ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society

This Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act of 2007, a bill which would prohibit lying to voters in order to discourage them from showing up at the polls.  According to the bill's findings, it was introduced in response to a history of such practices:

(6) Shortly before the 1990 midterm Federal elections, 125,000 voters in North Carolina received postcards providing false information about voter eligibility and a warning about criminal penalties for voter fraud. Ninety-seven percent of the voters who received postcards were African American.

(7) In 2004, Native American voters in South Dakota were prevented from voting after they did not provide photographic identification upon request, despite the fact that they were not required to present such identification in order to vote under State or Federal law.

(8) In the 2006 midterm election, 14,000 Latino voters in Orange County, California received mailings from the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, warning them in Spanish that `if you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that can result in incarceration...'. In fact, an immigrant who is a naturalized citizen of the United States has the same right to vote as any other citizen.

(9) In the same 2006 election, some Virginia voters received automated phone messages falsely warning them that the `Virginia Elections Commission' had determined they were ineligible to vote and that they would face severe criminal penalties if they tried to cast a ballot.

(10) In 2006 in Maryland, certain candidates for Governor and United States Senator distributed fliers in predominantly African-American neighborhoods falsely claiming that the candidates had been endorsed by their opponents' party and by prominent figures who had actually endorsed the opponents of the candidates.

The bill provides for both civil and criminal penalties against persons who make statements they know to be false to voters with the "intent to prevent another person from exercising the right to vote . . . ."  It also allows for injunctive relief against people distributing disinformation to voters.