Question: What is Voter Caging?
Answer: The sale of mailing lists to direct mail marketers is a fairly lucrative business, but outdated mailing lists are hardly worth the price. So from time to time, advertisers will send out a flyer and record the addresses associated with any flyers returned as undeliverable, then purge those addresses from the mailing list. This practice is called caging. The purchasers of the mailing list may then rest comfortably in the knowledge that anything they send to the listed addresses, whether it reaches the original intended recipient or not, will at least not be returned as undeliverable.
Since 1981, the Republican Party has used caging to identify potentially "fraudulent" voters--sending out flyers to registered voters in contested states in search of undeliverable addresses, then used the returned mail as grounds to challenge the legality of votes.
Historically, the GOP has used this practice to target African-American voters. To cite one Washington Post report, for example:[blockquote shade=on]In 1981, the Republican National Committee sent letters to predominantly black neighborhoods in New Jersey, and when 45,000 letters were returned as undeliverable, the committee compiled a challenge list to remove those voters from the rolls. The RNC sent off-duty law enforcement officials to the polls and hung posters in heavily black neighborhoods warning that violating election laws is a crime.Even when the tactic isn't specifically used to target minority precincts, it still has the net effect of suppressing low-income and minority voter turnout. High-income voters, who tend to vote Republican, have addresses that are likely to change hands from one recipient to another fairly quickly and to fill out address forwarding forms, which means that mail sent to those addresses--whether it reaches the intended recipient or not--doesn't get returned as undeliverable. Meanwhile, low-income voters, who tend to vote Democratic, have addresses that are less likely to change hands quickly, and they are less likely to fill out address forwarding forms when they move. This means that mail sent to those addresses is more likely to be returned as undeliverable. This is why the outcome of voter caging always tends to produce discriminatory results even if it is technically done in a "neutral" way.
Since 1981, the Republican Party has used caging to identify potentially "fraudulent" voters--sending out flyers to registered voters in contested states in search of undeliverable addresses, then used the returned mail as grounds to challenge the legality of votes.
Historically, the GOP has used this practice to target African-American voters. To cite one Washington Post report, for example:[blockquote shade=on]In 1981, the Republican National Committee sent letters to predominantly black neighborhoods in New Jersey, and when 45,000 letters were returned as undeliverable, the committee compiled a challenge list to remove those voters from the rolls. The RNC sent off-duty law enforcement officials to the polls and hung posters in heavily black neighborhoods warning that violating election laws is a crime.Even when the tactic isn't specifically used to target minority precincts, it still has the net effect of suppressing low-income and minority voter turnout. High-income voters, who tend to vote Republican, have addresses that are likely to change hands from one recipient to another fairly quickly and to fill out address forwarding forms, which means that mail sent to those addresses--whether it reaches the intended recipient or not--doesn't get returned as undeliverable. Meanwhile, low-income voters, who tend to vote Democratic, have addresses that are less likely to change hands quickly, and they are less likely to fill out address forwarding forms when they move. This means that mail sent to those addresses is more likely to be returned as undeliverable. This is why the outcome of voter caging always tends to produce discriminatory results even if it is technically done in a "neutral" way.
