How the Indiana GOP Used Uneven Early Voting Rules to Tamp Down Democratic Votes

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: August 11, 2017 at 8:11:35 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] How the Indiana GOP Used Uneven Early Voting Rules to Tamp Down Democratic Votes
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> How the Indiana GOP Used Uneven Early Voting Rules to Tamp Down Democratic Votes
> By Ed Kilgore
> Aug 10 2017
> <http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/how-the-indiana-gop-skewed-early-voting-opportunities.html>
>
> Sometimes, disputes over voting rights are hard to sort out, since they are often loaded with legalese and hinge on 
> obscure election procedures. But an investigative report by the Indianapolis Star lays out a pretty open-and-shut 
> case of voter suppression by the Indiana GOP:
>
> State and local Republicans have expanded early voting in GOP-dominated areas and restricted it in Democratic areas, 
> an IndyStar investigation has found, prompting a significant change in Central Indiana voting patterns.
>
> That made voting more convenient in GOP areas for people with transportation issues or busy schedules. And the 
> results were immediate.
>
> How much more convenient, you may ask? A lot:
>
> Hamilton County saw a 63 percent increase in absentee voting from 2008 to 2016, while Marion County saw a 26 percent 
> decline. Absentee ballots are used at early voting stations.
>
> Voter registration during this period was up in both counties.
>
> There’s not much mystery about why the trends and the decisions that drove them started happening after the 2008 
> elections: That’s when Indiana went Democratic in a presidential election for the first time since 1964, and only the 
> second time since World War II. Marion County (Indianapolis) had three early voting sites in 2008. Republicans 
> changed that immediately.
>
> State law requires a unanimous vote from county election boards to create more than one early voting site. The 
> Democrats on the boards in both urban Marion and suburban Hamilton Counties voted for more sites. The Republicans in 
> Hamilton did, too — but not the sole Republican in Marion.
>
> [F]our attempts to expand early voting in Marion County have been approved by Democrats, but blocked by the county’s 
> lone GOP representative on the elections board …
>
> In May, Common Cause Indiana and the NAACP’s Indianapolis chapter filed a lawsuit against the Marion County Election 
> Board, Lawson and individual members of the Marion County Election Board, along with Marion County Clerk Myla 
> Eldridge over the lack of early voting locations in the County.
>
> [snip]
>
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