Bush Gov't Trying To Keep Poor Voters From Voting

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/stories/56957

Bush Government to Poor Voters: We Don't Want You to Vote

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted July 17, 2007.

The Justice Department is pressuring 10 states to purge their voter rolls, while states are ignoring laws to help low-income Americans register to vote.

State welfare offices across the country are not offering millions of low-income Americans the opportunity to register to vote when applying for public assistance despite a federal law requiring them to do so, according to an analysis of a recent federal voting registration report and experts who say the Department of Justice and states are to blame.

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At the same time, the Justice Department's Voting Section, which enforces voting rights and supervises elections in some states, is pressuring 10 states to do more to purge voter rolls -- or remove ineligible voters -- before the 2008 presidential election, according to letters sent to state election officials this spring.

"We conducted an analysis of each state's total voter registration numbers as a percentage of citizen voting age population," wrote John Tanner, the Department of Justice Voting Section chief, in an April 18, 2007, letter to North Carolina's top election official. "We write now to assess the changes in your voter registration list ... and the subsequent removal of persons no longer eligible to vote."

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Voting Section chief John Tanner did return a telephone call to discuss his office's priorities and accomplishments. On Monday, July 16, the House Judiciary Committee announced it was postponing a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, July 17 "because the Department refused to make Voting Section chief John Tanner available to testify," its press release said.

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