STORY OF THE WEEK: The GOP’s Stealth War Against Voters - Will an anti-voter-fraud program designed by one of Trump’s advisers deny tens of thousands their right to vote in November [editors note: more likely 1 to 7.2 million, 85% of who will be people of color]. Plus 14 links with Crosscheck background information.

8-24-2015 - Rolling Stone - by Greg Palast - The GOP’s Stealth War Against Voters

Will an anti-voter-fraud program designed by one of Trump’s advisers deny tens of thousands their right to vote in November [editors note: more likely 1 to 7.2 million, 85% of who will be people of color]. ? The latest tool: Election officials in more than two dozen states have compiled lists of citizens whom they allege could be registered in more than one state – thus potentially able to cast multiple ballots – and eligible to be purged from the voter rolls.

Rolling Stone had Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include eBay and American Express, look at the data from Georgia and Virginia, and he was shocked by Crosscheck's "childish methodology." He added, "God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states."

Swedlund's statistical analysis found that African-American, Latino and Asian names predominate, a simple result of the Crosscheck matching process, which spews out little more than a bunch of common names. No surprise: The U.S. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of 100 of the most common last names. If your name is Washington, there's an 89 percent chance you're African-American. If your last name is Hernandez, there's a 94 percent chance you're Hispanic. If your name is Kim, there's a 95 percent chance you're Asian.

9-2-2016 - Verified Voting - National: Controversial anti-voter fraud program risks disenfranchising voters through racial bias, report finds | Facing South - The Voting News - Back in 2005, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — who as chair of his state’s Republican Party championed an illegal voter suppression technique called “caging” — launched a program called Interstate Crosscheck to compare voter registration data across states and ferret out evidence of double voting. The program has since expanded to 30 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), but it’s been controversial from the start. For one thing, it’s resulted in very few actual cases of fraud being referred for prosecution, as alleged cases of double voting in multiple states turned out to be clerical and other errors. One tally found that while the program has flagged 7.2 million possible double registrants, no more than four have actually been charged with deliberate double registration or double voting. Meanwhile, some states including Florida dropped out of the program due to doubts about the reliability of its data — though others, including the swing state of North Carolina, joined despite those issues.

8-26-2016 - The Election Crime Wave Involving 7 Million Americans & The GOP Scam Behind The Hype - by Greg Palast with Dennis J Bernstein - If you believe the Republican hysteria machine, there’s an unprecedented election crime wave sweeping America involving a staggering 7.2 million suspected double voters. Thousands of these supposed criminals — who, if found guilty, have committed a felony punishable by 5-years in the slammer — have already lost their right to vote, with 41,000 people in Virginia alone being struck off voter roles. Statistical analysis of the evidence uncovered by investigative reporter Greg Palast shows that one million Americans may lose their vote by November. It also shows that a high proportion of these black, white, and brown voters have one thing in common: they tend to vote blue.

Resources on ERIC and CrossCheck

Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program

8-12-2015 - A 6 page Comparison of Eric and Crosscheck systems by the Advancement Project - with 42 references

Crosscheck - the shady crosscheck seems to no longer have a web site - nor does it seem to publish a list of it's 30+- member states.

VA Mischeff underway - 8-16-2016 - The Conservative Landmark Legal Foundation, on behalf of voters of the Commonwealth of Virginia, has requested the State Board of Elections ("Board" or "SBE") immediately implement the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program ("Crosscheck") at the local level. Implementing Crosscheck at the local level involves releasing to general registrars the names of voters in their respective jurisdictions who are registered in another state. This information will provide a critically important and effective tool for fulfilling the legal duty to ensure that oruy qualified voters are maintained on local voting lists.

CA Potential Crosscheck Mischief underway - 2016 - AB 2433- This version requires Crosscheck yet A Second version does not - not clear which version is the active version or the hidden version.

Actions in 2014 against Crosscheck - AlJazeera - Voting-rights groups challenge electoral purges- [ editors note: after this story Crosscheck appears to have stopped their web site and have hidden most of what they are doing]. and Jim Crow returns - Millions of minority voters threatened by electoral purge

6-16-2016 - VOTER LIST ACCURACY - a pages on the conservative National Council of State Legislators site - with this bad link - The Interstate Crosscheck Program had 30 member states as of May 5, 2016. The stated purpose of the program is to identify possible duplicate registrations among states.

2014- The Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) endorses The Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program (hereinafter referred to as "Crosscheck") as a valuable tool for shoring up the integrity of states' voter rolls.

KS Rock Star

8-26-2016 - The Contributor - If Conservative Voter Suppression Had a Rock Star, It'd Be This Guy - Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is a right-wing activist who has championed anti-immigrant and voter suppression effortsaround the country and has helped to insert right-wing rhetoric into recent Republican platforms. As Miranda reported this month, Kobach is pushing his fellow Republicans to adopt legislation modeled after the disastrously restrictive voting law he helped push through in Kansas. The September 8 issue of Rolling Stone looks at one of Kobach’s ventures in “The GOP’s Stealth War Against Voters.”

Eric

Eric -The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) [ editors note: maybe good guys] is a non-profit organization with the sole mission of assisting states to improve the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens. ERIC is governed and managed by states who choose to join, and was formed in 2012 with assistance from The Pew Charitable Trusts. View the ERIC Bylaws and Membership Agreement The seven states that pioneered the formation of ERIC in 2012 are: Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, Utah, Virginia, and Washington. Washington D.C., Oregon, Connecticut, Louisiana, and Minnesota joined in 2014, Alabama, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island in 2015, and Alaska, Ohio, New Mexico, West Virginia and Wisconsin in 2016.

Action Item:

A PETITION TO Attorney General, Loretta E. Lynch to RELEASE THE NAMES OF VOTERS ON THE “INTERSTATE CROSSCHECK” PURGE LIST - In his new Rolling Stone investigation Greg Palast has revealed that a program to prevent alleged voter fraud, “Interstate Crosscheck,” has wrongly tagged voters listing them as registering in two states or voting in two states, a felony crime. The suspect list of potential criminals contains an astonishing SEVEN MILLION NAMES—naming ONE IN SEVEN voters of color in the Crosscheck states. Experts have stated the Crosscheck system, directed for 30 states by the highly partisan Secretary of State of Kansas, is “dangerously biased against minorities.” As the great civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery said of Crosscheck, “This is Jim Crow all over again.” from Hon. Alcee Hastings, US Congressman and Santiago Juárez, Voting Rights Attorney