“VOTE CAGING" – YET ANOTHER DEPLORABLE REPUBLICAN PARTY TACTIC TO SUPPRESS PARTICIPATION BY THE POOR

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

It is really the fault of the mainstream media. Reacting to critical pressure from the right, editors everywhere caution reporters not to be “partisan” in their coverage – which means not to favor the Democrats or Republicans.

Republicans know this – and exploit it to their advantage.

Typical is the latest outrage revealed in the hearings on the Justice Department’s firings and their relationship to Republican Party efforts to intimidate poor and minority voters out of exercising their right to vote.

Ohio Republicans sent thousands of letters with first class postage, “return requested – do not forward” instructions to minority voters. If the voter does not sign the “receipt,” the postman brings with the letter (because he’s not home or doesn’t want to sign for a letter with Republican Party stamped all over it), then he’s “challenged” at the polls for residency fraud.

Labeled “vote caging”(for locking up a likely Democratic vote),

The tactic has been tried and blocked by Federal Courts – in Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina and now Ohio.

As the Court weighed the merits in a lawsuit to “open the cage” brought by Democrats, Assistant US Attorney General Alex Acosta wrote a letter to the judge siding with the Republicans. His action was characterized as “cheerleading for the Republicans” by the former deputy chief of the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Section – who served under Acosta.