Lose your house, lose your vote

By Eartha Jane Melzer

Michigan Republicans plan to foreclose African American voters

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”

The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”

One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Hebert called it, “mean-spirited.”

GOP ties to state’s largest foreclosure law firm

The Macomb GOP’s plans are another indication of how John McCain’s campaign stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures in the state. McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.

The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

Challenges to would-be voters

Statewide, the Republican Party is gearing up for a comprehensive voter challenge campaign, according to Denise Graves, party chair for Republicans in Genessee County, which encompasses Flint. The party is creating a spreadsheet of election challenger volunteers and expects to coordinate a training with the regional McCain campaign, Graves said in an interview with Michigan Messenger.

Whether the Republicans will challenge voters with foreclosed homes elsewhere in the state is not known.

Kelly Harrigan, deputy director of the GOP’s voter programs, confirmed that she is coordinating the group’s “election integrity” program. Harrigan said the effort includes putting in place a legal team, as well as training election challengers. She said the challenges to voters were procedural rather than personal. She referred inquiries about the vote challenge program to communications director Bill Knowles who promised information but did not return calls.

Party chairman Carabelli said that the Republican Party is training election challengers to “make sure that [voters] are who they say who they are.”

When asked for further details on how Republicans are compiling challenge lists, he said, “I would rather not tell you all the things we are doing.”

Vote suppression: Not an isolated effort

Carabelli is not the only Republican Party official to suggest the targeting of foreclosed voters. In Ohio, Doug Preisse, director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus) and the chair of the local GOP, told The Columbus Dispatch that he has not ruled out challenging voters before the election due to foreclosure-related address issues.

Hebert, the voting-rights lawyer, sees a connection between Priesse’s remarks and Carabelli’s plans.

“At a minimum what you are seeing is a fairly comprehensive effort by the Republican Party, a systematic broad-based effort to put up obstacles for people to vote,” he said. “Nobody is contending that these people are not legally registered to vote.

“When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote,” Hebert went on, “your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others,” who see a long line and realize they can’t afford to stay and wait.

Challenging all voters registered to foreclosed homes could disrupt some polling places, especially in the Detroit metropolitan area. According to the real estate Web site RealtyTrac, one in every 176 households in Wayne County, metropolitan Detroit, received a foreclosure filing during the month of July. In Macomb County, the figure was one household in every 285, meaning that 1,834 homeowners received the bad news in just one month. The Macomb County foreclosure rate puts it in the top three percent of all U.S. counties in the number of distressed homeowners.

Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent and Genessee counties were — in that order — the counties with the most homeowners facing foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. As of July, there were more than 62,000 foreclosure filings in the entire state.

Joe Rozell, director of elections for Oakland County in suburban Detroit, acknowledged that challenges such as those described by Carabelli are allowed by law but said they have the potential to create long lines and disrupt the voting process. With 890,000 potential voters closely divided between Democratic and Republican, Oakland County is a key swing county of this swing state.

According to voter challenge directives handed down by Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, voter challenges need only be “based on information obtained through a reliable source or means.”

“But poll workers are not allowed to ask the reason” for the challenges, Rozell said. In other words, Republican vote challengers are free to use foreclosure lists as a basis for disqualifying otherwise eligible voters.

David Lagstein, head organizer with the Michigan Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), described the plans of the Macomb GOP as “crazy.”

“You would think they would think, ‘This is going to look too heartless,’” said Lagstein, whose group has registered 200,000 new voters statewide this year and also runs a foreclosure avoidance program. “The Republican-led state Senate has not moved on the anti-predatory lending bill for over a year and yet [Republicans] have time to prey on those who have fallen victim to foreclosure to suppress the vote.”

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Just Like Bush White House, Palin Uses Personal E-mail Accounts And Claims Executive Privilege

The Washington Post reports that Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) is “being asked by a local Republican activist to release more than 1,100 e-mails she withheld from a public records request, including 40 that were copied to her husband, Todd.” Invoking a favored practice of the Bush administration, Palin has claimed executive privilege to keep the e-mails secret — despite the fact many of them were sent to Todd, who is not an elected official.

What’s more, Palin and her staff intentionally use her personal Yahoo e-mail account, perhaps to avoid document release requests:

Palin also routinely does government business from a Yahoo address, gov.sarah@yahoo.com, rather than from her secure official state e-mail address, according to documents already made public.

