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Over the past few months the election between Barack Obama and John McCain has seen unprecedented and consistent irregularities. Many have brushed off them off as simple accident's and coincidences but if we have a look at the available evidence from 2004 regarding election activities and compare them with what is happening in the current election a rather alarming pattern emerges.

Voter Suppression
Voter suppression is a type of electoral fraud which is used to depress the vote total of an rival candidate or suppress certain groups of people from voting e.g. African-Americans, college students, Hispanics, elderly people. Vote suppression is often hard to detect since it is usually done under the guise of targeting voter fraud. Voter fraud is when the individual defrauds the election process e.g. an individual may vote twice or an illegal immigrant may vote. On the other hand electoral fraud is when a party defrauds the election process. Voter fraud has proven to be extremely rare but can be heavily exaggerated to justify restrictions to the polls and to bar people from voting.

Voter suppression is predominately used by Republicans since the history of US election shows that Republican's leverage in elections goes up as the voting populace goes down. In the upcoming election between Barack Obama and John McCain the 9 million newly registered voters are overwhelmingly democratic. In states where registration is recorded by party, including eight key states that could decide the election, voters have signed up Democratic in the past six months by a margin of nearly 4-to-1. It would be extremely beneficial for Republicans to suppress voters in any shape or form.

There are various techniques of voter suppression with the most damaging being confusion and the allocation of machines, photo id laws, voter purging and voter caging. These techniques used pervasively have the power to suppress hundred and thousand's of votes and flip an election. In recent election's massive amount of votes have not being counted. In the 2000 election 1.9 million votes did not count with an incredible 53 percent of them being African-American voters. In the 2004 election between Bush and Kerry 3,600,380 votes were not counted with African American's 9 times more likely to lose their vote than white americans. According to the 2006 Election report by the Election Assistance Commission 3.2 million votes were not counted. Incredibly 621,000 votes were not counted in Pennsylvania alone. While some some votes may have been lost due to error there is clearly something very wrong with the numbers especially considering African-American comprise of only 13 percent of the population.The following analysis will deal with how and why millions of votes were lost in 2004 and how on Tuesday there will be more votes not counted than ever before.

Voter caging
Voter caging is suppression tactic which evidence has shown only Republican's engaging in. It involves the party sending out mail to voter's or particular groups of voters they want to target with 'do not forward' or 'return to sender' and if the mail comes back for any reason undelevirable they compile those names into a 'caging list' which is used to:


 * Purge voter's off the voter rolls
 * Challenge absentee ballots and absentee ballot requests
 * Challenge voter's at the polls
 * Challenge vote's after they have been cast

This usually results in all the people on the caging list losing their vote. So what's the problem? Well in many court cases and circumstances voter caging has been declared illegal in violation of either the NVRA or the Voting Rights Act due to the fact that it suppresses thousand's of legitimate voters and target's minorities and poor people. The Republican National Committee also entered a consent decree in 1986 when the RNC in 1981 and 1986 sent party mailer's out to predominately black neighborhoods and when the over tens of thousands of letters were returned undeliverable they took them off the voter rolls.Thousand's legitimate voters can lose their vote through caging when letters are sent to their address and returned undeliverable becuse


 * Voter rolls suffer from typos and other clerical errors.
 * A voter may not be listed on the mailbox of her residential voting address.
 * A voter may live at a non-traditional residence.
 * A voter may be temporarily away from her permanent residence.
 * A voters permanent mailing address may differ from her residential voting address.
 * Mail may not be properly delivered.
 * A voters street name may have changed.
 * A voter may refuse to accept certain mail.
 * A voter may have moved permanently, but nevertheless remains eligible to vote.

To give you an idea of how many people this can include recently letters were sent out to all Ohio voters and 600,000 were returned undeliverable. It's not unusual for large amounts mail to be returned in mass mailings and especially when they have 'do not forward' on the letters. This technique although illegal could be justified by the RNC as targeting voter fraud but considering there's been less than a hundred cases out of the hundred's of million votes in presidential elections in the last 8 years it doesn't add up if it risking disenfranchising hundred's of thousand's.

