Quote:
Originally Posted by smc
You wrote earlier: "The DOJ sent 400 people to Arizona, not to ensure that illegals do not vote, but to watchdog Arizona officials who are trying to ensure that illegals do not vote." Whether that's true or not, do you accept that during the Bush administration government officials, acting for partisan interests, did anything like that.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TracyCoxx
I haven't heard anything like that happening during the Bush administration, and I doubt it did since although illegal immigration was bad during Bush's term, it wasn't as bad as it is now. And the Bush administration wasn't nearly as hostile towards Arizona either.
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Remember, I support neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. I believe them to represent two wings of the people who oppress all the rest of us, and voting for them is a vote against my own economic interests.
That said, let me clarify about voter suppression. It seems as if you thought I was being specific about the Bush administration doing something in Arizona. I was not I only used your example to pose my question.
I will give you one non-Arizona example of Republican voter suppression during the Bush administration.
In 2002, Republican officials in New Hampshire attempted to reduce the number of Democratic voters by jamming phones. Professional telemarketers from a company based in northern Virgina, "GOP Marketplace," were hired to make repeated hang-up calls to to the telephone numbers that the Democratic state committee and the state firefighter's union were using for voters to call and get rides to the polls. By keeping these lines busy, the intent was to suppress the number of voters who could ask the Democratic Party for such rides. This voter suppression effort was undertaken in the interest of getting John E. Sununu, the son of George H.W. Bush's first White House chief of staff, elected to the U.S. Senate. Sununu won a narrow victory.
Four men were convicted of federal crimes and sentenced to prison for their involvement. There was a guilty plea by Allen Raymond to several felony charges in federal court in Concord, New Hampshire on June 30, 2004, which really brought the case to the public's attention. The prosecutor in Ramond's case indicated to the court that Raymond had been contacted about the phone jamming by "a former colleague who was then an official in a national political organization." Not long after, the
Manchester Union-Leader, one of the most right-wing daily newspapers in the country, reported that the unnamed individual had a significant role in the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign." He was later identified as James Tobin, then serving as the New England regional director for the Bush campaign. He resigned in October from that post and in December was indicted and arraigned on two criminal counts each of conspiring to make harassing telephone calls and aiding and abetting telephone harassment.
Later, Allen Raymond was sentenced to five months in federal prison. His accomplice, Charles McGee, received seven months. Tobin refused to cooperate, and during his trial questions came up about who was paying for his defense. Ultimately, it was revealed that the Republican National Committe was paying for his lawyer.
Later in this case, after being convicted, Tobin was freed on appeal -- but on legal technicalities, not the merits of the actual case of voter suppression. Raymond Allen wrote a book that sold quite well,
How to Rig an Election.
This is but one example of how both parties seek to undermine voting rights, Tracy. I can provide many more. One of the more common things Republicans do is to send letters to minority voters (yes, U.S. citizens who happen to be black and live in poverty-stricken election districts) disguised as "official" in some capacity telling people that if they show up at the polls they run the risk of arrest for any outstanding parket tickets, or must pass a reading test, or may be subject to imprisonment if they have moved, etc. Democrats pulled the same kind of stuff in the South before the Voting Rights Act.
It's despicable, but voter suppression efforts are certainly not the purview of one party or one administration.