“Whoops!” Palin aide Frank Bailey wrote, after addressing an e-mail to the governor’s official state address.

“Frank, This is not the Governor’s personal account,” a secretary reminded him.

The lawyer filing the request pointed out that the point of government e-mail is to ensure “security and encryption.” “She’s running state business out of Yahoo?” he asked. Mother Jones reports that Palin’s refusal to hand over e-mails stands in violation of the Alaska Public Records Act.

Palin’s move is eerily reminiscent of Bush administration ploys to dramatically increase secrecy in government, such as when White House aides switched to personal e-mail accounts to avoid subpoenas during the investigation into U.S. Attorney scandal last year:

But just a week after E-mails in the U.S. attorneys case became a main focus of congressional Democrats probing the firings, several aides said that they stopped using the White House system except for purely professional correspondence. […]

At least two aides said that they have subsequently bought their own private E-mail system through a cellular phone or Blackberry server. When asked how he communicated, one aide pulled out a new personal cellphone and said, “texting.”

As Josh Marshall pointed out at the time, if the White House was using personal e-mails, “they can’t have even the vaguest claim” to executive privilege. Similarly, the fact that Palin copies her husband on her e-mails and often uses a personal account raises the question of whether her e-mails are actually official executive business.

Palin’s commitment to secrecy and her stonewalling of an ethics investigation into her role in “Troopergate” are more evidence that a McCain-Palin administration would be little more than a third Bush term.

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Two-party 'charade' must end, Ron Paul says

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas called on voters to back a third-party candidate for president Wednesday, rejecting his party's nominee and offering equally harsh words for the Democratic candidate.

Rep. Ron Paul attacks the two-party system Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington.

Paul, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination this year, told supporters at the National Press Club in Washington that he is not endorsing GOP nominee Sen. John McCain or Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama.

Instead, Paul will give his seal of approval to four candidates: Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, independent candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin.

Paul said he's supporting the third-party candidates because the two major parties and media had "colluded" to avoid discussing issues and falsely presenting the difference between McCain and Obama as real.

"I've come to the conclusion, after having spent many years in politics, is that our presidential elections turn out to be more of a charade than anything else, and I think that is true today. It is a charade," he said.

Paul offered an open endorsement to the four candidates because each signed onto a policy statement that calls for "balancing budgets, bring troops home, personal liberties and investigating the Federal Reserve," an aide to the congressman said.

Paul said a strong showing by the third-party candidates would express the public's frustration with the current system.

"I have no doubt that the majority is on our side," Paul added, citing public opinion polls. "We represent the majority of the American people."

Paul said that he had received a call from the McCain campaign Tuesday asking for his endorsement. Paul's response: "I don't like the idea of getting 2 to 3 million people [Paul supporters] angry at me."

McCain's aides argued that the Texas Republican should endorse McCain because he would do a "little less harm" than Obama, Paul said, but "we just don't need to do that anymore."

"If you ever get to the point where you believe the two parties are essentially the same, if the majority is outside of the establishment, it's not very democratic. The process is not working," Paul said.

Paul attacked Obama, saying, "He's not for change," and the congressman argued that his efforts would help the Republican Party.

"If the Republican side realized what I'm trying to do, they should be funding me," Paul said.

Paul failed in his bid for the Republican nomination, but he found a large, diverse audience for his anti-war and anti-tax messages.

The Texas congressman's campaign was fueled by an on-line, grass-roots fundraising operation. Throughout the campaign, Paul supporters called on others to join the "Ron Paul Revolution."

At the Republican National Convention last week in St. Paul, Minnesota, Paul supporters threw their own party in Minneapolis. iReport.com: See Ron Paul signs raised high at the "counter-convention"

Paul, who said he entered the presidential race reluctantly, told the roaring audience, "I lost my skepticism. I hope you lost your apathy."

"I did not want to run people's lives. I did not want to run the economy and I did not want to run the world. I didn't have the authority to do it, and I didn't have the Constitution behind me to do it," said Paul, who has been in the House of Representatives for more than 30 years.

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Poll Madness: McCain Takes Lead Even As Democrats Out-Register Republicans?

This week's mainstream coverage of the presidential horse-race has been dominated by a series of polls showing the McCain-Palin ticket with its first stable lead over Obama and Biden. Gallup's tracking poll, USA Today and CBS News all show the Republicans with some kind of lead over the Democratic ticket. But, interestingly, all three polls were also conducted using a higher sampling of Republican voters than in July, raising a question of methodology.

