Since moving to Toronto from Michigan four years ago, I have tried to put the state out of my mind. Every once in a while, though, a morsel so juicy comes along that I have to go back and revisit my old home.
This is one such morsel.
Macomb County, one of the predominantly white counties that make up the suburbs of Detroit (and not too far from where I grew up) is one of the top three counties in the United States for home foreclosures from the sub-prime mortgage fiasco. Of these foreclosures, a disproportionate amount affect its black residents. Macomb County is also, if the pundits are to be believed, one of the “swing” counties in Michigan, itself a “swing” state in this election. Though I always knew Macomb County as the home of the City of Sterling Heights (or as I used to call it, Sterile White), and a largely conservative area, the black residents of Macomb tend to vote solidly Democratic, as do most black residents in the Metro Detroit area. These could be the voters who send Barack Obama to victory.
When I heard that the Grand Old Party had plans to put election challengers at polling places in Macomb to contest the residency of all people on the “foreclosed list,” the only thought I could think was: Jim Crow ain’t dead. He was only sleeping.
In a campaign dominated by thinly veiled racism and Islamophobia, the GOP’s decision to challenge these voters shows that the modern party of Lincoln is concerned only with perpetuating its own power. It has forsaken the country and what little remains of its democratic spirit.
In Michigan, each party has the legal right to place representatives at polling places to challenge individual voters’ rights to cast a ballot at that station. If someone is found ineligible, they are effectively barred from voting, since there is no same-day registration. In this case, it is quite clear that GOP is targeting those on the “foreclosed list”: the predominantly black Democratic voters of Macomb County. Never mind that these voters might still be living in their houses, in the process of refinancing, or living in the same district. This about victory at any cost.
The day after this story broke, the Michigan GOP announced that they had reconsidered, and will not make challenges based on the “foreclosure list.” They will engage in a practise known as “vote caging” instead, where the party sends a piece of mail marked “Do Not Forward” to an address. If the mail is bounced back, they make the challenge, and likely cost someone their vote.
This tells us a great deal about the state of electoral politics in the U.S. In a country where less than half the population votes, and where the last two presidential elections have been stolen in plain sight, politics have become synonymous with the pursuit of power for its own sake. Americans have been lulled into a stupor, made into consumers instead of citizens—and that the future of the country lies in the hands of amoral men.
Forget the wall along the Mexican border. As far as I’m concerned, build a wall along the U.S. and Canadian border, and hope the fallout isn’t too bad when the shit hits the fan.
