Voter Caging

Voter caging is a term that drew public attention after Monica Goodling, former White House liaison to the Department of Justice, referred to the practice when she testified before a May 2007 House Judiciary Committee hearing on the firings of eight US Attorneys. Although public interest in voter caging is relatively recent, the practice is not new. The mass challenges to voters in the 2004 election were the end result of voter caging operations. Republicans have engaged in voter caging on the national and state level since the late 1950’s. According to many election observers, voter caging is a controversial political tactic that typically targets minority voters to deny their right to vote or suppress their vote by intimidation. Republican officials, on the other hand, maintain that voter caging is part of what they describe as “ballot security” measures necessary to combat voter fraud.

What is “Voter Caging”?

Voter caging is a practice of sending mass direct mailings to registered voters by non-forwardable mail, then compiling lists of voters, called “caging lists,” from the returned mail in order to formally challenge their right to vote on that basis alone. Other methods, such as database matching, have been used more recently to compile voter caging lists. The practice is used almost exclusively by officials or members of the Republican Party, local and national.

How Can Voters be Challenged?

Voter caging is used in conjunction with state voter challenge laws, which permit private individuals to challenge the right of other citizens to vote. The process of issuing the challenges differs from state to state. Commonly, the process begins with a formal written challenge filed with local election boards by a certain date before the election. The challenger must have personal knowledge that the challenged voter is ineligible to vote in some jurisdictions, but that is unfortunately not the norm. Many more states permit challenges merely on the basis of the challenger’s “reasonable belief” that the voter is ineligible.

What’s Wrong with Caging and Voter Challenges?

Many of the state challenge laws have their roots in the post-Reconstruction Era and are descendants of the Jim Crow laws intended to deprive African Americans of their franchise. In the1890s, former Confederate states reacted to robust political participation by African American voters and candidates during Reconstruction by instituting what was known as the “Southern system.” The Southern system employed restrictive residency requirements, periodic registration, poll taxes, and literacy or “understanding” requirements, to suppress the African-American vote. Challenge laws were passed during this period to enable private poll watchers to issue challenges. The obvious flaw in permitting private citizens to challenge voters is that it opens the door to partisan interference in elections.

The rise of voter caging as a part of political campaigns coincides with “Southern Strategy” developed during the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater. The Southern Strategy marked a radical change in United States politics. Before the mid-1960’s southern Democrats were the group that was most actively involved in suppressing the African American vote. With the advance of the Civil Rights movement, Republican conservatives decided to pursue the votes of alienated white Southern Democrats instead of competing with the opposition for the growing African American vote. Republican ballot security programs originated in conjunction with the GOP’s Southern strategy, as noted in a comprehensive report on the subject by Professor Emeritus Chandler Davidson, and colleagues Tanya Dunlap, Gale Kenny, and Benjamin Wise at Rice University.

Although Republican officials in charge of voter caging operations assert that they do not target minority voters (many of which skew Democratic), the majority of voters challenged as a result of caging operations have overwhelmingly been minorities. Voter caging operations to date have focused on inner-urban areas with greater numbers of minority voters. Reports of challenges to voters in areas with a majority of Republican voters are not evident in contemporaneous accounts of mass challenges.

Another flaw inherent in partisan voter caging operations is the well-documented inaccuracy of mailing operations. Mail may be returned for many reasons, including errors in the database from which the mailing is derived, errors in the mailing labels, failure to include an apartment number or poor matching criteria. In some cases a voter may have rejected the mailing or been out of town. A single returned piece of mail is not a reliable basis for challenging the right to vote. King County, Washington is an example. Republican party officials sent out a mass mailing and challenged about 1,943 voters whose mail was returned. The database company they hired to match the voter registration rolls to addresses of businesses, however, neglected to include the name of the city in the match criteria. The result was that a significant number of the letters were sent to the wrong addresses.

Last, but certainly not least, the ballot security programs conducted by Republican entities are in response to alleged problems with voter fraud. Yet, no significant problems with voter fraud exist. Voter fraud, where it is found involves tactics such as the misdirection of absentee ballots, voter intimidation tactics at polling places, or vote buying. It is far from common and it is not the province of one party. More importantly, voter fraud in which an individual voter votes more than once, the type of fraud voter caging operations are designed to catch, are extremely rare. Cases in which a voter is registered in two different jurisdictions are more likely to be the result of failure to cancel an old registration than an intent to vote twice. Mass challenges coupled with media campaigns alleging widespread voter fraud may serve a political agenda, but they are of questionable value in ensuring election integrity.

How Has Voter Caging Been Used?

After an initial voter caging operation in Arizona in 1958, a nationwide voter caging campaign dubbed “Operation Eagle Eye” was conducted in 1964 by the RNC and state Republican parties in major metropolitan areas nationwide. Voter caging and other voter challenge operations continued in isolated states during the 1980s and early 1990 and re-emerged on the political scene as nationwide campaign strategy in 2004. In 2004, political operatives targeted more than half a million voters in voter caging campaigns in nine states. At least 77,000 voters had their eligibility challenged between 2004 and 2006.

Additional Documents:

Caging Democracy: A 50-Year History of Partisan Challenges to Minority Voters. Teresa James. September 2007.

Republican Ballot Security Programs: Vote Protection or Minority Voter Suppression-or Both? Chandler Davidson, Tanya Dunlap, Gale Kenny, and Benjamin Wise. September 2004.

The Role of Challengers in Elections. Project Vote. December 2006.

Litigation

Democratic National Committee v Republican National Committee. October 2004.

News Stories

GOP Says They'll Continue Voter Suppression Tactics. Steven Rosenfed. AlterNet. September 7, 2006.

Ohio, Florida laws could dampen Democratic voting. Greg Gordon. McClatchy Newspapers. September 26, 2007.

Ex-Justice official accused of aiding scheme to scratch minority voters. Greg Gordon. McClatchy Newspapers. June 24, 2007.

Voter Caging. NOW with David Brancaccio. July 27, 2007.

Raging Caging: What the heck is vote caging, and why should we care? Dahlia Lithwick. Slate. May 31, 2007.