In a year in which Democrats have a lead of 11 million registered voters over Republicans, and have been adding to that advantage through a robust field operation, are pollsters over-sampling Republicans?

Despite a raft of advantages in the electorate for Democrats, in September's first Gallup tracking poll, an equal number of Republicans and Democrats were surveyed (including "leaners") from Sept. 3-5, compared to a 10-point Democratic identification advantage two weeks ago. That partisan makeup of the polling pool resulted in a 5-point lead for McCain in Sept. 5 tracking poll. Meanwhile, the new CBS poll features a 6-point swing in partisan composition toward Republicans, which plays some role in the poll's two-point lead for McCain. Finally, the latest USA Today poll, which claims a four-point edge for McCain, was arrived at after a 10-point swing in partisan makeup toward GOP respondents.

Some polling experts say the changing state of party affiliation in the field is slow to be reflected in polls themselves. Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg told the Huffington Post that "when it comes to registration and turnout, the polls often do a very bad job of taking those [factors] into account," because newly registered voters aren't in the voter files used by firms that survey public opinion. "You could make the argument they are under-representing new registrants," she said, which would mean that the Democrats new edge would not be taken into account.

Monday's USA Today poll had a 48-47 split between Democrats and Republicans surveyed. That represents a nearly 10 point shift in party identification toward Republicans since USA Today's July polling. When asked for comment, USA Today polling editor Jim Norman wrote that "it's possible" that their latest sample includes too many Republicans. Though he added, "it's also possible that we have too many Democrats," because "there's always the chance of an over- or under-representation" in polls.

Still, Norman admitted that the GOP identification in the latest survey has spiked. "The party ID in our most recent poll does show a shift away from what Gallup has been getting in earlier polls, going all the way back to 2005," Norman said. "But previous conventions -- the Republican one in 1988, the Democratic one in 1992, the Democratic one in 2000 -- have also shown shifts in party ID toward the party that had the convention, and those shifts seemed to last, to greater or lesser degrees, though the election. Further, I've been told by Gallup that their tracking poll has shown a similar shift in party ID since the Republican convention. ... I guarantee you we will be watching closely in all of our polls between now and election day to see whether there are further shifts in party ID in either direction."

And it's true. Gallup's own GOP identification (including leaners) has swung six points in the last month, from 42 percent of voters to 48, according to tables provided to the Huffington Post. Meanwhile, solid and leaning Democrats have fallen from 52 to 48 percent of those polled. For political scientists who believe that partisanship is largely stable over time -- and who take note of the advantage in voter registration being experienced by Democrats during the same period -- the newly GOP-heavy poll samples can raise eyebrows.

Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz is highly skeptical of the new Gallup, USA Today and CBS polls. About the latter, which showed a statistically insignificant two point lead for McCain, Abramowitz said: "One reason for the dramatic difference between the two recent CBS polls is that the two samples differed fairly dramatically in terms of partisan composition. The first sample was 35.2% Democratic, 26.2 percent Republicans, and 38.6 percent independent. The second sample was 34.9% Democratic, 31.1% Republican, and 34.0% independent. That's a change from a 9 point Democratic advantage to a 3.8 point Democratic advantage. That alone would probably explain about half of the difference in candidate preferences between the two [CBS] polls."

If these polls are improperly reflecting the partisan makeup of the electorate at large, it certainly would go part of the way toward explaining anything beyond the quick "dead cat bounce" after the Republican convention. And if the convergence of polls around a small McCain lead has anything to do with sampling error, it would render any claims about a new equilibrium in the race somewhat moot.

One day before USA Today announced its new poll numbers, it also ran an Associated Press story with the headline "Democrats Post Big Gains In Voter Registration." In that article, the AP noted that, during the primary season, "more than 2 million Democrats [were added] to voter rolls in the 28 states that register voters according to party affiliation. The Republicans have lost nearly 344,000 thousand voters in the same states."

The article proceeded to lay out a variety of statistics that favor Democrats:

Nationwide, there are about 42 million registered Democrats and about 31 million Republicans, according to statistics compiled by The Associated Press.

The Democrats have posted big gains in many competitive states, including Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado and Florida. They have also been targeting historically Republican southern states.

Since 2006, the Democrats have added 167,000 voters in North Carolina, while the Republicans have added 36,000.

