The Vote Caging Megathread

[Ender]

We keep having these as the GOP tries it more and more, might as well have a single place for it all.

For those of you living under a rock since 2004, here's a rough breakdown:
Howard Dean starts making heavy use of the internet to engage and energize previously untapped voters. He gets beaten by the standard machine, and Kerry goes on to lose the election. But he still had remarkable success compared to what he actually did, which attracted the interest of the Dem Leadership. He gets made chairman of the DNC. In his new role, he expands what he did for his campaign. His biggest angle was using Democracy for America to establish grass roots organizations and connect them and other organizations to build a bigger but more subtle machine (e.g Drink Liberally, the local DNC, show up at the college democrats meetings here, and there are some bullet points put out). These united groups basically now matched the church organizations the GOP had been making use of for years - small community organizations that rally to a larger cause. The biggest effort was not towards fundraising, but a GOTV. GOP redistricting had made it easier for them to hold incumbent seats, but by increasing the number of democrat voters overall, those efforts were negated. Combine this with poor GOP performance in the government role, and you got the 2006 victory. Next two years, they keep it up. Obama mirrors it with some improvements and guts the Clinton campaign. Now the Democrats stand with a 40-30-30 D-R-I registration ratio - a structural gain that is very difficult to combat. GOP is up shit creek - prior to Palin the churches weren't interested in supporting them this time around, and even then the Dems have a numbers edge. So the response was to step up the vote caging.

Efforts have already been going on against voters in KS, MI, and LA (link; thread; focus on MI here), Mississippi (link), and against veterans (link; thread)

Slate has a breakdown of where the real battlegrounds will be, but this doesn't let the "solid" states off the hook - the GOTV eforts there have undercut them and gave the Dems a solid shot at a 60 seat majority, so they are under attack as well.

Here it is again in Ohio, where we previously had the McCain campaign send out absentee ballots which would have been invalid (link; thread). In response to their shennigans in 2004 where they disqualified 30,000 otherwise eligible voters and this time where they are trying to disqualify 600,000 voters (yes you read that right, that is 20% of the electorate in the 5 counties they mailed to) the state issued the Brunner Directive, which allows you to vote early as absentee without justification. The GOP is of course outraged, and suing (link).

Meanwhile, in VA, college students are being targeted (link), being threatened that they could lose scholarships if they register to vote locally.

And then you have Alabama, where state law some felons (those not convicted of crimes that violate "moral turpitude") could vote. The GOP officials there put their boot to the Alabama Prisoners Commissioner's neck to make them forbid the voter registration drive there (link)

So that's it for now. I'm not quoting all the articles because this would be huge. Discuss.