In October 2004, the BBC Newsnight program reported on an alleged so-called "caging list" maintained by the Bush campaign that suggested that they may be planning possibly illegal disruption of African-American voting in Jacksonville, Florida.

The BBC reports that it has obtained a document from George W. Bush's Florida campaign headquarters containing a list of 1,886 names and addresses of voters in largely African-American and Democratic areas of Jacksonville. Democratic Party officials allege that the document is a "caging list" that the Bush campaign intends to use to issue mass challenges to African-American voters, in violation of federal law.

Whilst 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. The city of Jacksonville has a large African-American population. Like the other states in the American Southeast, Flordia has a legacy of formal and informal racial discrimination in elections. Members of the African-American community are justifiablly concerned that they might be denied their voting rights.

The list appears to have come to light because of what appear to be E-mails addressed by Republican campaigners to the georgewbush.org anti-Bush site instead of the georgewbush.com Bush campaign site. The E-mails had the subject line "Re: Caging" and contained Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file attachments called "Caging.xls" and "Caging-1.xls".

If true, revelations that caging lists are being employed in Florida could be interpreted as an indication of a larger strategy of state Republican parties to reduce voter turnout by African-American and other predominantly Democratic voting constituencies.

Sources

• 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

• BBC Newsnight report: New Florida vote scandal feared
• http://www.georgewbush.org/deadletteroffice/