Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It looks like The Tennessee Tribune is laying some asphalt.

In the hopes of encouraging their citizens to vote in 2008, the weekly newspaper that reaches to the heart of Tennessee’s Black community has printed thousands of names of Nashville Citizens Registered to Vote in the Last Presidential Election Yet Have Never Voted.

Newschannel 5 interviewed the publisher of the registered non-voters:

“We have people over here who won’t go out and vote,” said Rosetta Miller-Perry, president and publisher of the Tennessee Tribune. “It’s ridiculous. It really hurts.”

… The paper plans to publish the names of voters in four to five districts with predominately African-American voters in them.

“Sometimes when you embarrass people they do the right thing,” Miller-Perry said.

The paper published a list during the 2006 Senate race. She said in one district voter turnout went from 37 percent to 65 percent after the list was published.

“We need to live up to the civil rights that have been given to us,” she said.

Indeed we do, Ms. Miller-Perry.

(And, yes, I’m completely ignoring the likelihood that she is motivated by the fact that most of the people in the district she is “outing” would likely vote for the Democratic candidate – see the “it really hurts” comment.)

But I’m afraid this goes a bit too far.

Oh, I was briefly tempted to go grab a similar list of Tampans, but of the thousands of names (and addresses) printed in Nashville, I would imagine that hundreds of these people have legitimate reasons for not voting.  And I don’t think you can call out an entire group of people in a public forum like this.

But most importantly, the right to vote also includes a right not to vote, and therefore these people have an expectation of some privacy in that matter.

I’d rather ask them face to face, anyway.