Caging, Does Someone Need To Go To Jail?

From Think Progress
Hillbilly Report
Glendale, Kentucky
May 28, 2007
In 2004, BBC reporter Greg Palast obtained two e-mails — prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign’s national research director — that listed “1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas” of the Jacksonville, FL Naval Air Station. Palast explains:
Here’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, “Do not forward”, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as “undeliverable.”
The lists of soldiers of “undeliverable” letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters’ registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted.
Caging is a voter suppression tactic. Suppressing votes on the basis of race is not only illegal under the federal Voting Rights Act, but also unconstitutional.
E-MAIL FROM THE GEORGEWBUSH.ORG "CATCH-ALL" MAILBOX
Click here to see all the emails.