“As soon as we see the complaint, we will issue a response on Michigan Messenger,” said CIM editorial director Jefferson Morley. CIM sponsors the Minnesota Independent, the Michigan Messenger and online news sites in three other states and Washington, D.C.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.)

On Friday the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee called on U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to launch a full-scale investigation into reports — first published here — that Michigan Republicans plan to use home foreclosure lists to challenge voters on Election Day. The committee also scheduled a hearing on the matter for Wednesday.

In a letter to Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, released simultaneously, Democratic Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Detroit, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, asked McCain to denounce any efforts by the Republican Party to engage in voter suppression, including challenges based on a voter’s home foreclosure status. Conyers requested that McCain direct his supporters to refrain from using that tactic.

“At a time when Americans are losing their homes at record numbers, it is difficult to imagine that anyone would attempt to capitalize on such misfortune for political gain,” Conyers wrote. “Furthermore, a rejection of this strategy would be consistent with your recent commitment to a “fair and transparent election.”

Last week the McCain campaign announced that it had formed an Honest and Open Election Committee,“with a mission to ensure that every qualified citizen has the opportunity to vote in a fair and transparent manner.” In a press release that did not include contact information, the McCain campaign Web site announced on Sept. 15, “The committee will work with state and local election officials to anticipate, and where possible resolve in advance, problems likely to arise on Election Day.”

Calls by Michigan Messenger to the McCain campaign/Honest and Open Election Committee were not returned.

Republicans have denied that they will use foreclosure lists to challenge voters and that they have ever violated campaign law though Eric Doster, attorney for the Michigan GOP did acknowledge the use of challenge lists based on returned mail. Democrats have filed suit in federal court, asking for an injunction against challenges based on foreclosure, charging that such challenges could lead to many harms including long lines at the polls.

In his letter to McCain, Conyers noted that when Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006, Democrats and Republicans agreed that discriminatory voter suppression tactics had not been completely eradicated and that protections against such tactics were still necessary.

Plans by the Macomb County Republican Party to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters should be investigated as a possible violation of the Voting Rights Act, the Judiciary Committee told Mukasey, because this practice would disproportionately affect African-Americans, who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters.

As a result of the subprime mortgage crisis, an estimated 2.5 million homes will face foreclosure this year, Conyers wrote, and the committee cited a report by the Center for Responsible Lending, which found that African-American borrowers will experience foreclosure at more than twice the rate of white borrowers.

“Certainly there can be no denying the kind of negative impact that challenges based on home foreclosure status can have on historically disenfranchised voting populations who have traditionally been targeted by predatory practices,” Conyers wrote. “A person’s ability to exercise his or her right to vote should not be contingent on financial circumstances.”

Conyers and the committee called on authorities to recall the history of GOP vote suppression:

Notably, in 1981 a federal court condemned the Republican National Committee (RNC) for using vote caging tactics similar to the foreclosure list plan. Since the federal court’s decision in 1981 in New Jersey, the RNC has been under a federal consent decree to refrain from engaging in this practice. It is important to note that the Department, under President George H.W. Bush filed suit in 1990 to stop a vote caging effort by those associated with Senator Jesse Helms’ re-election campaign.

Conyers asked McCain and Mukasey to respond to the concerns about vote suppression.

On Wednesday the committee will hold a hearing on federal and state preparations for the November election. Jonathan Godfrey, spokesman for Conyers’ office, told Michigan Messenger that members of the Department of Justice’s Voting Rights Division are expected to attend.

The controversy arose after a story on Michigan Messenger last week in which the Macomb County Republican Chair James Carabelli indicated that foreclosure lists will be used to challenge voters. The Republican Party of Michigan has since denied the story.

The letter begins by stating the following:

“We are extremely concerned about recent allegations regarding plans to challenge voters on Election Day based on lists of homeowners facing foreclosure. If officials in any jurisdiction plan or attempt such a tactic, it must be prevented.”

