Rights Leaders Denounce Black Voter Suppression

 Los Angeles - Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson and other civil rights leaders denounced voter suppression tactics by shadowy political operatives to suppress the black vote. The latest ploy was a flyer put on car windshields at a polling place in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Houston, Texas warning black voters not to vote “the straight Democratic ticket.” The group that put this out is called "The Black Democratic Trust of Texas." There is no contact name, address, and no phone number. It’s a phony group.
  
 The civil right leaders sent copies of the fliers to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and urged the department to step up its Election Day monitoring and enforcement activities, and that includes prosecutions, of any voter suppression actions by dummy front groups.
  
 “These kinds of dirty trick voter suppression tactics aimed at black and Latino voters are not new,” says Hutchinson, “The Justice Department must redouble its efforts to send the strongest message through arrests and prosecutions that minority voter suppression is illegal and will be prosecuted.”