Right wing attempts to suppress voters
By
Caleb T. Maupin
Cleveland
Published Oct 23, 2008 10:25 PM
A mass movement in Ohio among students, oppressed people and the working class
has resulted in 600,000 people registering to vote for the first time. The
Republican Party, the right wing of the corporate ruling class—which is
overwhelmingly aware that these new voters will most likely not be voting for
them—has responded with one of their well-practiced methods: the
disenfranchisement of poor and Black voters.
A massive voter purge of 200,000 people in Ohio was attempted by the
Republicans and blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court. These 200,000 people would
have been prevented from voting merely because their forms did not match the
Secretary of State’s records exactly.
A similar tactic was carried out in 2000 in Florida, where thousands of mostly
Black registered voters were kept from voting. In order to avoid the ugly
scenes of oppressed people being dragged away from polls by police, a new
method of disenfranchisement has been developed in Ohio.
Voters whose names have been purged from the rolls will be given
“provisional ballots.” However, these second-class ballots are not
likely to be counted.
In 2004, voters in highly-Democratic areas in Ohio such as inner-city Cleveland
faced long lines and a lack of voting machines, while machines were plentiful
in rural conservative areas with smaller populations.
Clearly, it seems that when the rich are not satisfied with the election
results, the votes of the oppressed, who fought so hard merely to win the right
to cast them, are expendable.
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