq.htm

Which has the different voter ID laws for different states.

The GOP also hopes to use voter ID laws to prevent people from voting successfully. Please check in with your local campaign office and make sure that they are helping people fulfill/understand the ID requirements in addition to registering people.

Since this article is about Michigan, here's the contact information for its ACLU office.

ACLU of Michigan
Executive Director: Kary Moss, Esq.
2966 Woodward Avenue
Detroit, MI 48201
Phone: 313-578-6800
Fax: 313-578-6811

No email address listed, sorry.

You get to vote once, from the place you currently live. If I move for any reason, why should I get to vote from where I used to live?

Look, the foreclosure situation in our country (and particularly in places like Detroit) is bad on many, many levels. But using it to encourage voter fraud (voting from a place you don't live) still isn't appropriate. People who have been foreclosed on still live somewhere, and should vote from that place.

Ensuring that people vote once, from their current residence, is one way to protect the integrity of our elections. Refusing to do so is enabling fraud.

I'm not fan of Republicans, but isn't this a voting fraud issue? Just like you shouldn't be casting ballots after you're dead, people that aren't technically residents of a county should also not be voting in their election. I guess it comes down to what a 'technical' resident is. People from foreclosed homes usually move to other accommodations - why would this not be sufficient evidence of residence? And aren't there provisions that allow the homeless to vote? And aren't provisional ballots available for anyone else who can't prove residence at the time they vote?

Still, it's obvious that they're using these trumped up fears about election fraud to confuse, deter, and otherwise depress poorer, foreclosed upon, typically Democratic voters.

Brian,

"People who have been foreclosed on still live somewhere." No, there are people who don't have homes, about 10,000 of them in Detroit. Where do you suggest they vote? Where should people vote if their house is foreclosed after voter registration ends?

I don't know where you live, but in Michigan, where I live, you specify your address when you register to vote and they assign you a single polling place. If you re-register with a different address, they change your polling place. At no point is it possible to vote more than once.

To answer the questions about voter fraud:
Many people still live in home that are going through the process of foreclosure; it's still their residency, so they are actually registered correctly. But once a vote has been challenged, I believe what happens is that vote is just tossed aside unless the election is close, and then we investigate whether or not it should be counted.

Also, as far as voter ID laws being used to prevent voter fraud: http://truthaboutfraud.org/

Finally, if I were concerned about voter fraud, the kind that I would be concerned with is the kind that's used to stuff ballot boxes/swing elections...the kind that involves "cheating." This is not the case here. This is regular people trying to vote who's vote will not be counted because they defaulted on their mortgage.

Here's some info on homeless people's ability to vote: http://www.nationalhomeless.org/getinvolved/projects/vote/chart.pdf

I'm sure we can all agree that something needs to be done about voter fraud, but this is a really bad way to go about it. How about a better computer system instead? Just look at where the retail sphere is when it comes to sharing information between stores. If voter fraud is important enough to risk disenfranchising voters, something that is against the spirit, if not the word of the Constitution, surely we could earmark a few dollars for investing in better records.

Hey gang,

Thanks for posting this, Ann! Just wanted to let you know that I work for an organization called Progress Michigan, and we're currently circulating a petition to speak out against this very issue. If you're interested (and I hope you are!), you can sign it and read more about voter suppression in Michigan here:

http://progressmichigan.org/nohomenovote

shsally said it before i got a chance to.

this is a way of intimidating voters who are either living in the house that is in the process of foreclosure or who haven't gotten a permanent residence yet.

further, people who are going through foreclosure often have a lot on their minds... locating another place from which to register to vote is not one of those things, so it's likely many people who have recently had their permanent residences foreclosed will not be registered at a new location yet. effectively, this challenge disenfranchises them.

i love how brian tried to frame it in terms of voter fraud, but there are already protections against voter fraud and the voters in question are not likely to be voting twice.

as you said, each person has a right to ONE vote. that is not two votes, but it's also not zero votes.

this is despicable.