Challenging voters at the polls
Caging lists which are the lists compiled off the undeliverable mail are often used by poll watcher's or lawyers to approach voter's and challenge their vote. They will either be turned away or be able to cast a provisional ballot which most likely won't count. According to the Election Assistance Commission the rate of provisional ballot's not being counted is 1 in 3. They also aren't counted for 10 days which in most cases means the election is decided before the provisional ballots are counted.

right|Image on right|400px|Image: 400 pixels|frame| Full Document State Implementation Template III.doc click here

The evidence that the Republican National Committee had resumed this tactic from the 1980's emerged in 2004 when Republican officials accidently sent numerous emails to theirnames@georgewbush.org instead of theirnames@georgewbush.com. The emails were intercepted by the owner of georgewbush.org and passed onto BBC Journalist Greg Palast, you can see them here. In one of the emails which you can see to your right there was a document attached called 'State Implementation Template III.doc' which contained detailed caging plans. It was sent from Molly Houser to Jon Seaton and Doug Badger. In the source of the document the details are as follows:


 * Company: Bush/Cheney Re-election Campaign
 * Title: Pennslyvania Election Day Efforts
 * Author: Christopher Guith (Republican Lawyer)

Connection to McCain/Palin - Jon Seaton was John McCain's national field director from 2006 to 2007 and is currently McCain's Northwest regional political director for Ohio and Pennsylvania and also his Iowa state director.

The following parts of the document pertain to 'caging'



The language "At whatever point registration in the state closes" in the pre-election operations section and other statements in document, tell us this was used in at least numerous states. Targeted voter caging was clearly part of their pre-election operations and clearly corroborates with the what voter caging is. The clause "if the letter is returned for any reason" tells us they plan on stopping that person voting no matter what the reason is the letter is returned, even if it's the Republican's fault it has been returned. It's also important to note that was 'State Implementation Template III.doc, we don't know what's in II or I but this does give a good insight into voter suppression tactics being used.

As mentioned before when the Board of Election's sent out mail in September this year they had nearly 600,000 letters returned undeliverable. The number was obtained by voting rights group Advancement Project through a FOIA. If Republican's are still using those same tactics those 600,000 voters would be challenged on election day. There has been a directive by the SoS of Ohio preventing people using that particular list from challenging voter's but there has been no other directive's in any other states. If similar caging efforts have been in effect in other states ( A republican lawyer in Michigan admitted they would be voter caging while other states 'refuse to discuss election strategies') we can expect mass challenges.

So how do we know that the hundred's of thousand's of letter's being returned as undeliverable are actually legitimate voters? There was one investigation back in 2004 into a 'caging list' in New Mexico. Congressman Heather Wilson had got many letters back that she had sent to newly registered voters as undeliverable so she decided to pass the list onto US Attorney David Iglesias to investigate for voter fraud. Iglesias sent her a letter back informing her he had passed on her complaints for the FBI to investigate. Heather wilson passed the letter onto Senator Domenci with a handwritten note saying "What a waste of time. Nobody home at US Attorney's office." The only reason she would be upset if Iglesias was passing on the complaints to the FBI is if she knew they weren't fraudulent voter's and simply wanted indictments filed. It turns out she was right. The FBI came back with their findings and they ultimately determined that the correspondence from her office to newly registered voters had been returned as undeliverable because of incomplete addresses on voter registration cards, errors made by Wilson’s office in addressing the envelopes, or because the voters, many of whom were college students, had changed addresses since registering. The FBI recommended, and EAUSA Armijo concurred, that the matter should be closed without further investigation or prosecution. So technically according to the "State Implementation Template III.doc" all those innocent voters would have lost their vote and god knows how many other innocent voters did. The information of correspondence between Wilson, Iglesias and the FBI was obtained from the Inspector General's report on the US Attorney firings.

Connection to McCain/Palin - Jon Seaton was John McCain's national field director from 2006 to 2007 and is currently McCain's Northwest regional political director for Ohio and Pennsylvania and also his Iowa state director.

Provisional/Challenge Ballot
In most cases when a voter is caged and removed from the rolls and arrives to find their name off the rolls or is challenged at the polls from a caging list they are entitled to a provisional ballot or a challenged ballot. The problem with these ballots is that they are conditional, very easy to disqualify and if even if they are counted, they are not counted for 7 to 10 days after the election. In the 2004 election according to the Election Assistance Commission approximately 700,000 provisional ballot were not counted out of the 1.9 million cast. In 2006 according to the EAC approximately 200,000 provisional ballots were not counted out of the 800,000 provisional ballots cast. With winning margins sometimes being less than a thousand votes in presidential elections, to say 200,000 people didn't deserve to have their vote counted for one reason or another is preposterous. There is also the challenged ballot which is being administered in numerous states which is even worse. Challenged ballots are not counted unless there is a recount in the state. The voter requires no notification if their challenged ballot is not counted. The full details of provisional and challenged ballots and their differences can be seen here.

Challenging absentee ballots
Evidence of the RNC using caging list's to challenge absentee ballot's as well as soldier's absentee ballots emerged in 2004 in court documents and the emails mention earlier in this analysis. The following emails are of top RNC officials discussing caging voters in 5 key states Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, New Mexico and Florida. One particular email describes top RNC officials using a caging list from Cuyahoga county, Ohio to challenge absentee ballots. It's important to note that Cuyahoga county has the highest amount of African-American people in the whole state of Ohio with nearly 400,000 African-American's. The emails were sent from Christopher Guith (same Republican attorney who authored 'State Implementation Template III.doc) to Tim Griffin (Karl Rove's Protege), Shawn Reinschmidt, Terry Nelson, Christopher McInerney and Blaise Hazelwood.



