Montana

More news is coming out of Montana about the recent win against GOP voter suppression attempts. Looks like Jake Eaton, the GOP Chairman behind the voter challenges, has packed up his things and headed for the hills:

HELENA - In an unusual move three weeks before the election and after a failed attempt to challenge voter registrations in some Democratic strongholds, the Montana Republican Party said Tuesday night it was changing executive directors.

Former state Rep. Larry Grinde of Lewistown was named the party's executive director after Jake Eaton resigned “to pursue other interests,” the news release said.

Here's a statement on Eaton's departure from our friends at Forward Montana:

Eaton's departure marks an opportunity for the Montana Republican Party to make a renewed commitment to the rights of voters. While the civil rights of thousands of improperly challenged voters, including my own, have now been protected, it would be imprudent to think that similar challenges are impossible in the future.

Forward Montana remains dedicated to seeing legislation introduced and passed during the 2009 to prevent similar challenges. Ideally, these changes will present a multi-faceted solution to this problem, including raising the bar for filing challenges, providing penalties for malicious or false challenges with heightened penalties when the challenges target overseas voters, and bringing Montana's voter registration system into the 21st Century. Universal voter registration through an improved use of technology and better integration of state government will reduce opportunities for voter fraud and voter suppression, while enabling more citizens to be involved.

They also put out an excellent video explaining the challenges and how they disproportionately affected young, progressives in the state:

Here's a statement from Forward Montana CEO Matt Singer on today's voter protection win over the state GOP:

"Obviously, it is good news that Mr. Eaton is now moving to withdraw the 6,000 challenges he filed on behalf of the Montana Republican Party. This action is a vindication of the concerns raised by Forward Montana and other voting rights groups in Montana since day one: that these challenges impacted large numbers of properly and legally registered Montana voters and created unnecessary mass confusion.

"Moving forward, we are currently investigating the legal basis for withdrawing a sworn, signed, and notarized affidavit. We will also continue to monitor activity by the Montana Republican Party and other political organizations and campaigns from all sides of the political spectrum to ensure that no activities are being undertaken that threaten the voting rights of Montanans.

"We now have an obligation to ensure that this situation never repeats itself. We have initiated conversations with lawmakers, policy experts, and constituency groups to craft a legislative agenda to prevent spurious challenges in the future. We are optimistic that a well-crafted legislative package will receive bipartisan support in the 2009 Montana Legislature."

I feel like it's so rare to hear about progressives winning battles on election protection. This was some badass work by Forward Montana to protect the vote in their state.

I normally don't like to do two quick hits posts so close together, but three items came to my attention today that you should know about.

• First, Matt Singer of Forward Montana wrote to me last night saying that the GOP in Montana is withdrawing their challenges to voters in the state. Meanwhile, ABC News reports that more dirty tricks to keep students from the polls are ramping up - this time at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• Zack Exley has a must-read piece in the Huffington Post outlining the scope and methods of the Obama field program. Here's a taste:
  

  The Ohio campaign is attempting to build teams in 1,231 campaign-defined "neighborhoods," each covering eight to ten precincts. They are targeting virtually every inhabited square mile of the state. The campaign claimed to have teams in 65% of neighborhoods when I visited in early September. That's risen to 85% coverage at press time—and they are shooting for 100%. In contrast, the Kerry campaign effectively wrote off rural counties, and completely abandoned them in the final few weeks of the campaign in a last minute all-in shift to the cities.

  It was a huge risk for the national field program to have paid staff take the time to methodically build volunteer teams instead of rushing directly to spend all their time running voter contact activities themselves. From the point of view of the conventional wisdom of much of the pre-Obama field organizing world, the campaign is actually taking two big risks: first they are risking everything on the effectiveness of masses of volunteers, then they are risking everything again by relying on volunteer teams to lead those masses. What if teams was just a bunch of hippy nonsense? What if it turned out there just weren't that many unpaid activists capable of running high-quality canvasses?

• And one more item from the Obama campaign. Yesterday Sarah blogged about a video where kids talk to their parents about supporting Sen. Obama. Today, the campaign launched an entire micro-site backing up that video, The Talk. The site has tips on how to broach the subject, talking points on various issues, and good ideas on how to keep the conversation going and "win the news cycle" in your parents house, including emailing blog posts and news articles to fight any misinformation the 'rents are getting in their inbox or on Fox News.

Forward Montana reports from their protest outside GOP Rep Dennis Rehberg's office this morning:

MISSOULA, Mont. – Despite the rain, young Montana voters assembled in front of Congressman Dennis Rehberg's Missoula office this morning to rally against voter suppression tactics employed by the state Republican Party. Last week, the party's Executive Director, Jacob Eaton, filed 6,000 flimsy challenges to voters' registrations in historically Democratic, Native American, and young counties. Erik Iverson, the chair of the Montana Republican Party, also serves as Rehberg’s chief of staff.

“Iverson either needs to take credit for this pathetic assault on democracy or fire Eaton and apologize to voters statewide,” said Matt Singer, CEO of Forward Montana and one of the challenged voters.

Iverson has remained silent on the voter challenges promopting soaked protesters to carry signs saying “Where does the buck stop?” and “Eaton? Iverson? Who's in charge?”

