Lost Homes, Lost Votes (Demcracy Now!)

more: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/18/lost_homes_lost_votes_are_republicans

EXCERPT:

The Republican plan to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African Americans, who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. In Michigan, more than 60 percent of all subprime loans were made to African Americans.


In the article, Macomb County Republican Party Chairman James Carabelli is quoted as saying, “We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses.”


AMY GOODMAN: But two days after the story broke, the Michigan Republican Party demanded a retraction. Carabelli contends the quotes were fabricated. In a press release, he writes, “Let me state, again and unequivocally, there is no such plan to use foreclosure lists to challenger voters, and I never said there was. This is a story line being pushed by one liberal blog, the Obama campaign, and their friends and operatives on the left,” he wrote.


The reporter who wrote the article and the website that published it, The Michigan Messenger, are standing by the story and are not printing a retraction.


Jeff Morley is the national editorial director of the Center for Independent Media, which sponsors a network of online websites, including The Michigan Messenger. He joins us from Washington, D.C. We also invited the Michigan Republican Party on Democracy Now!, but they declined our invitation.


Jeff Morley, welcome to Democracy Now!


JEFFERSON MORLEY: Thank you, Amy.


AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Why don’t you lay out what this story is?


JEFFERSON MORLEY: Our reporter, Eartha Melzer, has been looking into all issues around, you know, what’s going to happen on Election Day. And given the history of what happened in Ohio in 2004, we were especially interested in deliberate efforts to confuse voters, to disqualify people on technicalities, and we started calling around to the Republican Party and asking them about their so-called Voter Integrity program.


We didn’t get a lot of response from the Republican leadership on that, so we started calling—Eartha started calling state and local officials, and in the course of making these calls, she spoke with Mr. Carabelli. I know that the party has, you know, denied that this happened, but Eartha is an award-winning journalist. We have her time-stamped notes. We stand by the story 100 percent. He said that that was their plan.


JUAN GONZALEZ: When you say he denied this happening, he didn’t deny the conversation, he just denied the content of the conversation.


JEFFERSON MORLEY: No, and he knows that the conversation happened, and he knows that he talked about the use of foreclosure lists. You know, the bigger picture here is about how close this election is going to be, and will the Republicans be able to hold down turnout, and will the Democrats be able to drive it up.

Did I miss something in all that 'The American military is defending our freedoms" stuff?

In this Republic isn't the vote of a registered voter one of our most cherished freedoms?

County, one of the richest in the country and home of Mike Pappageorge, republican nitwit, who was quoted in 2004 as saying "To win Michigan, we have to suppress the Detroit vote." I'm glad the Dems are going forward with the lawsuit. They want a law specifically forbidding this action.