By James Parks

During the 2003 election for governor in Kentucky, the Republican Party in Louisville publicly announced it would place “challengers” in 59 heavily Democratic precincts to challenge the eligibility of voters who might have moved out of the precinct or who had criminal records or any other factor that would disqualify them from casting a ballot. Every one of the targeted precincts was located in predominantly African American communities of the city.

“This was not about preventing voter fraud. It was an attempt, pure and simple, to intimidate black voters and to keep us from voting,” says Cylister Williams, a retired UAW member and president of the Louisville chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an AFL-CIO constituency group. “But it didn’t work. Instead, it galvanized the African American community. Civil rights groups, churches, business people, fraternities and sororities, politicians and unions formed a coalition to fight the ‘challengers’ and to make sure that every person who wanted to vote could do so.”

The coalition distributed a voters’ bill of rights door-to-door in the African American neighborhoods and organized a phone bank to call voters to urge them to not be intimidated and to vote. Activists were trained to monitor activities at the polls, and lawyers were recruited to be on call if problems occurred. As a result, the plan to intimidate voters flopped. African American voter participation rose by about 4 percent from 2000, and Republicans abandoned the challenger effort.

	Shame: Working families rallied in Tallahassee, Fla., in 2000 demanding that every vote be counted in the presidential election.

In Florida in 2000, some political groups tried to intimidate voters by placing fliers in communities of color listing the wrong date for the election and telling voters they had to have rent and traffic tickets paid before they would be able to vote, which was not true. The state got into the act by removing nearly 60,000 names from the voting rolls allegedly because the individuals were convicted felons who are not allowed to vote. Many of those whose names were purged turned out to have no criminal records.

In Virginia, Jim Dickson, who is blind, says when he has gone to vote, poll workers have told him they didn’t have time to read the ballot to him as is required by law. Some questioned for whom he wanted to vote, says Dickson, the government affairs director for the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD).

My Vote, My Right

With the 2004 election expected to be as close as the 2000 vote, the AFL-CIO, affiliated unions, constituency groups and dozens of allies are working to ensure every vote is counted by educating voters about their rights and giving them tools to protect their votes. In March 2004, the AFL-CIO Executive Council passed a resolution committing the federation to help bring more minority and other traditionally disenfranchised voters into the election process and to prevent them from being disenfranchised as in 2000.

“This is the most important election in recent history for working families. After the debacle of 2000, we must not let anyone steal an election or deny our votes. Every union member and their families must register to vote and vote for change in November,” says AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, chairman of the AFL-CIO Executive Council’s Committee on Political Education.

Through the AFL-CIO My Vote, My Right voting rights protection program, union members, people of color and people with disabilities are learning about changes in election laws since 2000 and what they can do to participate in the November elections.

It is a shame and a disgrace that voters are intimidated and denied their right to vote in the world’s leading democracy. The nation must act now to ensure the wholesale disenfranchisement of voters that occurred in 2000 is never repeated,” says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson.

The problems in Kentucky, Florida and Virginia are representative of election-related problems that have surfaced repeatedly around the country, says David Bositis, senior research associate at the Washington, D.C.-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Many of the problems are directly related to the way the nation’s voting system is set up, he says. Too many ballots are designed poorly, voting machines are maintained poorly and break down on Election Day, polling places are inaccessible to people with disabilities or located far away from elderly voters’ homes, polling places are inadequately staffed and polls close too early.

But on top of mechanical and procedural problems, some political groups deliberately try to intimidate voters, especially voters of color. Bositis says some groups have tried to intimidate African American voters by sending them letters saying if the information on their voter registration forms is incorrect—the wrong address, for example—and they try to vote, it is a felony, which is not true. Others have posted signs in Hispanic neighborhoods warning that immigration officials will be at the polls on Election Day checking for undocumented immigrants, which could cause documented immigrants to stay away from the polls.

“These things are not intended to stop everyone from voting but to shave a few points off the opponent’s total,” Bositis says. “In states where you have a close vote, it could make a difference in who wins.” In Florida, Bositis says, “black voters feel like the election was stolen—that A, it was stolen by keeping black voters from voting, and B, it was stolen by keeping black votes from being counted.”

Enforcing federal election laws

	“Every union member and their families must register to vote and vote for change in November.” —AFSCME President Gerald McEntee

Many of the changes at the ballot box this year are the result of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), which gives federal funds to states to replace the punch-card voting system that resulted in so many problems in Florida and other states in 2000. Under HAVA, anyone whose eligibility to vote is challenged may cast a provisional ballot that would be held until the eligibility question is resolved.

