Suppressing the vote in California

October 19, 2006

A letter, written in Spanish, was sent to about 14,000 of Hispanic families in Orange County, Calif., recently, warning them that they may be ineligible to vote, and risk facing jail or deportation if they do. “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,” the letter said, despite the fact that immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens can legally vote.

Because it’s a federal crime to threaten or intimidate voters, the letter sparked criminal investigations from state and federal officials. Surprise, surprise, the probe has narrowed in on a Republican congressional candidate.

State investigators have linked a Republican campaign to letters sent to thousands of Orange County Hispanics warning them they could go to jail or be deported if they vote next month, a spokesman for the attorney general said. […]

[Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s office] declined to identify the specific campaign, citing the ongoing investigation. The Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register both reported Thursday that the investigation appeared to be focused on the campaign of Tan D. Nguyen, a Republican who immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam as a child and is now challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez. Nguyen’s Web site says he opposes illegal immigration.

Yes, it is ironic that the Republican who is alleged to have warned immigrants not to vote is himself an immigrant.

In the bigger picture, the drive to suppress voting has become the last refuge of scoundrels, hasn’t it? As Shakes’ Sis put it, “Your American GOP: We have nothing to offer. Please stay home on Election Day.”

Sending this kind of message through the mail wan’t just potentially illegal, it was stupid. And yes, Nguyen being an immigrant is ironic, but he’s just trying to be a good Republican.

  • It’s important to remember and take seriously that suppressing the vote, by any number of dubious means, is a key republican strategy. One of the biggest ways is through vote roll purges that force people to cast provisional ballots which then do not get counted. Their were 2,000,000 million uncounted votes in 2000 and 3,000,000 in 2004. Gues what the plan is in local elections in 06 and nationally in 08?

  • Suppressing the vote and purging voter rolls is a favorite trick of the republi-thugs. The problem is rampant in Ohio, but it exists elsewhere, even in progressive California. It would be great if congress would look into election fraud once this election is over, and the Dems can look into something for a change. If not, we are not safe if the ballot box is not safe.

  • One of the commenters a couple of weeks ago put this kind of vote supression under the umbrella term of Diebolding. I can’t remember the other techniques he or she mentioned.

  • Proof you can’t teach an old mangy dog new tricks. Or even not to crap all over the place. This is a progression of the carefully diseminated rumours that went around predominantly black neighborhoods during the 00 and 04 elections. Then people were told police were waiting at the polls to arrest people with outstanding warrants. Because of course most black people have an outstanding warrant for something.

    But as beep52 noted, use of the USPS for this sort of assery is particularly idiotic. Word of mouth is impossible to trace. If those jackasses used bulk mail (wouldn’t surprise me) they are totally hosed. Enjoy your stay in Club Fed wankers!

  • Dale –
    Voter roll purging (using private, Republican run companies)
    Switching voting precincts
    Threatening information
    Voting techniques that allows for “spoiled” ballots that can be discarded (butterfly ballots, old punch card machines)
    Bringing out the State Troopers in minority districts

    All used in Florida in 2000

  • Now that habeus corpus has been suspended, and the rule of law has been made a flexible tool for our home grown radicals, we shouldn’t be surprised if they come up with a strategy to disenfranchise a lot of voters. Perhaps in the name of “security” or whatever. Look what we did to Japanese-Americans. No doubt Rush and Coulter would be thrilled if we imprisoned a number of potential “disloyal” voters.

  • OK, to be absolutely fair — which ThinkProgress has been (and CarpetbaggerReport and Tapped not quite)… there’s another part to the letter, which I have only seen today:

    “Not like in Mexico, here there is no benefit to voting. In the United States there is no registration card to vote. Therefore, it is useless and dangerous to vote in any election if you are not a citizen of the United States.”

    OK, I don’t know what they’re talking about in regard to the Mexico situation (“no benefit to vote”?, “registration card to vote”?) . But the 3rd sentence is nothing but the truth; you cannot participate in federal elections if you’re not a citizen, either born or naturalized. Don’t know about state elections. For things like local schoolboard or even city council I was able to vote with just the “green card”.

    There’s no doubt in my mind that vote supression was the primary aim of the mailing — it went out to Hispanic names only, for example, even though that district has a large Vietnamese immigrant population (which votes Rep). And the placement of the statements (CB’s way up top, the other way lower down) is relevant also; chances are, once you’ve seen “immigrant, jail, deportation” all thrown together, you may not read any further and just barricade yourself at home on Nov 7. Particularly since the mailing also mentioned something about existence of a database, which anti-immigrant groups could access easily; since the passage and signing of the Freedom to Torture Act, all immigrants (including naturalized ones, let me tell you ) have a heightened sense of vulnerability.

    Nevertheless… Fact remains that they have covered their asses exquisitely well.

    • Comments are closed.