I know this is shocking to y'all, but it looks like the McCain headquarters in Michigan are actually located inside the offices of Trott and Trott, a law firm specializing in mortgage forclosure. This guy Trott has raised tons of money for McCain.

Hmmmm....that's a mighty strange cooincidence, is it not?

Don't ya just love these Republicans? First they screw up the economy and then they want to deny you the right to vote them out of office.

Brilliant!

"Those people are likely to vote against us (for the rational reason that we dis-served them), so let's disenfranchise them! Quickly, to the Republican-mobile!"

Brian,

They're saying that they're going to use evidence of foreclosure as a reason to challenge these people's voter registrations. Being foreclosed on doesn't mean you immediately move out of the house - there are procedures the bank has to follow to take the house away from you, and those procedures take time. Many of these people could still be living at the same address, and still wind up having their right to vote challenged.

Exactly what you should expect from the party of "Family Values." 'Cause excluding and silencing people is a family value, right?

"Many of these people could still be living at the same address, and still wind up having their right to vote challenged."

If they still live at that address than the challenge should be easily rejected. Michigan law says that all the challenged voter has to do is swear under oath that they live where they're registered. If they do that, they get to vote. This is hardly a terrible obstacle to democracy.

"i love how brian tried to frame it in terms of voter fraud, but there are already protections against voter fraud and the voters in question are not likely to be voting twice."

The challenge procedure is an important part of these protections -- and why wouldn't people vote twice? Who's gonna stop them? They will be able to register and vote at their new address. If you can't challenge the voter's registration at the old address, what's to stop them from voting there too? I realize that the system is supposed to cancel the old registration, but especially if they're in different counties that doesn't always happen.

Many people that foreclose draw out there home's max equity in cash before running off with the money and leaving the morgage company high and dry. Thats different from stealing how?

Off course not everyone that forecloses does this, some don't have a choice and it's not there fault, but for the one's that do, perhaps there voting rights should be called into question.

umm, troll-be-gone please?
this is the second post i've read by bobbigrl that is clearly deliberate trolling. *yawn*

bobbigirl, I believe that's exactly why many states don't allow convicted felons to vote. However, this move by the Macombe County Republican Party clearly has nothing to do with conviction status. (Remember that in this country, people are supposedly considered innocent until proven guilty in front of a jury of their peers. This ain't Gitmo, no matter how badly the Republican party would like it to be.)

These sharky Republicans have essentially declared themselves judge, jury and disenfranchiser.

I have an idea; how about if we take away the voting rights of anyone currently under investigation for tax or securities fraud?

Brian,

A system to detect voter fraud is already in place. Can you deny that placing lower income, black voters under higher scrutiny is inherently classist and racist? Higher-income voters with two homes could be accused of the exact same thing (probably just as falsely). Should they be under higher scrutiny as well? If yes, then why aren't they? If no, then how are they different?

jogirl, I agree that in this country, people are supposedly considered innocent until proven guilty in front of a jury of their peers.

I think we should tell that to judges that rubber stamp restraining orders on men without a shred of proof and get innocent men kicked out of their own houses and alienated from their own children.

My jaw's on the floor. How was this...even considered..as a real idea!?

WTF!?

yeah...how utterly SHOCKING that it's more black people being denied the right to vote.

This happened in FL with the stolen Presidential election. People with names similar to convicted felons were denied the right to vote. The majority of them were black.

I live (and vote) in Macomb County. Our executive was on the news last night horrified about the article. He stated that this is a completely fabricated story and there is no such plan for our county.

As for voting in Macomb county? A breeze, even without a driver license or state issued ID.

Umm...love the attempt at derailing there Indykat34!

To those people saying that "voter fraud is a serious issue"...You have got to be kidding me! Voter fraud is practically non-existent. Between 2002 and 2005 a total of 25 people were convicted of voter fraud. 25 people! Are you people seriously implying that disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters is worth the cost for catching, say on average the 8 people who commit voter fraud each year? I don't think so! You have to have some serious F-ed up logic to think that would be a good idea. So I repeat: the "voter fraud" issue is a non-issue. However, it's the specter of "voter fraud" that (republican) politicians bring up to scare people into thinking it would be a good idea to disenfranchise poor, minority, mostly democratic voters, by pushing for things like the voter ID act. Seriously. Think. Grow a brain. I'm disgusted that some of you are actually trying to justify such a filthy policy with the notion of "voter fraud". For shame!

