http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/17/uselections2008.democrats

My headline isn’t as one sided as it sounds. Apparently Republicans are using the foreclosure crisis to stop people from voting. If someone has been foreclosed on they want said person’s address placed on a list at the voting stations so that anyone who wants to vote and is listed as living at that address, can’t. A little fishy, eh? This is supposedly an effort to lower voter fraud, which may be true in some part, but my guess (and only a guess) is that it’s also an effort to stop black people, who according to polls and history are much more likely to vote for Obama, from voting.

The one face saver the Republicans have in this little dispute is the argument of responsibility. I’m not talking about being responsible enough to not be foreclosed on or earning the right to vote by making good financial decisions. I’m talking about being responsible enough to update your address on your voter registration card. You can change that address regardless of whether you own the home you’re now staying at. This is a good argument. My only counter is that some people don’t have a home after going through foreclosure. They also may have been forced to move as far as another state and only temporarily. If you have lived in location A for 30 years and 3 months before the election you’re forced to move to location B, you probably want to eventually move back to location A. Why should your vote be counted in a state that you have nothing to do with and won’t have anything to do with in the future? This is a way to redraw the electoral map although I admit this isn’t the greatest argument against saying people should be responsible enough to update their address.

Either way, I don’t see how this would combat fraud. Why would someone be able to vote in multiple locations just because their house is in foreclosure? Why would a foreclosed home be prone to being used by multiple people as their residence when voting? These things lead me to believe that this is just Republicans being incredibly screwed up.

And yes, foreclosures do affect minorities more than whites.
http://www.foreclosurelistings.com/blog/foreclosure-victims/minorities-worst-affected-by-foreclosures.htm