Will the GOP FINALLY be held accountable for decades of minority vote suppression? Developing...
Voting suit revisits intimidation claims
Letters targeting Ohio minorities said to violate settlement after Kean-Florio race in'81
Monday, November 01, 2004
BY ROBERT SCHWANEBERG
Star-Ledger Staff
Armed guards wearing armbands patrolled polling places. Signs warned of criminal penalties for voting illegally. Hundreds of thousands of letters returned as undeliverable were used to compile a list of voters to be challenged at the polls.
Republicans said they were trying to keep the election honest.
Democrats said Republicans were trying to intimidate black and Latino voters.
It was 1981, during one of the closest elections in New Jersey history -- one that wasn't decided until a recount that dragged on nearly a month found Republican Tom Kean had defeated Democrat Jim Florio for governor by less than 2,000 votes.
State and county prosecutors launched probes into voter intimidation. Furious Democrats filed a $10 million federal lawsuit accusing the Republican state and national committees of depriving minorities of their constitutional right to vote.
But the criminal probes went nowhere and the lawsuit was settled a year later for $1. The Republicans admitted no wrongdoing, but signed a promise never to target minority voters for special treatment -- anywhere in the nation.
That 22-year-old settlement agreement is why a case will be argued today in federal district court in Newark that could affect the outcome of the presidential election. The lawsuit charges Republicans again with targeting minorities, this time in Ohio, a key battleground state in the race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry.
The lawsuit claims letters were sent to predominately black areas of Ohio and those that were returned as undeliverable were used to compile a list of 35,000 voters to be challenged at the polls. It claims that action violates the 1982 settlement in the New Jersey case, where the same tactic was used.
Craig Livingston of Nutley, one of the lawyers bringing the case, said mass challenges are intended to keep minority voters from the polls.
"Can you imagine 35,000 people being challenged in one big county, say Bergen County, on Election Day?" Livingston said. "People would be voting until 3 o'clock in the morning."
Brian Nelson, executive director of the Republican State Committee in New Jersey, said the lawsuit is "right out of the DNC's playbook, where every year prior to Election Day they say there's intimidation taking place where there is not."
The parties also are arguing the matter in Ohio federal courts. A federal district judge in Cincinnati last week ordered a halt to county hearings on the Republican challenges, and a federal appeals court refused to reverse that order.
The case brought in New Jersey is to be argued before U.S. District Court Judge Dickinson Debevoise, the same judge who approved the settlement of the lawsuit challenging the activities of the Republicans' National Ballot Security Task Force during the 1981 election.
That year, in predominately black and Latino precincts in Newark, East Orange, Camden, Trenton and other urban areas, voters going to the polls encountered official-looking signs warning, "It is a crime to falsify a ballot or violate election laws."
Republican-paid poll workers, some of them off-duty police officers carrying their firearms as required by law, patrolled polling places wearing armbands.
Democrats immediately went to court and got a judge to order the signs and armbands removed.
Richard Richards, chairman of the Republican National Committee, proudly defended the program and credited it with electing Kean.
"Anyone opposed to ballot security obviously must be supportive of election fraud," Richards said. "We would've been cheated out of the race if we hadn't been alert."
But within a week, the Republicans had suspended the head of the New Jersey ballot security operation, John Kelly, saying they questioned whether he had misstated his credentials.
Minority leaders were outraged.
The Trenton NAACP chapter president, Kathleen Graham, said, "I, as a black person, feel I was intimidated by the mere presence of a Gestapo arm band in my polling place."
But finding solid evidence that voters had been kept from the polls proved harder. A state command center staffed with 16 deputy attorneys general shut down after four days because an expected flood of complaints never materialized.
In settling the Democrats' lawsuit in November 1982, Republicans agreed never to target minority voters while insisting that had never been their goal. Richard McGlynn, who handled the case for the state GOP, said the party merely agreed "to a set of principles that we support anyway."
Robert Schwaneberg covers legal issues. He can be reached at rschwaneberg@starledger.com or (609) 989-0324.
Plea for America
First of all, so I don’t waste anyone’s time, I am not a Democrat so if you are not interested in what I have to say, you can stop reading now. I know, I know. I have no business posting on this site. After all, you’ve rejected some of your own members who are legitimately concerned about the future of your party so I don’t expect you to treat me any differently. For those who are willing to listen and do want to hear me out I want to ask some questions and give my thoughts in a respectful, civilized manner. I will not resort to vulgar language or hateful talk because I do not feel that is the way to have discussions.
For those of you still with me, I am not a Republican either. This past election, I voted for Republicans and Democrats, not based on their party affiliation but who I thought would make a better leader in their respective roles. I research both sides of the issues. I read liberal and conservative leaning papers and watch liberal and conservative leaning news stations. I visit Republican and Democrat websites. That’s what brings me here today. And after reading some of your posts, quite frankly, your beliefs boggle my mind. I know I am just an ignorant simpleton who doesn’t get it. I am also a proud conservative Christian; or, as you like to call us, right-wing nuts, fascists, fanatics, fundamentalists, and Jesus freaks. But what have you done to understand us? You call us every derogatory name in the book. You tell us that you “blue states” are going to merge with Canada and we “red states” are going to become Jesusland. Then after all that blasphemy you have the nerve, the audacity, to say it is people like us that killed Jesus Christ. Because we actually have the guts to stand up for our strong, although unpopular, beliefs and moral convictions that happen to differ from yours, you call us ignorant and misinformed hicks. That is the epitome of snobbery and self-centeredness.
