RNC and Voter Suppression

Indomitus writes "Slashdot recently listed the story about a voter registration company tearing up registration forms from Democrats but the story is quickly becoming much more than just that one story. Daily Kos is keeping track of the many folks digging up more and more information on this scandal-in-the-making. This is not only an important story to get out to voters, it's a great example of power of the internet to facilitate participatory journalism."

Comments

Re:What about DNC orders to claim voter intimidati

[Zelet]

You have your facts wrong. They want their "operatives" to highlight past voter intimidation so that there will be a spotlight on the area to possibly make that intimidation impossible.

Re:initial thoughts?

[TykeClone]

It's worth noting, by the way, that the Democrats have been waging a systematic campaign to get Ralph Nader off ballots, with no one seeming too upset about it...

Like how he was kicked off of the ballot in Pennsylvania(?) because he had enough signatures obtained in a timely manner, but the signatures were from Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

Excruciating Editorial Bias

[Snerdley]

Once again, we have an abysmal editorial decision on Slashdot.

A submission from Indomitus, a left-leaning reader (nothing wrong with that) comes in citing the dailyKOS as a source of news, and the editor doesn't even explain that that site is so unbelievably slanted as to be unreadable.

Just as a test, I've submitted the following story just to see what response I get. I'll be FLOORED if it gets through, although it is at least as accurate as the post Michael approved.

Submission:

The DNC has now confirmed that the excerpt from their Training Manual reported on the Drudge Report is authentic.

The excerpt calls election workers to issue press releases and give interviews about voter suppression, and that, "If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a pre-emptive strike".

Sinclair sotry even more so

[chatooya]

There's also been a huge amount of participation built up around this Sinclair Broadcasting scandal. People have been deluging advertisers with calls, mostly driven by interest on blogs. It seems to be working. (via The Regular)

Might as well get the whole story

[crmartin]

Have a look at the running log of voter fraud stories.

Re:Tell me again that Slashdot isn't biased...

[hey!]

Sure, but one thing you have to note -- this company is sponsored by the RNC. You can't say it was some local yahoo.

Re:initial thoughts?

[bibliophage]

It's happening ins Florida, too.

Re:initial thoughts?

[worm eater]

Is it a "wink, smile and nod" system or was the RNC truly caught off guard by this (as they will no doubt claim)?

Well, three people who resigned from the South Dakota GOP over the voter fraud scandal, have now been hired to work for the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio. I think that's more than just a "wink, smile and nod" system. They are actively being encouraged to maintain these tactics.

If the DNC is involved in this sort of thing, lets see some evidence. And no, the Colorado election day manual is not evidence of voter fraud, or even of false allegations of voter fraud, but merely that the DNC would like to see confirmed stories of GOP voter fraud from the past resurface. Not even remotely comparable.

Corrected: Might as well get part of the story

[Sevn]

Have a look at a cherry picked list of democrat only voter fraud stories being passed off as the whole story.

Disclaimer: Pissed off conservative sick of the biased "bored again conservatives" making the rest of us REAL Conservatives look like bushbots.

Re:initial thoughts?

[drix]

Bzzt! Wro-ong! I defy you to tell the the population of the county for any individual county in the United States. You, sir, have no clue what the capital-T True population of any county as, and neither does anyone else short of the Lord. Oh, you will lamely answer by foisting up the latest decennial census results for that county. To which I utterly dominate your argument by noting:

1. The census undercounts minorities, the very same people who have been the target of extensive voter registration efforts in states like, ta-da!, Ohio. It is well-documented that the 2000 census did not use statistical correction procedures to control for undercounted low-income persons and persons of color. Q: Could that result in a discrepancy of several thousand? A: Easily.
2. Even if said procedures were employed, is the census a full count? Nope. And several thousand in a large county in Ohio is well within the margin of error. Q: Could that result in a discrepancy of several thousand? A: Easily.
3. Even if the census were perfect, a lot of people have died or moved since 2000. Duh. Not even worth making the point. Think before you post, boy. Q: Could that result in a discrepancy of several thousand? A: Easily.

I have come to conclude that, well, you're just freakin' wrong. Better luck next time, try again, and all that.

In MI: "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Those looking for better documented details might want to check out this story. It contains a catalog of GOP voter suppression efforts. Of course it's one-sided, but quite frankly I haven't ever come across any similar documentation cataloging DNC voter suppression efforts. If anybody has one, please post it for all to see!

Here are a few excerpts:

Philadelphia's 2003 mayoral election did not set especially high standards for civic discourse ...

... According to Sherry Swirsky, a local antitrust attorney who is active in Democratic politics and who worked as an election monitor that day, the men carried clipboards and drove around in unmarked black vans.

"Some of them were just driving around neighborhoods, looking menacing," Swirsky recalls. "But others were going up to voters and giving them misinformation about the kind of I.D. they needed in order to vote. The truth is, you don't need any I.D. to vote. But they were telling them they needed a major credit card, a passport or driver's license. They were telling them it was risky to vote if they had any outstanding child support bills. Imagine the menacing presence of a bunch of big white guys in black cars who look like they're law-enforcement people telling you all these things."

... It was not a sick prank by one or two racists but instead a systematic effort that required planning and not-insignificant outlays of money (the uniforms, the vehicles and the men, some of whom were reportedly recruited from out of state). ...

Swirsky met dozens of voters who were intimidated by strange men in uniforms; in a survey of black voters taken after the election, 7 percent reported being accosted by voter-intimidation efforts. ...

. . .

[Ralph] Neas [president of the nonpartisan People for the American Way Foundation] is referring not just to the Philadelphia mayor's race but also to a widely publicized absentee ballot-fraud investigation conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in Orlando this summer. In that investigation, elderly African-American voters were visited at their homes by police officers curious about their voting behavior. While Florida officials deny any attempt to intimidate voters, critics say the investigation is emblematic of the kind of under-the-radar, state-sponsored intimidation program that Republican officials have conducted in the past. On Friday, the Justice Department disclosed that it has initiated a civil rights investigation into what occurred in Orlando.

. . .

In July, John Pappageorge, a Republican state representative in Troy, Mich., attended a local party meeting to discuss with colleagues the Republicans' chances of winning the state for Bush in November. In the course of the discussion, according to an account published in the Detroit Free Press, Pappageorge declared, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election." Detroit, of course, has a huge minority population; about 83 percent of its residents are African-American. Pappageorge's statement was roundly condemned and he quickly apologized for it, insisting that he wasn't suggesting anything racist or illegal in calling for a suppression of the Detroit vote. As a matter of politic strategy, Pappageorge was probably right.

. . .

In 1986 the party hired an outside company to conduct another ballot-security initiative, this one aimed at challenging the voting eligibility of 31,000 voters in Louisiana, the vast majority of whom were black. According to a 2002 study of voter-intimidation practices that Swirsky wrote for the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, when Democrats again sued over the ballot-security initiative, they unearthed a Republican planning document t