Caging list

Caging is a term of art in the direct mail industry, as well as a term applied to a technique of voter suppression. A caging list is a list or database of addresses, updated after a mailing program is completed, with notations on responses received from recipients, with corrections for addresses that mail has been returned undelivered from, or forwarded onward from.

Direct mail

In third-party direct mail fundraising, on behalf of the organization conducting a solicitation, a caging agent receives contributions, processes donor mail, and "deposits all contributions to the client's account," according to Eberle Associates, a United States direct mail and political fundraising firm.] The Association of Fundraising Professionals similarly defines caging as "the process or act of collecting donations by an entity other than the not-for-profit organization for which they were solicited."] Often the processing of responses to direct mail is conducted by a third party hired to conduct a number of individual services, which may include processing payments, compiling product orders, correcting recipient addresses, processing returned mail, providing lockbox services and depositing funds received into the hiring organization's bank account, and all of the associated data entry for each of these services. Caging is a short-hand term for all of these services bundled together. cite web|url=http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/caging/ |title=Caging definition from Double Tongued Dictionary |accessdate=2007-06-06 |date=2004-11-03 |work=Double Tongued Dictinary |publisher=Double Tongued Word Wreste ] The term may be a derivative of the financial teller cage, since a number of operations related to lockbox services involve the control and protection of funds.]

The personal information gathered about respondents may be more valuable than the donations received, or purchases made by the receipients. [http://www.malwarwick.com/learning-resources/articles/10-most-important-things-about-dm.html Mal Warwick Associates] explains that "caging" allows an organization to process "information that can be gleaned" from contributions that result from a direct mail campaign. In addition, "information from the caging process is often massaged and manipulated six ways from Sunday, all in hopes of finding a productive new mailing list, marginally improving a letter's results, or cutting its cost by a few pennies."

[http://directmag.com/disciplines/directmail/marketing_futures_mail/ Direct Magazine] adds that caging is also called "secure response management." The quality of response data -- and how those data might be used in future campaigns -- is directly proportional to pre-mail planning, which includes labor-saving devices like matched barcodes and other methods for "all digital workflow."

Voter suppression in the United States of America

According to an article by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate.com, caging has been used by members of the Republican Party of the USA as a form of voter suppression.] The use of direct mail caging techniques to target voters resulted in the application of the name to the political tactic. With one type of caging, a political party sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable - because, for example, the voter refuses to sign for it, the voter isn't present for delivery, or the voter is homeless - the party uses that fact to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the address, the registration is fraudulent.] A political party challenges the validity of a voter's registration; for the voter's ballot to be counted, the voter must prove that their registration is valid.

Voters targeted by caging are often the most vulnerable: soldiers deployed overseas, those who are unfamiliar with their rights under the law, and those who cannot spare the time, effort, and expense of proving that their registration is valid.cite episode
title=Voter Caging & Housing Works
episodelink=http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/index.html
series=NOW
serieslink=http://www.pbs.org/now/index.html
airdate=2007-07-27
number=330] On the day of the election, when the voter arrives at the poll and requests a ballot, an operative of the party challenges the validity of their registration. Ultimately, caging works by dissuading a voter from casting a ballot, or by ensuring that they cast a provisional ballot, which is less likely to be counted. Citation
publication-date = 2005-04-10
date = 2005-04-10
year = 2005
title = Solution or Problem? Provisional Ballots in 2004
url = http://electionline.org/Portals/1/Publications/ERIP10Apr05.pdf
accessdate = 2007-08-13] Fact|date=July 2007

While the challenge process is prescribed by law, the use of broad, partisan challenges is controversial. For example, in the United States Presidential Election of 2004, the Republican Party employed this process to challenge the validity of tens of thousands of voter registrations in contested states like Florida, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The Republican Party argued that the challenges were necessary to combat widespread voter fraud. The Democratic Party countered that the challenges were tantamount to voter suppression, and further argued that the Republican Party had targeted voter registrations on the basis of the race of the voter, in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act law.]

Monica Goodling cited the existence and concern about "vote caging" in her written and oral testimony to the United States House Judiciary Committee on May 23, 2007, mentioning that Tim Griffin, who was appointed as interim United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, would have allegations of vote caging arise if ever presented to be confirmed by the Senate to the office, and that the Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty "failed to disclose that he had some knowledge of allegations that Tim Griffin had been involved in vote-caging during his work on the president's 2004 campaign." ] [ [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/transcripts/goodling_testimony_052307.html Transcript of House Judiciary Committee, May 23, 2007] Congressional Quarterly Transcript Service, via "Washington Post," May 24, 2007.] cite news | first=Michael | last=Scherer | coauthors= | title=Goodling's McNulty-bashing | date=2007-05-23 | publisher=Salon.com | url =http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2007/05/23/goodling2/index.html | work =Salon | pages = | accessdate = 2007-05-25 | language =
(Goodling cites Deputy Attorney General McNulty's previous testimony to Congressional committee as being "incomplete or inaccurate"]

Examples of proven or alleged political caging

From the [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7422-2004Oct28.html Washington Post] : "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." Republicans however, denied that black voters were the target. An attorney for the RNC, Bobby Burchfield, stated that "troubling reports" of fictitious names such as Mary Poppins were appearing on Ohio's rolls and that is what prompted the challenges.

The Washington Post [ [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7422-2004Oct28.html continues] ] : "In 1986, the RNC tried to have 31,000 voters, most of them black, removed from the rolls in Louisiana when a party mailer was returned. The consent decrees that resulted prohibited the party from engaging in anti-fraud initiatives that target minorities or conduct mail campaigns to 'compile voter challenge lists.'" The Republican National Committee reportedly stopped the practice following the consent decree in the 1986 case, but allegations of RNC-conducted voter caging arose once again in the 2004 elections.

