Kerry/Edwards Election Directive: Charge Voter Intimidation, Even If None Exists

I have been watching this all morning on as it has developed on The Drudge Report.  I don\'t know how true it is, but it seems to be so and it is newsworthy.

Kerry/Edwards Election Directive: Charge Voter Intimidation, Even If None Exists
Matt Drudge
Drudgereport.com
10.14.04

The Kerry/Edwards campaign and the Democratic National Committee are advising election operatives to declare voter intimidation -- even if none exists, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

A 66-page mobilization plan to be issued by the Kerry/Edwards campaign and the Democratic National Committee states: "If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a \'pre-emptive strike.\'"

[SirMystiq]

Originally posted by GigaShadow
I have been watching this all morning on as it has developed on The Drudge Report.  I don\'t know how true it is, but it seems to be so and it is newsworthy.

Kerry/Edwards Election Directive: Charge Voter Intimidation, Even If None Exists
Matt Drudge
Drudgereport.com
10.14.04

The Kerry/Edwards campaign and the Democratic National Committee are advising election operatives to declare voter intimidation -- even if none exists, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

A 66-page mobilization plan to be issued by the Kerry/Edwards campaign and the Democratic National Committee states: "If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a \'pre-emptive strike.\'"

So they are trying to focus their campaign on intimidation tactics that they believe the Republicans are pulling off?

Whats so bad about that? (Not a rhetorical question)

Can you not read - even if there is no apparent sign of intimidation.  I have yet to see anyone on here or elsewhere show proof that any intimidation took place last election.

[SirMystiq]

The state of Florida is, just like in 2000, creating a list of African Americans (alleged former "felons") to whom it will deny voting rights -- and it still hasn\'t corrected the mistakes from this same unlawful fiasco in 2000.
It\'s not just African Americans whose voting rights are in trouble. Any American group that doesn\'t vote solidly Republican might be targeted. Here are portions of a shocking article from Rolling Stone magazine.

Like any good American citizen, Young Han wanted to cast his ballot in the presidential primaries. So in October, the sophomore at Hamilton College walked into the office of the county election board in Utica, New York, to register to vote. Han couldn\'t make it back to his home state of Washington to participate in its caucuses -- they were being held in February, the same week Hamilton requires sophomores to finalize a major -- so he decided to vote in the state where he actually lives.
But at the election office, a county official told Han that only "permanent residents" may register to vote. College students, she informed the clean-cut twenty-year-old, must vote where their parents live. "This is just how we\'ve always done it," county election commissioner Patricia DiSpirito told Rolling Stone. "A dorm is not a permanent residence -- it just isn\'t."

In fact, DiSpirito is flat-out wrong. Federal and state courts have clearly established that students have the right to vote where they go to school, even if they live in a dorm. But interviews with college students, civil-rights attorneys, political strategists and legal experts reveal that election officials all over the country are erecting illegal barriers to keep young voters from casting ballots. From New Hampshire to California, officials have designed complex questionnaires that prevent college students from registering, hired high-powered attorneys to keep them off the rolls, shut down polling places on campuses and even threatened to arrest and imprison young voters.

Much as local registrars in the South once used poll taxes and literacy tests to deny the vote to black citizens, some county election officials now employ an intimidating mix of legal bullying and added paperwork to prevent civic-minded young people from casting ballots. "Students have been singled out for outright discrimination," says Neal Rosenstein, government-reform coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group. "If someone was challenging the voting rights of a military person who is stationed somewhere temporarily, we\'d be screaming that it\'s not patriotic. There shouldn\'t be any less of a standard for students, who work and pay sales taxes in those communities."

Some local registrars make democracy as easy as possible, simply asking students what they consider their primary address. Several states, including Pennsylvania, Texas and Michigan, ban most added scrutiny as a form of illegal discrimination.

But in recent years, many election officials have been building a variety of hurdles to make it more difficult for students to register and vote. In May 2002, the city council in Saratoga Springs, New York, shut down a polling place at Skidmore College, forcing students to travel off-campus to vote. That same year, a judge in Arkansas tried to block 1,000 students at Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State University from casting ballots, ruling that they must vote in their hometowns -- even though the deadline for absentee ballots had already passed. And when students from the University of New Hampshire showed up at the polls on Election Day that year, poll workers handed them a pamphlet warning them that voting locally could affect their financial aid and taxes. The scare tactic worked: Many students left without voting.


Refusing to register students is "a blatant form of disenfranchisement," says Jennifer Weiser, who advocates for young voters as associate counsel of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. "It\'s clearly illegal."
In some cases, election officials simply don\'t seem to understand the law. Jehmu Greene, president of Rock the Vote, was surprised by the response when her group called state election offices in Oregon and Washington about laws regarding student voting: "They were clueless about the issue," says Greene.