Although the law requires states to develop new statewide voter registration databases, most states won’t have their databases ready by November 2004—and voter list problems disenfranchised far more Americans in the 2000 election than any problems with voting equipment, says Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), a coalition of more than 180 organizations, including the AFL-CIO and several affiliated unions.

“Even in the few states that will have their databases in place this November, there are still very real dangers that the eligibility of lawfully registered voters will be challenged on Election Day due to problems like inappropriate and illegal purging, errors in data entry or the inability to easily and accurately access the database at the polling place,” Henderson told a U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearing in April.

To help ensure the new election laws are implemented fairly, state federations, constituency groups, central labor councils and community allies are forming special voter protection advocacy teams in 32 communities in 12 key battleground states—Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. The teams, composed of six to 10 leaders from various groups, will monitor how local officials are enforcing new election laws and speak out when they discover problems that need to be corrected.

A state coordinator will synchronize the work of the advocacy teams in each of the battleground states. To help protect votes in your community, call your state federation or local central body.

Enlisting community groups

Take Action Now to Protect Voting Rights The success of the My Vote, My Right program will depend on the hard work of local volunteers and activists. To help the activists educate union members and other voters about their rights, such as being able to cast a provisional ballot and having accessible voting booths, the federation will provide materials and resources for local unions and organizations. To order these materials, call the AFL-CIO Civil, Human and Women’s Rights Department at 202-637-5270. Activists also can begin to mobilize voters by finding out basic information about voting, such as how to register, the location of polling places and times. They also can encourage voters to vote early where possible and provide information to members who might need absentee ballots. Materials, including state voters’ bills of rights, fliers and fact sheets, will be available online at www.aflcio.org. For more information about Working Women Vote, contact Rachna Choudhry in the AFL-CIO Civil, Human and Women’s Department or 202-637-5270 or rchoudhr@aflcio.org

Another first line of defense to protect working families’ votes is the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee (LCC), a national organization of union attorneys. Along with allies such as the LCCR, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law and People for the American Way, the LCC and the AFL-CIO are recruiting a network of volunteer lawyers to monitor the way local officials implement election rules and to provide a hotline on Election Day for any voter who encounters problems being allowed to vote.

Much of the lawyers’ work will be done before Election Day to ensure rules are fair and the problems that have cropped up in voting since 2000 are addressed. They will lead or accompany workers and civil rights activists to meet with state attorneys general and county election officers; train union members and others to serve as poll watchers; and identify potential violations of voting rights that need to be challenged before the election, says LCC Executive Director Jonathan Hiatt, who is also AFL-CIO general counsel.

To protect the voting rights of people with disabilities, this year AAPD is working with the AFL-CIO and coalitions in 19 states to register voters with disabilities and to urge them to vote. Nine of 10 voting booths are not accessible to people with disabilities, Dickson says, because states are not buying new equipment.

AAPD also is helping train election officials and poll workers on the laws regarding voters with disabilities and is working with allies to create a toll-free number disabled voters can call if they have problems voting on Election Day.

Getting out the vote

	Getting out the vote: Canvassers for Voices for Working Families get set to register voters in Miami.

The AFL-CIO and several allies of working people are using innovative as well as tried-and-true techniques to mobilize new groups of voters. Through fliers and candidate comparisons, the federation’s Working Women Vote 2004 campaign will build on the results of the recent Ask a Working Woman Survey to educate women voters on issues they identified as being the most important: good jobs and affordable health care.
 

Voices for Working Families, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group, is registering working families, people of color and people with disabilities with a goal of increasing voter participation by as much as 26 percent in states with close election results in 2000. The group is registering new voters and educating them on key issues important to working families.

America Coming Together (ACT), a progressive voter mobilization effort, is placing  organizers and state directors in 17 key states. Volunteer and professional canvassers will canvass local neighborhoods, registering people to vote. This summer, ACT will launch a massive door-to-door effort—contacting voters and identifying issues important to them, following up with individual communications. On­Election Day, volunteers and organizers will ­mobilize voters to get out and vote.

In Chicago, the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice (NICWJ) has joined with more than 70 local faith-based groups to form the Faithful Citizenship project, a pilot program to register new voters and encourage participation in the electoral process (www.nicwj.org).

This summer, NICWJ will expand the Faithful Citizenship program to six cities and launch a program to mobilize activists for a Get Out the Vote program in this fall.

Kim Bobo, NICWJ’s executive director, says, “If we want to be a part of the decision-­making process, we have to get out and vote.” @