Subject: Re: [EL] Latinos for Voter Suppression of Other Latinos?
From: Lori Minnite
Date: 10/19/2010, 10:57 PM
To: "election-law@mailman.lls.edu" <election-law@mailman.lls.edu>

What's interesting to me about the ad is the boldness in the voter suppression effort behind it, and the normalizing (airing an ad on TV) of old-fashioned dirty tricks that candidates, parties and campaigns used to execute in secret.  As Chandler Davidson has shown, sometimes these efforts backfire, and Jeff Patch is right to be indignant at the presumption that Latino voters are so gullible they will fall for this scam.  But Jeff may not understand how this works - close races increase the incentives to candidates, parties and campaigns to engage in voter suppression, as I argue (with my co-authors Frances Fox Piven and Margaret Groarke) in Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters (The New Press, 2009).  The closer the race, the smaller the number of votes needed to be suppressed, so sloppy suppression schemes that don't suppress most votes are fine as long as they suppress just enough.

Lori Minnite

On 10/19/2010 7:26 PM, David Epstein wrote:

I am listening to a story on this on TV right now. It seems that "Latinos for Reform" is actually a Republican group, which makes their call for Latinos to not vote a bit less astounding.

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 9:25 PM, Jeff Patch <jpatch@campaignfreedom.org> wrote:

Rick refers to the message of the rejected Latinos for Reform ad, which urges Hispanics to stay home in November in protest of the Democrats’ lack of action on immigration reform, as “astounding.”

 

My interpretation of his comments is that he perceives this proposed ad campaign as “astounding” in a decidedly negative way, akin to vote suppression by passing out flyers in an African American neighborhood with the wrong Election Day listed. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I got that impression from the link he selected, which referred to the ad as an effort to “suppress the vote of various racial minorities.” Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid has also referred to the ad as “an example of “Hispanic voter suppression.” A Las Vegas-based Hispanic group claimed that “[t]hey are trying to take away our privileged right to vote through scare tactics and fear mongering.”

 

Univision, a private business, has every right to decline to air the ad, despite its dominant position in reaching Hispanic audience. A few points/questions, though:

 

(1) The group is run by prominent Hispanic conservatives who have been involved in immigration reform for years. It’s pretty hard to see some sort of a racist motive here, no?

 

(2) The premise of this ad as a voter suppression tool seems—like most efforts to characterize independent ads as somehow corrupting or nefarious—to be that Latino voters are so gullible that they can be lured by the ad’s Siren call into not voting.

 

There’s certainly no intent on the part of the ad’s critics to imply that Latinos cannot decide for themselves how to vote, but the suggestion that the ad is reprehensible implies that people are too dim to decide political matters on their own when faced with controversial—or even misleading—advertising. That strikes me as pretty condescending toward the democratic process.

 

(3) Removing a potential racial motive, this tactic  seems perfectly legitimate. I’m a libertarian. In 2008 I did not vote, partly because of an absentee ballot snafu. But I ended up not remedying the mix-up because I was frustrated with McCain’s general election campaign even after spending three months volunteering for the primary campaign in various states. As a rational person, I’m aware my vote didn’t matter, but I don’t understand why it’s illegitimate for a group to urge people to not vote if a political party or candidate fails to act on their issues.

 

Perhaps this ad would have been less controversial if it urged Hispanics to write-in someone or vote third party, but that’s a bit more of a complicated message. But, I’m wondering if Rick would feel the same way if, in 2012, NORML ran ads in California asking marijuana users not to vote because no Democrats supported Prop. 19—or is there something specifically objectionable about an ad targeting a certain ethnic constituency of voters?

 

Jeff Patch

 

From: election-law-bounces@mailman.lls.edu [mailto:election-law-bounces@mailman.lls.edu] On Behalf Of Rick Hasen
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 12:11 AM
To: Election Law
Subject: [EL] Electionlawblog news and commentary 10/19/10

October 18, 2010

"Don't Vote This November"

That's the astounding message of an ad from "Latinos for Reform." Here's an NPR story on the group from 2008. Here's the group's press release about the new ad. The most recent filing of this 527 organization is not illuminating. Here's some 2008 financial information.

Posted by Rick Hasen at 09:01 PM 

 

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