Remark sets off election fervor
October 13, 2004
BY KATHLEEN GRAY
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
With a choice of words he now regrets, an Oakland County Republican legislator gave Democrats the opening they needed this summer to sound the alarm about perceived GOP efforts to challenge the votes of poor and minority voters.
State Rep. John Pappageorge's comments at a Republican county meeting in July -- "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election cycle" -- were first reported in the Free Press, but now have become a national symbol for Democrats. Since then, Pappageorge, R-Troy, has resigned as a chairman of Michigan Veterans for Bush-Cheney.
On Tuesday, former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, Democratic Party chairman Mark Brewer and television Judge Greg Mathis reminded reporters of Pappageorge's remark as they presented a plan to enlist an army of lawyers and volunteers at the polls on Election Day.
Coupled with the still-fresh memories of Florida's problems in the 2000 election when thousands of votes went uncounted, the group said it plans to make sure that minority voters, who overwhelmingly cast ballots for Democrats, aren't turned away from polling places Nov. 2.
"We have seen what happened when 4 to 6 million people are disenfranchised during the 2000 election," Archer said. "My advice to anyone who has any desire to suppress the vote of African Americans or Latinos: Don't do it."
The national spotlight is something that Pappageorge once may have coveted. He's a Vietnam War veteran and an experienced politician who worked his way from party activist to county commissioner to state representative. He also ran and lost in two congressional races against Democratic incumbent Sander Levin. But having his name appear in news reports, editorials and columns across the country for a statement that some view as racist is not the limelight he imagined.
"When it first happened, I said, 'Oh my goodness, I've been misunderstood,' " he said Tuesday. "The context of my comment was in changing voter preferences. It was not about preventing people from going to the polls."
The 73-year-old lawmaker said he went to every Detroit legislator in the state House of Representatives and apologized. And he immediately resigned from his position in the Bush-Cheney campaign.
That hasn't stopped Democrats from "playing the race card in a way that would help their candidate," Pappageorge said. "Moveon.org took it one step further and accused me of being some sort of national plot, and that's ridiculous."
He's received hundreds of phone calls and e-mails from friends and critics about the comment and says he now understands the explosive connotation of the word suppress. It's been banished from his vocabulary.
"Yes, this has been a big hurt," he said. "There was certainly no racist intent in my comment."
But Democrats are taking his comments -- and what they say is a concerted effort to deny the vote to thousands of likely Democrats -- seriously. They plan to have 60,000 lawyers nationwide, including 700 in Michigan, available Nov. 2 to help people who report problems at their polling places. An additional 1,400 volunteers will scatter across the state to make sure voters in minority neighborhoods don't encounter challenges to their right to vote.
They'll be joined by hundreds of Republican volunteers who will target Democratic-leaning precincts for any indication of fraud.
"Just as Democrats apparently believe that Republicans are engaged in voter intimidations, many in my party believe Democrats engineer voter fraud," GOP chairman Betsy DeVos said in a letter to Brewer in late August. "The Michigan Republican Party is not, and will not be, engaged in any effort to suppress or intimidate voters."
She suggested the two parties work together, ensuring that suspect precincts have poll watchers from each party. But Brewer declined the offer.
"We view the proposal as hypocritical. Their whole effort has been to intimidate voters and we're not going to help them with that," Brewer said Tuesday.
Republicans will be looking for people who are either not legally registered to vote or attempting to vote at more than one precinct, said Chris Paolino, spokesman for the state party. Recent reports about some paid voter registration solicitors turning in fraudulent paperwork fueled the GOP's concerns about mischief, he said.
"We don't have specific examples of that happening, but we do have concerns," he said.
The Michigan Department of Civil Rights also is embarking on a program to make sure voters know their rights.
The department will distribute 20,000 brochures to organizations and universities that explain the procedure to deal with local clerks who turn people away from the polls. Voters can call 866-687-8683 to get legal assistance on Election Day. State civil rights director Linda Parker also has been traveling throughout the state to educate people about how to register and vote.
"We want to make sure that people go to the polls on Nov. 2 and that they're treated with respect," she said.
The Michigan Democratic Party also is trying to make it easier to vote through a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Bay City against Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land and elections director Chris Thomas.
Under federal voting laws, provisional ballots must be offered to voters whose eligibility cannot be determined at their polling place, but may later be counted after election officials verify the voter's registration. The voter has six days to prove he or she was eligible to vote at that precinct.
But Democrats want to count votes of people who are legitimately registered even if they vote in the wrong precinct.
Contact KATHLEEN GRAY at 248-351-3298 or gray@freepress.com. |
