Foreclosures and the Right to Vote

The foreclosure crisis could do considerable damage to the nation’s voting system. More than a million people have lost their homes in the past two years. And because voter registration is based on people’s residences, they could face politically motivated challenges at the polls.

The problem may be especially acute in the presidential battleground states. In Ohio, more than 5 percent of home mortgages are seriously delinquent or in the foreclosure process, and there were more than 67,000 foreclosure actions in the first half of 2008. Michigan and Florida have also been hard hit.

There are a large number of advocacy groups and other programs that work to ensure that minorities, the disabled and students are able to cast ballots. Because the foreclosure crisis is so recent, not much work has been done to ensure that people who lose their homes do not also lose their chance to vote.

Many of the hardest-hit neighborhoods are low- income and minority areas, which tend to vote Democratic. That means officials have to be extra vigilant to ensure that Republicans do not use foreclosure lists to challenge voters. There was a dust-up recently in Michigan, after a progressive Web site quoted the Republican chairman of Macomb County as saying that his party planned to do just that. He and the party insist there are no such plans, but the Barack Obama campaign has filed suit to block foreclosure-based challenges. - nytimes