In many cases, however, there\'s more than ignorance at work. In small college towns, students often outnumber all other voters combined -- raising fears that they could determine the outcome of local elections. The colonial town of Williamsburg, Virginia, has only 6,000 registered voters -- and 7,600 students at the College of William and Mary. In January, when campus leaders began pushing students to register and vote, the city responded by requiring every student to fill out a two-page questionnaire detailing everything from their personal finances to where their car is registered. Of an estimated 150 students who completed questionnaires, only four have been registered. "They don\'t want students involved," says Rob Forrest, who quit school and moved off campus so he could run for a seat on the city council. "It\'s a cop-out to interpret the law like this -- and if the law says that we\'re not supposed to get involved, then the law is wrong."

There\'s no way to tell how many college students are being turned away by local election boards -- but observers say it could be enough to re-elect George Bush this fall. Voters under the age of twenty-four favored the Democrats by at least twenty percentage points in each of the past three presidential elections, and polls this year indicate that they favor John Kerry by as many as ten points. If the race is as close as last time, keeping turnout down among voters at one major college campus in each battleground state could tip the election to the Republicans.

Students who are denied the right to register at college can always opt to vote by absentee ballot -- but it\'s well known that this reduces participation. "It is likely to depress turnout, because it is a harder burden than just walking up to a poll," says Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. What\'s more, some election officials are also keeping students from the polls by making sure the polls are hard to get to. At Northwestern, Sacramento State and the State University of New York at Oswego, voting registrars have resisted demands to set up polling places on campus. "This is an intentional act of disenfranchisement," says the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "Students don\'t just have the right to vote -- they have the right to vote where they live."

Perhaps the most blatant attempt to intimidate young voters took place at Prairie View A&M University in Texas. The school is the last place one would expect a battle over voting rights: Twenty-five years ago, when black students at A&M were denied the vote by white county officials, the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling affirming that students can cast ballots where they go to school. But in November, District Attorney Oliver Kitzman published an open letter in a local newspaper accusing unnamed citizens of "feigned residency." Kitzman warned that any "illegal voting" would lead to a ten-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine.

Students fought back. On Martin Luther King Jr.\'s birthday, 1,500 students marched through the Texas town in protest, and Rock the Vote held a rally on February 23rd with Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest. "Students have to pay for food and shop in the town, so I think they should have some say in how it\'s run," Q-Tip says. The next day, under pressure from state and federal authorities, Kitzman settled a voting-rights lawsuit filed by A&M students and issued a public apology.

But despite the victory in Prairie View, some observers worry that the widespread discrimination will sour students on the political process for years to come. "Students complain to me all the time that county officials are thwarting their attempts to get involved," says Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore\'s presidential campaign in 2000. "These kids are new to civic engagement. Students, who are often taking part in democracy for the first time, should be given every possible opportunity to vote. Instead, they face all these barriers."

In New York, after a professor at Hamilton College called election officials on behalf of Young Han, they finally agreed to let him register. So Han resubmitted his application. But a week later, he received another wrong rejection letter, stating that students are encouraged to "vote from their home county."

"It seems ridiculous that someone would have to go through all this just to register and take part in the political process," Han says. "Everyone talks about how young people don\'t get involved -- but maybe it\'s because they make it this difficult."

http://www.progress.org/2004/vote27.htm


Maybe it\'s not "intimidation" but encouragement NOT to vote. And you can\'t deny it happens, specially where there are people that try to prohibit other people from voting for a guy that the majority around that area doesn\'t support.

[SirMystiq]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/elections/bal-te.md.turnout04nov04,0,732693.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Maryland Democrats and Republicans traded charges yesterday over allegations that one party is trying to buy African-American voters while the other is trying to suppress them.

The exchange of accusations came as both campaigns and outside advocacy groups have stepped up their advertising, recorded phone calls, mailings and other efforts to reach voters in the final days of Maryland\'s tight contest for governor between Republican Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

But Democratic plans for Election Day in Baltimore City and Prince George\'s County were in limbo last night when Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. - one of the state\'s top elected Democrats - questioned the party\'s strategy for using paid workers tomorrow.

The party\'s leaders had spent much of yesterday morning training hundreds of "nonpartisan" paid Election Day workers in Baltimore, under the careful scrutiny of State Prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli and Republican attorneys.

After initially planning to pay the workers up to $100 to canvass neighborhoods on behalf of Democratic congressional candidates, party officials said yesterday that such workers would be allowed only to encourage people to vote without advocating for any political parties or candidates - a compromise in the face of state election laws banning the practice of "walking-around money."

Republicans say they still believe the Democratic plans are illegal - a throwback to a practice banned in the 1970s - and are waiting for an opinion from Curran\'s office today.