Still, that doesn't discount the fact that Republicans have definitely made some gains. As Greenberg notes, "Sarah Palin came out and gave a really good speech. She certainly exceeded the low expectations. And then more people watched McCain's speech than Obama. And now it appears there was a bigger bump for McCain than there was for Obama. ... But there always been more room to grow his vote." Greenberg says the prior lack of enthusiasm among Republicans could have resulted in an inflated rate of survey respondents identifying as independents. "The CBS panels show most of the movement came to McCain from undecided voters, people who were probably holding back from McCain," Greenberg said.

Despite that, Abramowitz simply doesn't think the overall spike in Republican sampling among all three polling firms is an accurate reflection of the electorate. "It's just not likely," he says. Given how important polls can be in the coverage of the race, even a slight assist to McCain during a period in which he is exciting the Republican base could help him solidify a new narrative in the race, regardless of the partisan facts on the ground.

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Was Mussolini Misunderstood?

Giorgio Napolitano

Giorgio Napolitano, Italy's grandfatherly President, was trying not to squirm in his seat. But sitting center stage at a ceremony to honor World War II resistance fighters, the 83-year-old head of state couldn't help but wince as Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa shifted gears mid speech. "I would betray my conscience," La Russa declared, "if I did not recall other men in uniform."

Those "other men" were the fascist Italian troops allied with the Nazi occupiers. "From their point of view," La Russa said of the Nembo division, which served alongside the Germans in Rome, they "fought in the belief they were defending their country." La Russa's Sept. 8 speech was the second time in two days that a top leader of Italy's "post-fascist" National Alliance party — a key ally in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's ruling coalition — had opened wounds that most Italians have considered closed for decades.

Napolitano, a member of a Naples youth resistance movement during World War II, left no room in his own remarks for any backsliding on what is accepted history in Italy. "All the social, political and intellectual components" of Italy's postwar democracy come from those who opposed the Nazis and their Italian fascist allies, Napolitano said.

La Russa's controversial speech came just a day after Rome mayor Gianni Alemanno refused to categorically condemn Benito Mussolini's fascist regime. Interviewed by Milan daily Corriere Della Sera following a visit to Israel, Alemanno, who also belongs to National Alliance, said he did not consider fascism an "absolute evil." While racial laws passed by Mussolini in the last five years of his two-decade reign were abhorrent, Alemanno told the newspaper, "fascism was a more complex phenomenon. Many people signed up in good faith."

Alemanno's comments were denounced by Jewish groups, surviving resistance leaders and members of the center-left opposition. Walter Veltroni, former Rome mayor and current head of the major center-left Democratic party, said he would resign from a city committee spearheading the building of a Holocaust memorial museum in protest.

The National Alliance has spent the past few years distancing itself from its extremist past. Five years ago, Gianfranco Fini, the longtime National Alliance party chief, used the words "absolute evil" to describe Mussolini's regime. Coming at the conclusion of his first trip to Israel, the then deputy Prime Minister appeared to have definitively separated his party from its fascist origins. This week's comments have undone a lot of that work.

Before his flight from Rome in 1943, Mussolini reigned over an iron-fisted dictatorship. He instituted one-party rule, eliminated basic freedoms, and ordered the killing of political opponents. In 1938, Italy instituted racial laws which helped pave the way for the subsequent deportation of thousands of Italian Jews to Nazi death camps.

But fascist or "post-fascist" Italians still try to separate the excesses of the leaders from what they consider a worthy ideology and the good intentions of its followers. In some sense, the comments by La Russa and Alemanno express the two halves of the nostalgia in fascist circles. La Russa sought to defend the legacy of the soldiers who fought, and sometimes died, in pro-Mussolini forces. Alemanno hinted at the need in Italy for the kind of rigidly controlled, law-abiding society that was said to have existed under fascism.

But both miss a larger point that their leader Fini had finally seemed to grasp about the "absolute" lessons that must be drawn from history. As Venice mayor Massimo Cacciari said after La Russa's remarks: Nazi soldiers also believed that they were defending their nation, and no German politician would think to praise their efforts.

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Reduced Dominance Is Predicted for U.S.

By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus

An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.

The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, also concludes that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority -- military power -- will "be the least significant" asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because "nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force."

