Vote Caging & Voter Purges
Vote caging is a notorious voter suppression tool used to deter people of color, young people, and seniors from voting.
"Caging" is a term used by the direct mail industry to describe the gathering of information about people on a mailing list, such as which addresses are invalid.
Caging is sometimes done by a political organization or party to compile a list of people whose voter registration they deem questionable. Of course, they try to disqualify only the voters who are likely to vote for their opponent, and may target their list by race or other factors to achieve this goal.
In one method of caging, the organization sends mail to registered voters, some of which are returned to sender. The organization will then challenge the validity of these voters' registrations, either before or on election day.
However, many of the people who end up being challenged are not fraudulent voters. A person might be in the armed forces serving abroad, or letters may simply be returned due to misspelling of names or addresses.
If the validity of a registration is challenged, the voter can still file a provisional ballot. But then for that vote to be counted, the voter must do something else, such as going in person to a central elections office, in order to prove their registration is valid. Some voters are not able or willing to make this extra effort.
The end result is that voters often find themselves purged from the rolls. Challenges can have an intimidating effect on voters and can cause needless delays, which may deter many people from voting at all.
Current Legislation
The Caging Prohibition Act of 2009 will prohibit the use of "caging lists" to interfere with voting or registering to vote. Another provision in the bill will also prohibit using foreclosure status to challenge voters' registration. The bill has been referred to committee in the Senate and House.
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