The truth is, we Christians have been silent for too long and we are to blame for that. Well we are being silent no longer. In case you’ve forgotten, the very reason our country exists is because it was founded on Godly principles and morals. And as this election has proven, 51% of the nation is not ready to abandon those morals and principles. Why do you think our motto is “In God We Trust”? Why in our pledge of allegiance are we “one nation under God”? And you and your liberal judges are trying to take that away from us! On that note, you know it’s interesting that you ban prayer from school because it is imposing and offensive to some. God can’t be mentioned! It’s offensive! It’s contrary to my belief! However when we speak out about homosexuality because the behavior is offensive to us, what’s your response? Bigot! Gay hater! Gay basher! Homophobe! Christians do not hate gays or at least they shouldn’t. You claim to know so much about Jesus and the Bible but you somehow overlooked the verses where God condemns homosexuality. So now I’m a judging, Bible banger, right? I’m not being the judge. I’m just showing you what the Bible says. You can ignore it all you want but the verses are not going away. If a person is living in sin, it is my duty as a Christian to point that out because we love their soul. But when you liberals want to take away the sanctity of marriage that we hold strongly, that’s imposing a belief on me. That is affecting my life, my finances, and my environment. We can’t impose our moral beliefs because they’re offensive to some people. However, gays can do whatever they want and if we object or find that offensive, we are bigots and close-minded Christians. Hypocrites! How is that not of the utmost hypocrisy? You can’t explain it. If you are so smart and so educated, and I am so stupid, explain how that is not hypocrisy.
On another note, it is interesting that you are so passionate about people living their lives however they want to, yet you don’t believe that unborn children have the right to live at all. It’s the mother’s choice. What if your mother chose not to keep you? What if she said, “Forget you! It’s my choice to not keep you!” I simply do not understand this. But then again, I guess that just shows my ignorance. You want to blame our president for the divorce rate going up. You want to blame the divorce rate on gays not being able to marry. Yet you will glorify a man who had an affair with an intern in the White House for goodness sakes! He then LIED, LIED about it to a grand jury! You say, “Well it didn’t affect his job running the country so it’s OK he did that.” Yet Bush is to blame for the rise in the divorce rate. Hypocrites! Are you so wrapped up in yourself that you can’t see how hypocritical you are?! Are you so blinded by hatred and rage that you fail to see the irrationality and complete lack of logic in your beliefs?
Finally, because I have to stop sometime, your precious John Kerry lost this election. L-O-S-T LOST. He lost by over 3.5 MILLION votes. You liberals need to realize you are not in power. Your voice is not the majority. Not by a long shot. And instead of fighting for what you believe in, you tried force it on everybody through liberal judges. And as you have discovered that didn’t work with over half the nation. You scream, “Voter suppression!” You know, if not allowing convicted felons, dead people, illegal immigrants, people who can’t fill out a voter registration properly, and people to vote twice is voter suppression then I guess I am for it. He didn’t lose because African-Americans weren’t allowed to vote. If believing that we don’t owe African-Americans anything for what happened over 100 years ago and that they should earn what they get just like everyone else makes me a racist, call me a racist. The reason John Kerry lost is because he has NO guts. He stems his beliefs from polls and popular opinion, not from deep convictions! He was a people-pleaser, a soothsayer... not what we need in a time of war. He’d put our national security in the hands of a corrupt United Nations. If it were up to me I’d tell the UN to get out of our country. Yea, I said that. They don’t have the US’s interests at heart so they need to leave and go back to their socialist European nations.
Speaking of war, are you so wrapped up in your selfish endeavors that you have forgotten what happened 3 years ago? There are people on the other side of the world that want us DEAD. D-E-A-D DEAD! There is nothing wrong with criticizing the president if you don’t agree with him. Yea, he’s a human being that makes mistakes. That’s the beauty of free speech. But we have a president who works night and day to give you the freedom to call him a retarded cowboy, Hitler, the Antichrist, Satan, and every other terrible name in the book. But I don’t care that other socialist nations don’t like us. I am not going to apologize to those socialist thugs for protecting ourselves. We were attacked on September 11 and had a president in office that actually DID something about it unlike our previous president. Now that we actually fought back other nations are screaming at us calling us the evil empire. Forget them. I’m not worried about them anyway, because as soon as they need a handout, they’ll be our allies once again. Are you so ignorant to believe that once we capture Osama Bin Laden that the rest of the terrorists will simply disappear? Are the terrorists going to have to show up on your doorstep and kill you and your family to make you believe they exist? Why are you so concerned about the death of Iraqis when you don’t give a flip about unborn children here in America? I recently found a democratic-sponsored website that has a poll asking which was worse: 9/11 or 11/3? If you support this, you need to take your heartless and un-American behind and go to Canada or France and stay there. We don’t want you here. If you don’t support this, that proves how divided YOUR PARTY, not America, truly is. If people like Eminem who calls his mom a b*tch and makes a CD out of it are your kind of people, more power to you. That’s not me, and that’s not America. Of course what do I know? I’m just an ignorant hick from a southern red state.