First off you can see they are making sure to hide what they are doing and they may know that what they are doing is most likely illegal. What they are doing is using a caging list to block absentee ballot's. The people on the caging list (Cuyahoga returned list) are more than likely innocent but are on the list because they didn't receive a piece of mail and subsequently will have their absentee ballot thrown out.

According to the EAC in the 2006 election 347,000 civilian absentee ballots were received but not counted While 49,000 overseas ballots were not counted with over 70 percent of overseas military ballots not recorded in 2006. Because no one keeps centralized records on military ballots or voter turnout it's hard to tell why all these ballots are lost and rejected. While there is no evidence that soldiers were caged in 2006, because of the appearance of soldiers on caging list's from 2004 there is possibility were caged.

'Connections to McCain/Palin'

Shawn Reinschmidt' was a senior analyst to the Bush/Cheney campaign and is now working for the Republican National Committee as Director of Research/Deputy Communications Director. Reinschmidt took over Griffin's job.

Terry Nelson was political director for Bush/Cheney 2004 and was McCain's campaign manager from 2006 to 2007. He continued on as a senior adviser to the McCain campaign. Terry Nelson was also implicated in the New Hampshire phone jamming scandal. http://mediamatters.org/items/200612130001

''Tim Griffin' was the Director of Research/Deputy Communications Director for the Bush/Cheney campaign and is currently doing opposition research on Barack Obama for the McCain campaign.

Challenging absentee ballot request's


Evidence of Republican officials using caging list's to challenge absentee ballot request's in FL, PA, NV, NM and OH emerged in the same exhibit of emails from the court case filed with Hon. Dickinson R. Debevoise on Nov 1st 2004. This email exchange is between Christopher Guith and Coddy Johnson. Also on the emails are Caroline Hunter, Robert Pacuchik, Mike Magan, Dave Denherder, Terry Nelson and Tim Griffin.

What you can see here is Coddy suggesting they use 'reg returns' in other words 'caging lists' to prevent voters from receiving their absentee ballots. Christopher let's Coddy know they can do it in the 5 key states and Coddy suggest's they do it in other states as well. It's important to note that Ohio is the only state where it requires the county board of elections to keep the list of bounce back mailing's (a caging list). So what the Republican's can do is use that list and challenge every voter on that list even though it's likely to be illegal. While we know in the 2008 election that 600,000 is on the returned mailing list for Ohio and the SoS has directed the RNC not to use it, we have no idea how many thousand's of voter's are on the other states caging lists in the upcoming election. It's clear in 2004 they created list's for the other states by sending mail out in those states and compiling the list of return mailings to challenge voters. Those list's are likely to be the same ones created from 'Section IV Pre-Election Operations' in the 'State Implementation III.doc.' There is also 'Confidential Information - Subject to Protective Order' printed on all the emails which shows that the RNC did not want this information getting out.

The following email proves the RNC officials used the bounce back mailing list's from the Board of Elections to challenge absentee ballot requests.

AB-RETURN

Again you see the effort to make sure they hide what they are doing. BoE stands for Board of Elections. The Denherder press strategy may relate to trying to spread the word that these voter's on the caging list are fraudulent voters, similar to what Congresswoman Heather Wilson did in New Mexico.

The following email shows RNC officials specifically targeting ACORN and ACL out of the caging list:

ACORN

Why would they target ACORN? Well over half the people ACORN register are under 30 and around 70 percent of all who register are Hispanic and Black. ACT has similar demographics of voters. The question is if they were really worried about these voter's on the caging list being illegitimate why would they specifically target the ACORN and ACT voters on the list. It's important to note that there has not been a single case of voter fraud related to ACORN. There have been canvassers working for ACORN who have made up phony names on registration forms which because of HAVA ACORN has to hand in. But every single one was flagged by ACORN as suspicious and even when the Nevada GOP claimed 10 voter voted fraudulently when those voters where investigated they turned out to be 10 authentic hispanic voters.

The following email reveals them also targeting Franklin County and shows them specifically targeting counties through voter caging. According to census data Franklin county has the second highest amount of African-American's in Ohio with nearly 200,000 African-American's. Franklin and Cuyahoga counties nearly add up to half the African-American's votes in the state of Ohio. As you can imagine this is extremely effective at suppressing the democratic vote due the 9:1 ratio of blacks voting democratic. These counties also contain most of the city dweller's in Ohio who have shown vote overwhelmingly democratic.

franklincounty.jpg

Connections

'Caroline Hunter' After being deputy counsel of the Bush/Cheney campaign she was nominated by George Bush to become one of the four Election Assistance Commissioners.

