Stop Voter Intimidation and Deception

Intimidating voters takes many forms, from videotaping or asking inappropriate questions of voters in a polling place, to placing heavily armed police outside poll sites and distributing threatening flyers announcing the penalties for voting fraud.  The intention is to make voting actually or apparently risky in order to keep people away from the polls.  Voter intimidation is illegal under federal law, and many state laws as well.  However, most laws are not clear on what constitutes intimidation and there is a need for clearly articulated standards at the state level to make sure that these laws cover all of the techniques used to threaten voters. 

• During the 2008 presidential primary in Georgia, voters reported a roadblock on the way to one poll site, and an armed election inspector from the Secretary of State's Office was posted at another poll location.
• In a 2003 Philadelphia mayoral race, hundreds of men with cars and clipboards that bore official-looking insignias were dispatched to polling places in predominantly African American neighborhoods.  In a poll conducted after the election, 7% of African American voters said they had encountered these men.
• In 2004, the Election Protection Hotline received over a thousand complaints of voter intimidation or suppression.  The hotline reports that police outside a Cook County, Illinois, polling place were requesting photo ID and telling voters that if they had been convicted of a felony they could not vote.

People for the American Way – The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America Today
Project Vote – Caging Democracy: A 50-Year History of Partisan Challenges to Minority Voters
Advancement Project – Report to State and Local Election Officials on the Urgent Need for Instructions for Partisan Poll Watchers
Center for Policy Alternatives – Voter Protection Act
National Network on State Election Reform – Deceptive Practices and Intimidation Factsheet