In October 2004, the BBC "Newsnight" program reported on an alleged George W. Bush campaign caging list, the existence of which suggested that the campaign might have been planning illegal disruption of African American voting in Jacksonville, Florida. The BBC obtained a document from George W. Bush's Florida campaign headquarters that was inadvertently e-mailed to the parody website GeorgeWBush.org. The program reported that the e-mail attachment contained a list of 1,886 voter names and addresses in largely African-American and Democratic areas of Jacksonville. Democratic Party officials and a number of journalists allege that the document is a caging list that the Bush campaign was going to use to issue mass challenges to African-American voters, in violation of the court ordered 1982 and 1987 consent decrees. Although Florida statutory law allows the parties to challenge voters at the polls, this practice is not allowed if the challenges appear to be race-based. Court documents produced during limited discovery in a challenge to use of cagings list in Ohio, revealed clear intent to use caging lists to challenge voters. Specifically, in the US District Court, District of New Jersey, Civil Action No. 81-3876, exhibit D, filed 10/29/04 and entitled "Declaration_of_Caroline_Hunter_and_emails_exh_d", emails exchanged between RNC operatives (Blaise Hazlewood, Caroline Hunter, Terry Nelson, and Tim Griffin), Bush-Cheney '04 campaign workers (Christopher Guith, Coddy Johnson, Robert Paduchik, and Dave DenHerder) and the Ohio Republican Party personnel (Mike Magan) revealed involvement of these entities in caging operations and intent to utilize the caging lists to challenge ballots in Ohio and other states [ [http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2007/20070621_supressing_the_vote_2004.html Voter Suppression ] ] . Furthermore, these email exchanges also revealed concern about GOP fingerprints with ballot challenges based on caging lists in states that did not have flagged voter rolls [ [http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2007/20070621_supressing_the_vote_2004.html Voter Suppression ] ] . The concern about GOP involvement in the email sent by Tim Griffin to Christopher Guith and others may have reflected knowledge of the fact that the RNC is prohibited by Consent Decrees from involvement in ballot security measures such as caging, when the measures have racial bias. Regardless of the intent of caging list design, there are no documented voter challenges based on caging lists in the 2004 elections.

The list came to light because of numerous e-mails accidentally addressed by, among others, Republican campaigners to the [http://www.georgewbush.org georgewbush.org] anti-Bush site instead of the [http://www.georgewbush.com georgewbush.com] Bush campaign site. Two of these e-mails had the subject line "Re: Caging" and contained Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file attachments called "Caging.xls" and "Caging-1.xls". [Palast, Greg (June 2006) [http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/61/20537 African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List] , Democracy Now!] [ [http://2004.georgewbush.org/deadletteroffice/ Emails published on georgewbush.org] ] .

Investigative reporter Greg Palast initially received the emails from the owner of georgewbush.org, and [http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/05/24/justice-department-scandal-greg-palast/ in a 2007 interview] has drawn a link to the scandal surrounding the Alberto Gonzales U.S. Attorney firings, claiming that the firings are part of a wider effort by Republicans to use caging to "steal the 2008 election."cite web |url=http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/interviews/061 |title=Greg Palast, Author of Armed Madhouse, on How Rove May Have Already Stolen the 2008 Election |accessdate=2007-07-31 |date=2007-05-17 |work=BuzzFlash |publisher=buzzflash.com]

In December 2007, Kansas GOP Chair Kris Kobach sent an email boasting that "to date, the Kansas GOP has identified and caged more voters in the last 11 months than the previous two years!" [ [http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/26/kansas-gop-chair-sends-email-boasting-of-voter-caging/ Kansas GOP Chair Sends Email Boasting of Voter Caging] . "December 26, 2007".]

On September 16, 2008, Obama legal counsel announced that they would be seeking an injunction to stop an alleged caging scheme in Michigan wherein the state Republican party would use home foreclosure lists to challenge voters still using their foreclosed home as a primary address at the polls. [ http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2008/09/obama_dnc_file_lawsuit.html ] Michigan GOP officials called the suit "desperate." [http://thepage.time.com/2008/09/16/michigan-gop-obama-camp-suit-desperate/]

References

Sources

* "10 Most Important Things About Direct Mail" http://www.malwarwick.com/learning-resources/articles/10-most-important-things-about-dm.html
* Anne-Marie Cusac. "Bullies at the Voting Booth." The Progressive. October 2004.
* Andrew Welsh-Huggins. "Voter Registrations Challenged in Ohio." "Associated Press". October 28, 2004.

External links

* NOW on PBS video report on [http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/index.html Voter Caging] , featuring an interview with Greg Palast
* BBC "Newsnight" report: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm New Florida vote scandal feared]
* [http://2004.georgewbush.org/deadletteroffice/index.asp GeorgeWBush.org "Dead Letter Office"] - Source of 2004 Bush Campaign caging lists
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3958475.stm Republican response to Florida vote story]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3963089.stm Newsnight response to Republican complaint]
* [http://www.gregpalast.com/massacre-of-the-buffalo-soldiers African-American Soldiers Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List]
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7422-2004Oct28.html GOP Challenging Voter Registrations]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkvWkwv7UVo BBC Newsnight Report Oct 2004, The Florida caging list scam]
* [http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/05/24/justice-department-scandal-greg-palast/ Greg Palast discusses his 500 "lost" Rove emails proving illegal caging by Republicans]
* ePluribus Media analysis of the Voter Caging data [http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2007/20070704_palast_progressives_journalism.html Palast, Progressives and Investigative Journalism]
* [http://blackvoternet.com/caginglist.htm Jacksonville, FL 2004 caging list maps and analysis]