Collister "Coddy" Johnson began working for Ken Mehlman who was the chairman for the RNC. In 2004 he became the National Field Director for the Bush/Cheney Campaign. He has had close ties with Karl Rove since 1999. His father was George Bush's flat-mate in Yale, George Bush is also his godfather.

Purging caged voters
Using an caging list to purge voter's off the voter rolls is illegal under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, this is the clause it violates:

Pursuant to the NVRA, a voter may not be removed from the voters list unless (1) the voter has requested removal; (2) state law requires removal by reason of criminal conviction or mental capacity; (3) the voter has confirmed in writing that he has moved outside the jurisdiction maintaining the specific voter list, or (4) the voter both (a) has failed to respond to a cancellation notice issued pursuant to the NVRA and (b) has not voted or appeared to vote in the two federal general elections following the date of notice.

Recently the Republican Michigan SoS was caught purging voters using voter caging and the Judge declared it illegal and ordered her to reinstate the voters. See the Judge's order here. When a voter is removed off the Qualified Voter File (QVF) also known as the voting rolls they typically lose their right to vote.

Caging List Analysis
The following caging list's give insight into the type of citizen's caging list's prevent from voting.

Jacksonville, Florida
The following caging list was obtained

Voter caging in 2008 election
Numerous red flags have gone up that voter caging will play a part in the election on Tuesday.

Note: Many people are worried about their votes being not counted to due their homes being foreclosed. The Michigan GOP after their statements agreed that they will not directly use foreclosure list's to challenge voters but they can simply send letters to the house's on the foreclosure list's and cage all the foreclosure victims. That is exactly how an ex-republican operative told the Michigan Messenger he would do it.

Ohio


 * GOP officials in Ohio have acknowledged plans to challenge voter's based on foreclosure lists.

''Indiana'


 * In Marion County County GOP Chairman Tom John admitted he may challenge foreclosure victims and force them to cast provisional ballots. Marion county (Indianapolis) has the highest amount of African American's in Indiana with 200,000 black people. This accounts for nearly half the African-American people in the whole state of Indiana.


 * Republican's in Marion County in Indiana are going to be challenging absentee ballots on Nov 4th and if an absentee ballot is challenged it will not be reviewed until after the election. Even if voter caging doesn't end up rejecting a particular person's vote, the challenge itself delay's the vote from being counted on election night and is much more susceptible to not being counted. This affects the results on election night greatly and as you can imagine would benefit the Republicans.

Florida


 * Volusia County Elections Supervisor Ann McFall admitted that one party would be caging ever voter who has been foreclosed on. Which obviously would be Republicans.


 * Republican's sent out mailer's to democrats in 5 counties Duval, Hillsborough, Collier, Miami-Dade and Escambia with 'do not forward' on the letters with fake Voter ID number's telling voter's they have registered as Republican. The RNC declined to discuss the mailer with St Peterburgs Times but Amber Wilkinson said "It was simply a fundraising piece and it was not worth writing about." The journalist who wrote the story found it suspicious that she had told him it was not worth writing about. Hillsborough Democratic Party Chairman Michael Steinberg said it makes no sense for Republicans to question the party affiliations of Democratic voters. "I don't understand their logic," he said.

Michigan


 * The Michigan Messenger quoted James Carebelli saying he would challenge foreclosure voters, afterwards he quickly denied that he had said it and promptly sued the Michigan Messenger. The Michigan GOP agreed not to use foreclosure list's alone to challenge voters but they haven't ruled out caging voter's who have been foreclosed on.


 * Amazingly Eric Doster who is in charge of GOP lawyers going to the polls on election day when asked if they would be engaging in vote caging replied "I think so."


 * U.S. District Court Judge Stephen J. Murphy declared the purges Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land was making illegal due to a violation of the NVRA. She was removing voter's from the voter rolls when the Voter ID letters she was sending out were coming back undeliverable. She refused to comment on the case but was directed by the Murphy to restore thousand's of voter's to the voter rolls that she had purged.

'California'


 * In Northern California reports of voter caging emerged when letter's marked 'do not forward' were sent to democrats with fake voter ID number's. The description matches of the letter's matches the letter's that were sent out in Florida. See the caging letter that was sent out here. Many of the details were false on the letter for example the letters referred to a Voter Identification Division but RNC personnel said they had no such department. The RNC did not return call's to the news organization regarding the letters.

Kansas


 * In December 2007 Kris Kobach Chair of the Kansas GOP sent out an email to republican party officials saying "Our voter identification system is up and running giving us the capability to effectively mobilize voters and turn them out to vote on Election Day.To date, the Kansas GOP has identified and caged more voters in the last 11 months than the previous two years."