By GottaLaff
They needed to do something? [Follow the preceding link and this one for back stories on disenfranchisement] They're doing something:
Updated-- Responding to allegations that Republican Party officials in Macomb County, Michigan plan to use home foreclosure lists to challenge voters at the polls in November, the Obama Campaign and the Democratic National Committee filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in federal court to prevent what they contended was an illegal practice.
Obama Campaign General Counsel Bob Bauer said that using home foreclosure lists as a basis for challenging voter eligibility would have a “deadly effect of the voting process” and argued that the practice would be illegal. [...]
Last week the chairman of the G.O.P. in Macomb County, James Carabelli, was quoted in the Michigan Messenger newspaper as saying that the party planned to use foreclosure lists to stop voters who no longer have valid addresses from casting their ballots.
“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” Mr. Carabelli said, according to a Sept. 10 article in the Michigan Messenger.
Since the story first appeared, Mr. Carabelli has repeatedly denied that the party planned to use the lists, and in an interview with The New York Times suggested that he was misquoted. [...]
And in a statement on the Michigan G.O.P. Web site the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party Saul Anuzis called the story “a complete fabrication.”
“There has never been a plan to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters. There is no such plan, and there never will be such a plan. Period,” Mr. Anuzis said.
But the Obama campaign said the denials amounted to “backpedaling” on the part of the Michigan G.O.P., and said that they had enough evidence to go forward with the lawsuit.
“Our position is very simply, they can tell it to the judge,” Mr. Bauer said.
A copy the Obama campaign’s complaint, which was filed on Tuesday in United States District Court in Eastern Michigan, is available here.
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