“It's outrageous that our tax dollars are paying Erik Iverson's $160,000 salary while he attacks our constitutional right to vote," said Richelle DeVoe, a Missoula native and student at the University of Montana.

This is a pretty substance-heavy Quick Hits. Any one of the items here should merit a full blog post. There's just not enough time, damn it! Not enough time . . .

• CNN Money has an almost great segment on how the economic downturn may be driving young voters to the polls. My only quibble - in the final line the reporter claims that in the past "young people were eager to register, but not to vote." That's just not true. 80% of registered young voters actually cast a ballot on election day. Registration is the problem, not turnout. Or, as I've been saying - higher youth turnout is not about curing apathy but increasing access. (h/t Chris Kennedy of Rock the Vote)

• In the wake of GOP voter suppression efforts that have ensnared young people and veterans in Montana, Forward Montana has launched Montana Voter Suppression (.org), a website to track, report, and prevent voter suppression efforts in the state. Earlier today, the group also held a protest in front of the office of MT Rep Dennis Rehberg's office. Rehberg's chief of staff, Erik Iverson, is the Chair of Montana GOP, the group behind the voter challenges.
• Speaking of voter suppression, Nancy Scola and Allison Fine have a spectacular post over at Tech President detailing how Twitter could be used as an election protection tool.
• GQRR has a new poll out, this time of women. The results show that unmarried women, including many young women, are the key to Obama's success among that demographic. Unmarried women are supporting Obama 62 - 33%. So much for the "Palin Effect."

• In Kansas, Jim Slattery is embarking on a campus tour to drum up youth support for his Senate campaign. All down-ballot candidates should consider this if they want to ride the youth wave to its fullest. As much as we'd like to think they do, Obama's coattail don't necessarily extend all the way down the ballot.
• Veterans group IAVA issued it's congressional score card today, and John McCain earned a big fat D. The Disabled Veterans of American didn't score him much better, giving the Senator a 20% rating. So much for supporting the troops.

In yesterday's Quick Hits I posted a link to a story coming out of Montana this week, where the state Republican Party has challenged the registration of 6,000 Montanans in the Democratic strongholds of the state.

On Friday, the GOP apparently decided their initial suppression effort wasn't enough.

A state Republican Party official said Friday that the party plans to expand its challenge of registered Montana voters who have changed their addresses, beyond the 6,000 voters challenged in six counties this week.

"These counties are the beginning, not the end," said Jake Eaton, executive director for the party. "We're looking at this across the state."

While Eaton goes on to say that the Montana GOP merely targeted those counties with the most discrepancies (and that the fact that they're Democratic strongholds is a coincidence), we can't ignore the context in which this is happening. A Great Falls Tribune article does a good job of explaining:

According to news reports from across the country, courtroom battles over voter registration, absentee ballots and the integrity of state voter lists are happening in politically strategic states such as Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and New York.

In Ohio, the state GOP tried to overturn a new state law that allows same-day registration and voting. State and federal courts upheld the law last week.

In Michigan, the state GOP reportedly plans to challenge the registrations of people who lost their homes to foreclosure.

In Wisconsin, the Republican attorney general is suing the state agency that oversees elections, saying that federal law requires that the agency check the names of more than 240,000 voters against driver records. Election clerks there say it is impossible to perform those checks by Nov. 4.

The problem with the GOP's explanation is that we've seen too many like it over the past few decades to take it at face value. Every election year we get reports of calls and fliers that purposely confuse specific demographics by giving them incorrect information regarding when they can exercise their right to vote. We have local election chairs telling college students they can't vote in the county where their institution is located.

And there's a twist to this particular story out of Montana that demonstrates how un-American this crusade is. Kevin Furey, a 1st Lt. in the Army from Helena, was told that his right to vote was being challenged. Furey found out just before he was to leave for his second tour of duty in Iraq.

"It is ironic that at the same time I am about to return to Iraq to help build a democracy that my own right to vote is being challenged at home for partisan purposes. These challenges are a blatant and offensive attempt to suppress the rights of voters," Furey said in a telephone interview from Chicago, where he was on leave visiting his ailing grandmother.

It's quite apparent that as Election Day approaches and the future of the Republican Party gets bleaker, the voting rights of minorities, college students, the poor, and all other oppressed voters will be in jeopardy. Isn't it interesting how the first party to question patriotism is usually the first to want to undo the very fabric that holds our country together? While a sad turn of events, it's an opportunity for progressives and the Democratic Party to demonstrate their principles by pledging to fight for an inherently American right.

UPDATE: This post at CBS's Youth Vote '08 blog has more detailed information on how this development affects college students. Matt Segal further explains why this is, in fact, a partisan effort.

Matt Segal, CEO of the Student Association for Voter Empowerment, said he was told of the situation in Montana when he was at his Washington D.C. office earlier this week.

"This is clear voter caging," Segal said. "What we are seeing here is Republican Party taking advantage of a loophole. This is legal. But, I think as a society we need to be cognizant that few people barely stay in one place. Voter right could be challenged every time someone moves every election year. What is being done is legal but hardly nonpartisan."