The letter asks Mukasey to answer two specific questions, in order “to [ensure] that homeowners with missed mortgage payments do not also miss the chance to exercise this precious right”:

1. What steps, if any, will you take to ensure that eligible voters are not intimidated or harassed at the polls because they are facing foreclosure?
2. Will you train federal election monitors to ensure that voters are not intimidated or harassed based solely on the fact that they have received a foreclosure notice, and to stop such tactics should they occur?

The letter was signed by both of Michigan’s senators, Carl Levin, D-Detroit, and Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing. Neither Levin nor Stabenow returned e-mails for comment in time for publication.

“In the middle of the worst economy in recent memory, with so many Americans fighting to stay in their homes, these allegations suggest a mean-spirited and desperate attempt to suppress the vote,” said Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a former Rhode Island U.S. attorney and attorney general. Whitehouse is also the author and sponsor of legislation to combat voter caging, an activity designed to identify voters for challenge at the polls.

Cover: "How to Rig an Election" by Allen Raymond

Last week we reported about Republican plans to use home foreclosure lists to block voters from the polls after James Carabelli, chair of the Macomb County Republican Party, told Michigan Messenger that on election day Republican volunteers will “have a list of foreclosed homes and make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses.”

Republican leaders have since disavowed plans to use foreclosure lists as part of their plan to challenge the eligibility of some voters, but an attorney for the party, Eric Doster, did confirm that the party would use returned mail to challenge voters based on residency. As veteran Republican activist Allen Raymond told Michigan Messenger in a recent interview, holding down Democratic turnout is a key part of Republican strategy for victory in November.

Raymond knows about Republican campaign tactics. For almost a decade he managed campaigns for Republicans running for state and national office. In the 2002 New Hampshire elections, he ran a phone-jamming operation aimed at blocking elderly people from arranging rides to the polls, an illegal action that he says was approved by the highest levels of the party. He spent three months in federal prison. Earlier this year, Raymond published a book about his life and work as a Republican operative, titled “Confessions of a Republican Operative: How to Rig an Election.”

As for our report that the Michigan GOP planned to use foreclosure lists to block likely Democratic voters, Raymond said: “It’s a very good tactic. It works.

“It is actually a very smart thing to do,” he went on, “particularly in this climate with so many foreclosures.”

For Republicans, he said, targeting the foreclosures would be a cost-effective and “probably” legal method of reducing Democratic votes.

If he were still in the election business, he said, “I’d be doing that all day long.”

Raymond explained how he would use foreclosure lists.

“You would go into certain geo-political areas and make a selection based on voter history and performance, and then what you would do is look for foreclosures within those geopolitical areas, and you would mail letters, and then those letters would come back and say that that person’s not there any more because their house has been foreclosed on, and they get challenged,” he said.

He explained why it makes sense for Republicans to seek to disqualify people who have lost their homes.

“If you look at who is being foreclosed upon, it is going to be sub-prime [borrowers]. Sub-prime [borrowers] are generally going to be low-income people, and low-income people are generally going to be Democratic voters.

“You got to remember this is a cost-per-contact business,” he explained. By targeting households in foreclosure, for the price of a letter and first-class postage, Republicans get a high rate of return, because people in foreclosure are very likely to move and to have their mail returned.

Raymond estimated that people might have moved out of as many as a third of homes listed as foreclosed. “That is a huge number,” he said, noting that people enduring the stress of foreclosure are not likely to think to change the address of their voter registration.

Raymond said that, barring some legislative action, Republicans will be free to challenge voters who’ve lost their homes.

“They will get challenged and they will get denied,” he said.

Raymond admitted the practice is not fair to people facing foreclosure.

“You can call them a victim or a bad business person in terms of their personal finances,” he said. “Whatever you call them, they still should have the right to vote.”

On Friday, the McCain campaign refused to meet with members of the Jobs with Justice campaign and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which came to deliver a letter opposing using foreclosure lists to challenge voters.

The McCain/Palin Great Lakes campaign headquarters is located in Farmington Hills in the Trott Financial Center. The law firm Trott & Trott specializes in representing banks in foreclosures. The office building is also home to Trott & Trott’s subsidiary American Processing Company, LLC, which uses proprietary software to provide mortgage default processing services nationwide.