Voter Suppression: It's a Real Problem

10/27/08 Update: According to CNN, "Georgia must allow thousands of people whose citizenship was questioned by the state's new voter verification system to vote in the upcoming election, a panel of federal judges ruled Monday.

The court ruling will affect about 4,500 people in Georgia who had been "flagged" by the new voter verification system and faced being denied a chance to vote Nov. 4 because their citizenship was questioned.

It could also affect more than 50,000 other registered Georgia voters also flagged by the new system because of mismatches in their personal identification information, such as discrepancies in addresses.

The three-judge panel also ordered Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel to inform all the flagged voters that they can vote.

"We are very pleased that the court agreed with our legal position that the state violated the Voting Rights Act," said Elise Shore, a lawyer with one of the civil right groups who brought the lawsuit.

Shore said the ruling applies to the 4,500 Georgians that were flagged for citizenship reasons and she was uncertain whether it applied to the some 50,000 others that were flagged for other reasons.

The issue was raised in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Georgia college student who claimed that the secretary of state's voter verification system violated the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act and caused an illegal purge of voters in the weeks before the election.

Federal law prohibits widespread voter purges within 90 days of the election. In Georgia, that has become a heated issue with some calling the purge "voter suppression.""

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Original Blog Entry

From CNN

College senior Kyla Berry was looking forward to voting in her first presidential election, even carrying her voter registration card in her wallet.

But about two weeks ago, Berry got disturbing news from local election officials.

"This office has received notification from the state of Georgia indicating that you are not a citizen of the United States and therefore, not eligible to vote," a letter from the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections said.

But Berry is a U.S. citizen, born in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a passport and a birth certificate to prove it. Video Watch some of the concerns of voting experts »

The letter, which was dated October 2, gave her a week from the time it was dated to prove her citizenship. There was a problem, though -- the letter was postmarked October 9.

"It was the most bizarre thing. I immediately called my mother and asked her to send me my birth certificate, and then I was like, 'It's too late, apparently,' " Berry said.

Berry is one of more than 50,000 registered Georgia voters who have been "flagged" because of a computer mismatch in their personal identification information. At least 4,500 of those people are having their citizenship questioned and the burden is on them to prove eligibility to vote.

Experts say lists of people with mismatches are often systematically cut, or "purged," from voter rolls.

The article continues:

A lawsuit has been filed over Georgia's mismatch system, and the state is also under fire for requesting Social Security records for verification checks on about 2 million voters -- more requests than any other state.

One of the lawyers involved in the lawsuit says Georgia is violating a federal law that prohibits widespread voter purges within 90 days of the election, arguing that the letters were sent out too close to the election date.

The NY Times reports that "Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law." These states include: Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina.

The article continues "The six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio seem to be improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters.

In addition to the six swing states, three more states appear to be violating federal law. Alabama and Georgia seem to be improperly using Social Security information to screen registration applications from new voters. And Louisiana appears to have removed thousands of voters after the federal deadline for taking such action."

Brad Friedman at The Brad Blog has more.

Foreign Relations Running Hot and Cold

The problem with other countries is that they just don't do what we want them to do. Take Russia and Georgia. They have a beef with each other, they are ostensibly both our allies, and still they fight. What's a superpower to do?

As our lame duck president said, "The actions of Russia in recent days have damaged its credibility in the eyes of the free world. Bullying and intimidation are not the way to conduct foreign policy." I wonder if any country said that about our incursion into Iraq in March, 2002?

The Soviet bloc is no more, and supposedly the cold war is over. Yet, our relations with the Russians are tenuous at best between this festering sore and the U.S. agreement placing a missile defense system inside Poland--which the Russians are not so keen about. This only four months after President Bush and Prime Minister Putin met in Sochi, the Russian resort 15 miles from Georgia, and signed an “agreement” pledging cooperation on a variety of diplomatic and security matters and declaring that “the era in which the United States and Russia considered one another an enemy or strategic threat has ended.” Whoops!

Russia needs oil ports to sell its oil, Georgia has oil ports on the Black Sea (Georgia has been a key conduit of oil and gas from Central Asia to the West that bypasses Russia), we need oil, it seems pretty straight forward. Either encourage Georgia and Russia to play nice or work out an U.S. energy "plan b" that doesn't require playing referee with other countries whose are inextricably tied to fossil fuel.

But we should feel good because our president has his finger on the pulse of the situation. Bush said “got a lot of folks, smart folks, analyzing the situation on the ground and, of course, briefing us on different possibilities that could develop in the area and the region.” We'll hope they do better than in 2002.

NATO: Yes to Missle Shield, No to Ukraine, Georgia

Reuters reports NATO leaders were set to endorse a planned U.S. missile shield for Europe on Thursday, a senior U.S. official told reporters.

The final summit statement would "recognize the substantive contribution to the protection of the allies" from the missile defense system to be deployed in the Czech Republic and Poland, the official told reporters.

According to the BBC, NATO has confirmed it will not yet offer membership to Georgia or Ukraine after the 26-member alliance was split amid strong objections from Russia.

Due to a conflict between Greece and Macedonia over a territorial issue, the alliance also said it would not invite Macedonia to join.

In what may be a continuation toward increased NATO influence in the Middle East, United States will be able to move some of its troops to Afghanistan's south once France sends a battalion of troops to the east of Afghanistan as part of efforts to bolster the 47,000-strong peacekeeping force, meeting Canada's conditions to keep troops in Afghanistan, the official said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said earlier