Where's the part about "we will help people in the unfortunate situation of foreclosure with getting registered in the proper county"?? The callousness is reprehensible.

"Higher-income voters with two homes could be accused of the exact same thing (probably just as falsely). Should they be under higher scrutiny as well?"

They should be under increased scrutiny, and they have been. The link below talks about some news media investigations that have happened on that very topic.

"Between 2002 and 2005 a total of 25 people were convicted of voter fraud. 25 people!"

This could be because no one is committing voter fraud, yes. Alas, we don't know that because our current system makes it almost impossible to catch anyone. Frankly, you'd have to be pretty stupid to actually get caught voting twice. This Slate article from 2004 gives some perspective on the problem -- there are clearly a lot of people getting away with it now.

The challenge system is one way to help slow this down, at least, and I find ironic that the same people who scream that the last two presidential elections were "stolen" are trying to prevent efforts to make our elections fairer.

Brian, maybe the challenge system is necessary. The thing that pisses so many people off is that it's not practiced in an evenhanded way. Anyone who believes that the fact that mostly low income and minority Democrats are targeted is just a coincidence has got to have his/her head buried in the sand. To read more on this, click here or here.

Also, the choice of lower income, predominantly Black precints is doubly damaging, because these are the precints that so often have insufficient equipment and are thus plagued by long lines. Add to this some blowhard Republican challenging every other voter who walks in, and the wait will double. Now let's see. In which neighborhood are you more likely to find people who don't get paid time off to go vote, and can't afford to leave work for several hours? Bingo! It's the low-income neighborhoods that are mainly targeted by the Republican party. What a remarkable coincidence! Please.

Brian, you can't possibly be dumb enough to think that the people who say the previous elections were stolen are saying it happened becase of this kind of voter fraud. It's simply silly for you to pretend that is the same issue.

As anyone paying attention to voting issues in this country would know, the well-documented problems with voting in the last elections had to do with voter intimidation, under-registration of voters, lack of voting staff and equipment, as well as numerous well-documented problems with voting machine technology.

So setting aside the difference in why those elections were stolen, just focusing on the much much greater evidence for those kinds of problems with voting, why would you prioritize something like voter fraud when there is less evidence for it?

saying "there haven't been many cases convicted therefore we should search harder" sounds even dumber when we already know there are far far greater problems to be dealt with.

For some reason you discount the higher numbers of voter intimidation, faulty voting machines and lack of resources for poor, disabled, and black voters, as if they are less important than the voter fraud issues, when in simple numbers those are much greater problems. The only way to weigh priorities that way is if some magical thing makes those other problems matter less...

Don't worry people. ACORN is here! Michigan recant plans to foreclosure voters. See article below dated 9/11.

http://www.michiganmessenger.com/4231/republicans-recant-plans-to-foreclose-voters-but-admit-other-strategies

More about ACORN.......
Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State. Seven ACORN workers had submitted nearly 2,000 bogus voter registration forms. According to case records, they flipped through phone books for names to use on the forms, including "Leon Spinks," "Frekkie Magoal" and "Fruto Boy Crispila." Three ACORN election hoaxers pleaded guilty in October. A King County prosecutor called ACORN's criminal sabotage "an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls."

The group's vandalism on electoral integrity is systemic. ACORN has been implicated in similar voter fraud schemes in Missouri, Ohio and at least 12 other states. The Wall Street Journal noted: "In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained ACORN's practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier."

In March, Philadelphia elections officials accused the nonprofit advocacy group of filing fraudulent voter registrations in advance of the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary. The charges have been forwarded to the city district attorney's office.

Obama's work as "community organizer" was as lagal representative of ACORN in Chicago.