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Get Up with MorningWood, on 70,000 Watt Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org. 4 to 6 am (eastern) every Tuesday!

Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD

Marathon

Yes, WMNF has had a buttload of pledge drives this year, and MorningWood has been involved in all of them. This is the last one for a while, and absolutely the last one this year. This time, we need money strictly for day to day operations. We’ll worry about the new building later.

To volunteer to help out during Marathon, call or email Gene Moore. (813-238-8001) or call me in the studio this morning: 813-239-WOOD.

Marathon runs from October 1 8 through October 8 15. Please support MorningWood with your pledge on Tuesday, October 5 12. (Rescheduled due to our extended power outage after all of the recent weather and such.)

Blogging on the radio

A brief history of recent voter intimidation schemes.

As this just released report from the PFAWF and the NAACP puts it,

In a nation where children are taught in grade school that every citizen has the right to vote, it would be comforting to think that the last vestiges of voter intimidation, oppression and suppression were swept away by the passage and subsequent enforcement of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965. It would be good to know that voters are no longer turned away from the polls based on their race, never knowingly misdirected, misinformed, deceived or threatened.

Unfortunately, it would be a grave mistake to believe it.

In every national American election since Reconstruction, every election since the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, voters – particularly African American voters and other minorities – have faced calculated and determined efforts at intimidation and suppression. The bloody days of violence and retribution following the Civil War and Reconstruction are gone. The poll taxes, literacy tests and physical violence of the Jim Crow era have disappeared. Today, more subtle, cynical and creative tactics have taken their place.
......

voter intimidation and suppression is not a problem limited to the southern United States. It takes place from California to New York, Texas to Illinois. It is not the province of a single political party, although patterns of intimidation have changed as the party allegiances of minority communities have changed over the years.

Voter intimidation and suppression thrives today, often pushed by the GOP under the guise of protecting the integrity of elections or rooting out fraud.

With John Ashcroft in charge of the Justice Department, priorities that for years were aimed at protecting the rights of voters at risk of being disenfranchised have now shifted to reflect the partisan “integrity” strategy. Rights are yesterday’s news, and today’s hip, party loyalist Ashcroft hire is hot to deny the vote to any minority group that might tend to vote Democratic.

On October 8, 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft stood before an invited audience in the Great Hall of the Justice Department to outline his vision of voting rights, in words that owed much to the rhetoric used by L.B.J. and Lincoln. “The right of citizens to vote and have their vote count is the cornerstone of our democracy - the necessary precondition of government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” Ashcroft told the group, which included several veteran civil-rights lawyers.

The Attorney General had come forward to launch the Voting Access and Integrity Initiative, whose name refers to the two main traditions in voting-rights law. Voter-access efforts, which have long been associated with Democrats, seek to remove barriers that discourage poor and minority voters; the Voting Rights Act itself is the paradigmatic voter-access policy. The voting-integrity movement, which has traditionally been favored by Republicans, targets fraud in the voting process, from voter registration to voting and ballot counting. Despite the title, Ashcroft’s proposal favored the “integrity” side of the ledger, mainly by assigning a federal prosecutor to watch for election crimes in each judicial district. These lawyers, Ashcroft said, would “deter and detect discrimination, prevent electoral corruption, and bring violators to justice.”

Federal law gives the Justice Department the flexibility to focus on either voter access or voting integrity under the broad heading of voting rights, but such shifts of emphasis may have a profound impact on how votes are cast and counted. In the abstract, no one questions the goal of eliminating voting fraud, but the idea of involving federal prosecutors in election supervision troubles many civil-rights advocates, because few assistant United States attorneys have much familiarity with the laws protecting voter access. That has traditionally been the province of the lawyers in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, whose role is defined by the Voting Rights Act. In a subtle way, the Ashcroft initiative nudged some of these career civil-rights lawyers toward the sidelines.

Addressing the real but uncertain dimensions of voter fraud means risking potentially greater harm to legitimate voters. “There is no doubt that there has been fraud over the years - people voting twice, immigrants voting, unregistered people voting - but no one knows how bad the problem is,” Lowenstein says. “It is a very hard subject for an academic or anyone else to study, because by definition it takes place under the table.” And, despite its neutral-sounding name, “voting integrity” has had an incendiary history. “One of those great euphemisms,” Pamela S. Karlan, a professor at Stanford Law School, says. “By and large, it’s been targeted at minority voters.”

Which brings us to our brief history of recent voter suppression tactics employed by the GOP. Kind of a Rethuglican Greatest Hits from 1981 to 2002. (pdf file)

I’ll include such classics as armed guards at polling places, videotaping of minority voters, fake immigration stakeouts, aggressive challenges of voters approaching the polls, and more. Tune in for all of the fascist favorites!

Playlists

Each week, I bring my planned songs in on CD. I usually end up playing most or all of them in the planned order. But sometimes things go askew. Sorry - no guarantees or refunds.

Hour 1 planned playlist

Hour 2 planned playlist

Live playlist (May be down due to power outage)

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