Adam asks over at STL Activist Hub whether a voter caging operation, such as the one being planned in Wisconsin, is possible in St. Louis. Well, naturally it is.
Anybody can go to the Board of Elections and purchase a disk with the name, address, birthdate, and history of voting of each registered in the county. By history of voting, I mean which elections the voter has cast a ballot, not who the voter has cast a ballot for. You can easily assign possible preferences for a voter by seeing whether they voted in contested Democratic primaries and/or if their precinct consistently votes in overwhelming numbers for Democrats.
Once a list is compiled, the prospective cager could put together a cheap mailer asking the voter to return the card if they want to stay registered, and if they do not, or if the cards come back undeliverable, the voter is added to a list of people who will be challenged at the polls. As Adam notes in his post, being challenged could keep people from casting their ballots, or at least being forced to cast provisional ballots which generally aren’t counted. And wrangling over ballots tends to create long lines at the polls which further discourage people who aren’t even challenged from casting their ballot, as voters often don’t have a whole lot of time away from their job to wait in line to vote.
So yeah, a systematic voter caging effort could easily be put in place and steal the election, especially a lower turnout election like the midterms. We already know that the Ed Martin campaign is planning an aggressive poll watcher program. That’s his right, as long as it doesn’t cross over into an effort to obstruct people from lawfully casting their ballot.
Fortunately, it’s not as if voter caging is unstoppable. Parties can send trained people, usually lawyers, to the polls to observe and report back to headquarters about possible voter intimidation practices, and also to provide immediate guidance to voters as to their rights.
I have a couple of calls out to see what the Missouri Democratic Party is preparing to combat possible voter caging. I’ll report back when I get some info.
the presidential election. “Challenger” is what the position has been known as but I was there to protect everyone’s right to vote. I’ve yet to find any information concerning volunteering to do voter protection for the upcoming election if you do let me know. Democrats know how to do voter protection. They just need to do it.
Myself and thousands of other Attorney’s across the US were trained to spot voter suppression tactics and how to ensure that voters cast an actual ballot and not a provisional ballot. There was a GOP Challenger at one of my polls but but left for somewhere else early on when he reported that there were two attoneys there for the Democrats doing voter protection.
The GOP is dastardly in its voter suppression efforts. We learned that their tactics include parking what looks to a be a police vehicle near a poll with two men in it acting in a way so as to scare voters into thinking they are police. I actually had two men in suits with clipboards come into my polling place in a predomoinantly AA neighborhood and point to voters in line and act like they were taking notes about them. I had them removed. They had no right to be there.
We learned that in the past that the GOP has spread rumors in the community that if you have a warrant out for you, a deliquent parking ticket or are behind on alimony or child support that the police will grab you when you go to vote. Part of the Obama campaign’s voter protection effort included sending out robo-calls from communitiy leaders or actually having them knock on doors to dispel a specific rumor as soon as the campaign learned of it.
Unless no can immediately be found showing that a person is registered to vote there is no reason to have them cast a provisional ballot. There are poll workers with laptops at every polling place in the City now that can tell voters where their correct polling place is and if not that they can go to a central voting location such as City Hall.
Volunteer to be an election supervisor. I started out as a poll watcher but decided I could do more as a supervisor. And I have. I am on a great team (R and D both) and we make sure all the rules are followed. Having people at the polls, running the polls, who know the election law are, at least in my opinion, a better way to make sure things run smoothly.
We had a poll watcher/challenger leave because he was bored for we were doing everything correct!
Oh, and in the county we are issued Palm Pilots that have the election database where people can make sure where they vote. I am usure if the city has the same resource. It works great. Often on big important elections one of us will walk the waiting line and help people make sure they are in the right spot.
Again, having a great set of workers at the polls makes for a better voting experience.
Just my $0.02