Fingar's remarks last week were based on a partially completed "Global Trends 2025" report that assesses how international events could affect the United States in the next 15 to 17 years. Speaking at a conference of intelligence professionals in Orlando, Fingar gave an overview of key findings that he said will be presented to the next occupant of the White House early in the new year.

"The U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished," Fingar said, according to a transcript of the Thursday speech. He saw U.S. leadership eroding "at an accelerating pace" in "political, economic and arguably, cultural arenas."

The 2025 report will lay out what Fingar called the "dynamics, the dimensions, the drivers" that will shape the world for the next administration and beyond. In advance of its completion, intelligence officials have begun briefing the major presidential candidates on the security threats that they would be likely to face in office. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) received an initial briefing Sept. 2, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) expected to receive one in the coming days, intelligence officials said.

As described by Fingar, the intelligence community's long-term outlook has darkened somewhat since the last report in 2004, which also focused on the impact of globalization but was more upbeat about its consequences for the United States. The new view is in line with that of prominent economists and other global thinkers who have argued that America's influence is shrinking as economic powerhouses such as China assert themselves on the global stage. The trend is described in the new book "The Post-American World," in which author Fareed Zakaria writes that the shift is not about the "decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else."

In the new intelligence forecast, it is not just the United States that loses clout. Fingar predicts plummeting influence for the United Nations, the World Bank and a host of other international organizations that have helped maintain political and economic stability since World War II. It is unclear what new institutions can fill the void, he said.

In the years ahead, Washington will no longer be in a position to dictate what new global structures will look like. Nor will any other country, Fingar said. "There is no nobody in a position . . . to take the lead and institute the changes that almost certainly must be made in the international system," he said.

The predicted shift toward a less U.S.-centric world will come at a time when the planet is facing a growing environmental crisis, caused largely by climate change, Fingar said. By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe, from northern China to the Horn of Africa.

For poorer countries, climate change "could be the straw that breaks the camel's back," Fingar said, while the United States will face "Dust Bowl" conditions in the parched Southwest. He said U.S. intelligence agencies accepted the consensual scientific view of global warming, including the conclusion that it is too late to avert significant disruption over the next two decades. The conclusions are in line with an intelligence assessment produced this summer that characterized global warming as a serious security threat for the coming decades.

Floods and droughts will trigger mass migrations and political upheaval in many parts of the developing world. But among industrialized states, declining birthrates will create new economic stresses as populations become grayer. In China, Japan and Europe, the ratio of working adults to seniors "begins to approach one to three," he said.

The United States will fare better than many other industrial powers, in part because it is relatively more open to immigration. Newcomers will inject into the U.S. economy a vitality that will be absent in much of Europe and Japan -- countries that are "on a good day, highly chauvinistic," he said.

"We are just about alone in terms of the highly developed countries that will continue to have demographic growth sufficient to ensure continued economic growth," Fingar said.

Energy security will also become a major issue as India, China and other countries join the United States in seeking oil, gas and other sources for electricity. The Chinese get a good portion of their oil from Iran, as do many U.S. allies in Europe, limiting U.S. options on Iran. "So the turn-the-spigot-off kind of thing -- even if we could do it -- would be counterproductive."

Nearly absent from Fingar's survey was the topic of terrorism. Since the last such report, the intelligence community has projected a declining role for al-Qaeda, which was deemed likely to become "increasingly decentralized, evolving into an eclectic array of groups, cells, and individuals." Inspired by al-Qaeda, "regionally based groups, and individuals labeled simply as jihadists -- united by a common hatred of moderate regimes and the West -- are likely to conduct terrorist attacks," the 2004 document said.

The new assessment saw a continued threat from Iran, however. Fingar predicted steady progress in the Islamic republic's attempts to create enriched uranium, the essential fuel used in nuclear weapons and commercial power reactors. For now, however, there is no evidence that Iran has resumed work on building a weapon, Fingar said, echoing last year's landmark National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which concluded that warhead-design work had halted in 2003.

He said Iran's ultimate decision on whether to build nuclear weapons depended on how its leaders viewed their "security requirement" -- whether they thought their government sufficiently safe in a region surrounded by traditional enemies.

Iranians are "more scared of their neighbors than many think they ought to be," Fingar said. But he noted that the United States had eliminated two of Iran's biggest enemies: Iraq's Saddam Hussein and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

"The United States took care of Iran's principal security threats," he said, "except for us, which the Iranians consider a mortal threat."

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