First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
- by Rev. Martin Niemöller, 1945


Columnist Bob Herbert has a rather eye-popping piece about Republicans in Detroit wanting to surpress certain sectors of the electorate:

After his startling quote was published several weeks ago in The Detroit Free Press, Mr. Pappageorge, who is 73, apologized and said he certainly never meant to suggest that anything racist or illegal take place. But he reiterated to me in a phone conversation last Friday that he did indeed mean that the vote in Detroit needed to be kept down.

A lot of other Republicans have similar views about the vote in areas with large African-American populations. Most blacks vote Democratic. If those votes can be suppressed, Republicans benefit. And there is increasing evidence that a big effort to suppress the vote among blacks and some other heavily Democratic voting groups is under way,

Herbert's concern is valid. Florida elections officials were forced to abandon use of a disputed list of people believed to be convicted felons to purge voter rolls, acknowledging a "flaw" that kept some Hispanic felons off the list and could have allowed them to vote. The list contained roughly 48,000 people and only 61 were classified as Hispanic. Hispanics in Florida tend to vote Republican. Blacks in Florida tend to vote Democratic. Florida has also not taken names off of the list for those who had received clemency, attempting to make those individuals reregister, but later backed off.

Writer and columnist Greg Palast has written extensively about the systematic attempts to disenfranchise the black vote.

People for the American Way recently released a new study about the many ways that black voters are disenfranchised in the US. From examples of voter intimidation to misinformation to outright suppression, PFAW outlines examples of how black, Hispanic and Native American votes aren't counted.

This issue doesn't just effect Democrats, however. While blacks have trended toward Democrats and liberals there are also Independent, Republican, conservative and centrist black voters as well. To work to systematically deny these Americans their right to vote is a travesty of the political system.