Large-Scale GOP Voter-Intimidation Drive Planned in Ohio
October 23rd, 2004
No, I’m not kidding:
Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.
In the meantime, Democrats recruited 3,600 people to protect those same voters from Republican intimidation. The Republican intimidation drive and the Democratic defense against it are taking place primarily in “heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities.” This is not a two-sided attempt by both parties to intimidate voters on the other side–this is purely offensive on the part of the GOP, hoping to scare off as many Democratic voters as possible.
This is reprehensible. But not unexpected. The GOP is now running scared, and is evidently willing to stop at nothing to win this one by hook or crook.
My question is, don’t you have a federal body that over looks elections? Why are G.O.P. mercenaries even allowed in polling stations?
Apparently a party can register to have “observers” with the authority to challenge a voter if they deem them suspicious. Obviously the GOP intends to use this as a cudgel to intimidate legitimate voters, acting like an Election Gestapo, stopping people and random and demanding they identify themselves, taking names on clipboards and saying they’re going to check up on them and other assorted BS. All of it is legal, but clearly easily abused.
Elections are partially a state thing (recall the scuffle over the Heimat Sekuritaet attempt to guestimate a terror attack’s effect on elections and what the federal government would have to have as an excuse to shut things down), but it’s the same way anyhow: you get power, then appoint your boys. There is an excellent recent documentary (there are a lot these days), Unprecedented, which is a kind of one-stop source on all aspects of the 2000 election, and it includes footage of the harassment techniques (mostly constant badgering ala getting a girl to cry in primary school). Also there’s a book called Jews for Buchanan, which Studs Terkel reccommends as the source on the whole mess, which features an interview with Pat in which he points out, “look, those weren’t my votes. I’d like to claim them but we all know those were not mine.”