Indiana Officials Target A Black Voter Registration Drive On A Technicality
The Indiana secretary of state claimed a voter registration group had forged applications — but there’s no clear evidence that happened.
10/22/2016 03:59 pm ET
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson (R) sent a letter to state election officials warning that “nefarious actors are operating” in the Hoosier state.
WASHINGTON ― Earlier this month, just ahead of Indiana’s voter registration deadline, state police executed a search warrant at the office of an organization that had set out to register black voters in a state with the worst voter turnout in the country.
Officers conducted their search on the Indiana Voter Registration Project’s headquarters just a few weeks after Republican Secretary of State Connie Lawson sent a letter to state election officials warning that “nefarious actors are operating” in the Hoosier state and asking them to inform authorities if they received any voter registration forms from the group.
The letter from Lawson ― who, when she was a state legislator, co-sponsoredIndiana’s controversial voter ID law ― amounted to “the voter suppression equivalent of an Amber alert,” said Craig Varoga, the president of Patriot Majority USA, a liberal nonprofit group that ran the Indiana Voter Registration Project.
The publicity surrounding the actions taken by Lawson and Indiana’s state police have cast a shadow over the nonprofits, with many stories accusing them of voter fraud.
Varoga said the Oct. 4 police action prevented the group from registering 5,000 to 10,000 additional voters ahead of Indiana’s Oct. 11 voter registration deadline. He’s worried that clerks won’t count some of the 45,000 applications the group had already collected.
State Democrats condemned Lawson’s earlier language as “inflammatory” since she claimed thousands of fraudulent applications had been found but did not release an exact number. But Varoga thinks that comments from other Republicans in an IndyStar story caused her to soften her language.
“The only reason she would walk it back is because members of her own party must have told her she was being reckless,” he said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...tigation_us_580a6cafe4b000d0b156a21a?section=
The Indiana secretary of state claimed a voter registration group had forged applications — but there’s no clear evidence that happened.
10/22/2016 03:59 pm ET
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson (R) sent a letter to state election officials warning that “nefarious actors are operating” in the Hoosier state.
WASHINGTON ― Earlier this month, just ahead of Indiana’s voter registration deadline, state police executed a search warrant at the office of an organization that had set out to register black voters in a state with the worst voter turnout in the country.
Officers conducted their search on the Indiana Voter Registration Project’s headquarters just a few weeks after Republican Secretary of State Connie Lawson sent a letter to state election officials warning that “nefarious actors are operating” in the Hoosier state and asking them to inform authorities if they received any voter registration forms from the group.
The letter from Lawson ― who, when she was a state legislator, co-sponsoredIndiana’s controversial voter ID law ― amounted to “the voter suppression equivalent of an Amber alert,” said Craig Varoga, the president of Patriot Majority USA, a liberal nonprofit group that ran the Indiana Voter Registration Project.
The publicity surrounding the actions taken by Lawson and Indiana’s state police have cast a shadow over the nonprofits, with many stories accusing them of voter fraud.
Varoga said the Oct. 4 police action prevented the group from registering 5,000 to 10,000 additional voters ahead of Indiana’s Oct. 11 voter registration deadline. He’s worried that clerks won’t count some of the 45,000 applications the group had already collected.
State Democrats condemned Lawson’s earlier language as “inflammatory” since she claimed thousands of fraudulent applications had been found but did not release an exact number. But Varoga thinks that comments from other Republicans in an IndyStar story caused her to soften her language.
“The only reason she would walk it back is because members of her own party must have told her she was being reckless,” he said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...tigation_us_580a6cafe4b000d0b156a21a?section=