Splicetoday

Politics & Media
Sep 22, 2008, 07:27AM

Michigan GOP: No house, no vote. UPDATE

There's been a substantial amount of commentary surrounding Michigan Messenger's report that the Michigan GOP is planning on denying voting rights to those whose houses have been foreclosed. Democracy Now hosted a discussion on the topic a few days ago with Jefferson Morley, National Editorial Director of the Center for Independent Media, which sponsors a network of online websites in Washington, D.C. and swing states, including Michigan Messenger. The Obama campaign has filed suit in Michigan in an attempt to cut the GOP off at the pass. Talking Points Memo has an interesting take on the subject with a link to the filing (pdf) at the end of the post.

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You know, the bigger picture here is about how close this election is going to be, and will the Republicans be able to hold down turnout, and will the Democrats be able to drive it up. And so, at the margins, both parties are struggling for advantage here, and we know what the Republican tactics typically are here. And in her reporting for Michigan Messenger, Eartha Melzer talked to the lawyer for the Michigan Republican Party, Eric Doster, and he acknowledged that they’re going to be using a variety of tactics to seek to disqualify people. So it’s not really surprising that they would say this and that they’re planning on doing it. I take their denials that they’re going to use foreclosure lists at face value, but we will be checking to make sure that that’s true.

The other thing about the big picture here is, and one reason why I was, as an editor, urging Eartha to get on this story, was John McCain’s landlord in Michigan is a law firm called Trott & Trott. They are the biggest law firm in the state handling foreclosures. David Trott, the head of the firm, is a major bundler for the McCain campaign. So, it made sense to me. It made sense to me that they would be using foreclosure lists. This is sort of built into the infrastructure of the McCain campaign in Michigan.

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