SAN BERNARDINO
"THE LONG SHADOW OF JIM CROW"

By Chris Levister

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was among the crowning achievements of the civil rights movement. It would be encouraging to think that the last vestiges of voter intimidation, oppression and suppression were swept away by the passage and recent renewal of the historic law.

A San Bernardino woman votes in the 2005 California Special Election. National election watchers warn of subtle creative tactics to suppress the Black vote.

Meet Prentice, a registered Democrat who served in the Navy overseas from 2003 to 2005. When he showed up in his San Bernardino precinct to vote in the November 2005 California Special Election he was turned away. The reason according to the poll worker: "He was registered to vote from a false address."

"I was shocked to learn I was listed among voters registered in Jacksonville, Florida," said Prentice whose mother and sister live near the Jacksonville Naval Air Station. "San Bernardino has always been my registered address. I never registered in Florida," said Prentice.

Prentice says months after the 2005 election he was contacted by news reporters from the BBC Television Newsnight (UK). He says it was then he learned of so-called "caging lists" and other confidential data surrounding an October 2004 campaign directed by GOP party chiefs which sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election. He says the spreadsheets indicate most of the letters were sent to African-American majority zip codes.    

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) says the Prentice case is a striking example of several hundred to a few thousand voters the majority of them Black servicemen and women assigned to overseas duty who were wrongly identified as registering to vote from false addresses.

Here's how the vote challenging campaign worked: Certain voters were mailed letters in envelopes marked "Do not forward, return to sender". These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their U.S. home addresses. The lists of soldiers of "undeliverable" letters were transmitted to election officials as "bad addresses". The party could then challenge the voters' registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballot from being counted.

Prentice says when he tried to re-register for the 2005 California election he was  challenged on the basis of the returned envelope. Republican spokesman Mindy Tucker Fletcher acknowledged that these were voters, "we mailed to, where the letter came back - bad addresses."

The GOP has refused to say why it would mark soldiers as having "bad addresses" subject to challenge when they had been assigned abroad.

The voter challenge campaign is just one example of attempts to suppress the nation's minority vote says the American Civil Liberties Union who filed voting rights lawsuits in Florida, California, Georgia, Illinois and Missouri following  the 2000 election.

The ACLU says discriminatory voting practices continue to exist. Today, these usually take the form of creative methods of establishing districts that dilute the voting power of minority groups. Among eligible voters, faulty voting booths, confusing ballots and flawed voting procedures often result in uncounted or improperly counted ballots.

A report by the People for the American Way and the N.A.A.C.P. describes many recent examples of voter harassment and intimidation. The study called the "The Long Shadow of Jim Crow," noted: 

Voter suppression efforts have not been limited to a single party, but have in fact shifted over time as voting allegiances have shifted. In recent decades African-American voters have largely been loyal to the Democratic Party, resulting in the prevalence of Republican efforts to suppress minority turnout. The report said researchers found endless stories of attempts to discourage Blacks from voting.

Researchers acknowledge few vote blocking or tampering cases are investigated, even fewer result in criminal charges and most don't make it to the national spotlight.

Last month the Riverside Press Enterprise reported the political party affiliation of dozens of Inland voters was switched to Republican without their knowledge during recent GOP-funded registration drives. Investigations by the state and the San Bernardino County district attorney's office into suspicious voter registrations have yet to produce any criminal charges. The PE reported registered Democrats were sent GOP absentee ballots and party campaign materials and were allowed to vote only for Republicans. 

Adam Aleman executive director of the San Bernardino County Republican Party said the party was the victim of unscrupulous signature gathers. It still pays bounties, but only to members of Republican clubs who sign up new GOP voters.

State officials are also investigating voter registration fraud in Orange County. Earlier this year, the Orange County Register reported that more than 100 voters there had been re-registered as Republicans without their knowledge.

With a pivotal midterm election less than five weeks away, the African American Voter Registration Education and Participation (AAVREP) has been on a mission to register, educate and persuade voters to exercise the most important right they have - the right to vote. 

Our goal says project chairman and California Assembly member Mark Ridley-Thomas is to introduce African-Americans to the candidates and issues but more importantly educate them on the importance of protecting the vote.

"When duly registered African Americans are improperly challenged at the polls, or someone tries to use a patently discriminatory voter felons list or Black votes are criminally tempered with or simply not counted," says Ridley-Thomas "we  are here to let them know, together we will fight back until every vote is counted and every vote counts."