Pre-Election Day Voter Suppression
October 19, 2006
Republicans have reportedly been attempting to preemptively suppress the votes of Hispanic people in southern California. The misleading part of the letter, which was written in Spanish (didn’t the President say that the national language should be English?), was [translated] as follows (with my emphasis added):
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“You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time.”
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Now, according to the MSNBC article and US law, “In fact, immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens can vote.” This is sinister, just like tactics that said that people who’ve been found “guilty of anything, even a traffic violation, can’t vote in the presidential election.”
The key thing to understand here is that voter suppression begins long before election day. We need to be on the look out for such tactics before 7 Nov 2006.
Have similar things happened in your areas? What’s the best way to combat this sort of thing?
Categories
Politics
Voting
Immigration
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