Republican Crosscheck Program Threatens to Remove Voting Privileges for Millions of Minorities
Reports of Republicans courting minority voters are countered by a flawed program that threatens to remove their voting eligibility under the guise of targeting voter fraud, Al-Jazeera reports.
The Republican-backed program, Crosscheck, is attempting to target potential voter fraud in 27 states -- by isolating names found voting in two or more states on a list of 7 million nationwide.
The problem? They are names as common as Smith in the minority cultures.
Georgia, Virginia and Washington released a list of 2 million to Al-Jazeera and include the names such as Jackson, Garcia, Patel and Kim.
The project was started by Kansas secretary of state, Kris Kobach -- a controversial Republican figure who has been pursuing voter fraud for some time.
This project, which has now spread to 27 states, is being compared to the Jim Crow laws -- calling it a modified version of the laws which restricted African-American voting for nearly a century before the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act revoked them.
Based on the Al-Jazeera investigation, a high number of minorities has been targeted of the 7 million in 27 states as being suspected of voter fraud. Washington has participated but will not be using the results to take any action.
At least 1-in-7 African-Americans, 1-in-8 Asian-Americans and 1-in-8 Hispanic voters are at risk of being scrubbed off the lists for allegedly voting twice. But the list does not only target minorities since at least 1-in-11 white voters are also at risk.
So far, in Virginia alone, 41,637 have been taken off the list.
The criteria used has been criticized as flawed, and indications of mismatch are being ignored.
The presentation Kobach had made in 2013 included an example of matching first, last and middle name or initial; date of birth; suffixes; and Social Security number, or at least its last four digits, Al-Jazeera reported.
Instead, based on the lists provided by the three states, in the instances of all information matching except for a birth date or social security name, the person is still tagged for fraud.
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