Soldiers Also Caught In GOP Voting List Purge

by Neelanjana Banerjee

(PNS) -- I know my uncle, a 22-year veteran of the U.S. Army currently fighting in Iraq, wants to vote. But because of Republican Party tactics this election year, he almost lost his chance.

The last e-mail I got from my Uncle Surjo read: "Dear Neela: I just got a little break from the war to e-mail you and let you know that I'm OK. I'll write again when I get back to my home base, now we are busy fighting insurgents. Next, I will go to either Sadr City or Fallujah."

Uncle Surjo is no typical South Asian man. Born in India, raised in Ohio and Oklahoma, he speaks in an accent tinged with his global upbringing: one-part soft Bengali consonants and two-parts all-American twang. During his tenure in the Armed Forces, he has served in Germany, Korea, Panama, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq he has been stationed in the Middle East.

Armed with a voracious appetite and a loud sense of humor, Uncle Surjo has always been one of my favorite family members. Now, as the number of soldiers killed in Iraq steadily increases past 1,000, I stare at his hastily typed messages on my computer screen and try to imagine him dodging mortar blasts and insurgents' bullets.

Beyond his cheerful ways, Uncle Surjo has always been an example to me of the hard-working backbone of people of color that supports the Armed Forces. Over the years he has often spoken to me of dealing with racism and the "Old Boy's Club" mentality of the service. Time and time again, sometimes to his own detriment, my uncle has stood up to injustices. For this reason, I know his vote in the upcoming election means the world to him. But it was nearly taken away by the GOP's over-zealous voter registration purges.

While the 2000 GOP purging of voter lists in Florida is now infamous, Republicans are now challenging thousands of voters across the country -- focusing, of course, on battleground states. On Oct. 22, the deadline for this move, the GOP challenged over 35,000 new voters in Ohio alone -- mostly on the grounds that mail sent to the voters' addresses had been returned. Uncle Surjo's name was on the list.

My uncle has been using my father's house in Centerville, Ohio, as his residence for as long as I can remember, a common thing for members of the Armed Service, who are often traveling from place to place. Since my father recently sold his house and moved into a new apartment, my uncle hasn't been able to fill out a change-of-address form and his mail has been getting returned. You know, he is a little busy.

According to the Dayton Daily News, my uncle sent the local board of elections a request for an absentee ballot in June, and they sent it to him last month. Luckily, the Ohio GOP ended up withdrawing all of the local challenges due to clerical errors. So when Uncle Surjo sends in his ballot, it will, presumably, be counted.

But what if there hadn't been errors? First of all, local elections officials have to hold hearings on each challenge. Can these overburdened offices hold hearings on thousands of challenges to make sure this important election runs smoothly? Those who have been challenged must receive a letter from election officials sent by first-class mail no later than three days before a hearing to answer the challenge. Challenged voters can bring witnesses and lawyers to the hearing. How exactly would my uncle -- now on his way to Falluja -- have managed that? How many other soldiers could have the same problem?

This goes beyond Ohio. GOP groups and individual activists have been challenging thousands of voters in Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and other swing states. According to the Washington Times, these challenges are partly due to the huge increase in voter registration this year. The Committee for the Study of the American Electorate recently reported that it is likely that voter participation, just 54 percent in 2000, will reach or exceed the 58 percent level of 1992.

Republicans, in turn, accuse the Democrats -- whose voter registration efforts have been slightly more successful -- of registering bogus names in order to boost their registration numbers and give the appearance of momentum. Democrats maintain that Republicans are challenging voters in order to create turmoil in the system -- hoping for another court-ordered victory like in 2000.

Though many of these challenges are happening at the local level, U.S. Attorney John Ashcroft was the mastermind behind an investigation into voter fraud in key states that may have been the impetus for the thousands of challenges in Ohio. Civil rights advocates and Democrats criticized Ashcroft for focusing his investigation on new voter registration in poor and minority communities.

I wonder what other tricks the Republicans have up their sleeves in these final days before the election. As my uncle deals with the increasingly volatile situation in Iraq, I am glad he was at least able to have his voice heard in this election. I think I know who he is going to vote for.