Last night, Curran said the opinion will say that state election laws dealing with walking-around money apply to all elections in Maryland, including those for federal office. But nonpartisan paid workers would technically be legal.

"The person could not wear a T-shirt or in any shape or form express favor for a candidate," Curran said. "If that did happen, it would be illegal."

Nevertheless, as a statewide Democratic candidate up for re-election tomorrow, Curran said he thinks the party should reconsider its plans - because paid workers also could be prosecuted if they advocated even slightly for a candidate.

"Something may be very narrowly legal, but that doesn\'t make it a good idea," he said. "As a candidate it would be my advice that it would not be a good thing to do. It\'s not that I don\'t want people to vote, but I would recommend using volunteers. That is the safer thing to do."

\'Difference of opinion\'

A spokesman for the Democratic Party said last night that its officials had not seen the ruling but intend to go forward with their plans.

"We have a difference of opinon," said spokesman David Paulson. "However, we will strictly adhere to both the finding of the attorney general and the letter of the law. We had always planned to follow the letter of the law."

Earlier in the afternoon, Democratic leaders sought to shift attention away from their party\'s Election Day plans to what they described as efforts by Republican activists to discourage African-Americans from voting.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings and Baltimore Mayor Martin O\'Malley said they are concerned that plans by members of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police to serve as GOP poll workers may intimidate city voters. O\'Malley said he has called both the police commissioner and FOP president to warn against intimidation.

"We will not tolerate in the city of Baltimore any implied, any overt, any intimidation at all at the polling places," O\'Malley said.

Cummings also held up a flier that Democratic campaign volunteers said they found posted in some Northwest Baltimore neighborhoods, including on the doors of Pimlico Middle School.

The unsigned flier read: "URGENT NOTICE. Come out to vote on November 6th. Before you come to vote make sure you pay your parking tickets, motor vehicle tickets, overdue rent and most important any warrants."

"Of course all of us know this is an effort to stop people from coming out to vote," said Cummings, who noted the election is Nov. 5. "We don\'t know exactly who put this out, but you must agree it is an interesting combination. We are very clear we will not allow this to happen."

Democratic party officials said they intend to pass out fliers in city neighborhoods with a toll-free phone number for voters to call to report any suspected intimidation. The line is to be staffed by 100 lawyers.

Townsend - who did not attend the news conference but joined the other Democratic leaders at a voter rally later in the afternoon - also worried about intimidation. "If [police officers] are being used to intimidate people, it is outrageous," she said.

But Republicans and FOP officials said they have no plans to discourage African-Americans from voting and are outraged by the Democrats\' allegations. They said they are unaware of the flier and questioned its authenticity.

"They have absolutely no evidence to support these allegations except fliers printed within their offices," said Ehrlich spokeswoman Shareese DeLeaver. "To suggest on the Sunday before the election we are attempting to suppress the African-American vote is ridiculous. It\'s an effort to change the subject that they are the ones trying to buy the African-American vote."

Gary McLhinney, president of the Baltimore FOP, said off-duty members will spend Election Day at poll sites with city firefighter union members handing out cards on their endorsement, the first time the city police union has backed a Republican gubernatorial candidate in more than three decades.

"We\'ve been working polls for 20 years for Democrats, including Parris Glendening and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in 1994," McLhinney said yesterday. "The first time in 35 years we\'ve endorsed a Republican for governor, and now we\'re getting accused.

"I cannot believe that the lieutenant governor would insult police officers in this manner and try to inhibit us from exercising our constitutional rights," he said.

A flood of ads

Yesterday\'s accusations came as both gubernatorial campaigns stepped up their efforts in advance of Election Day tomorrow.

Voters are receiving a flurry of recorded phone calls, featuring such well-known political figures as former President Bill Clinton, first lady Laura Bush and former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp.

All types of ads are flooding radio stations, particularly those with many African-American listeners.

In one spot, Cummings, a Baltimore Democrat, tells listeners that Ehrlich "voted against real gun control, even voted against civil rights, voting rights and help for minority businesses."

In another, Monica Turner Steele - ex-wife of heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson and sister of GOP lieutenant governor candidate Michael S. Steele - urges voters to make her brother Maryland\'s first statewide African-American elected official.

Townsend\'s campaign also began airing a radio spot from O\'Malley telling voters that she would be the best choice to help Baltimore.

Both campaigns also have unveiled new television spots attempting to hammer home their campaign themes. Townsend uses a series of brief testimonials from voters saying Ehrlich is too conservative for Maryland, while Ehrlich uses video footage of Gov. Parris N. Glendening to link the lieutenant governor to the unpopular outgoing governor.

Emphasis on turnout

With polls showing the race to be close, both campaigns say voter turnout tomorrow will be crucial. Townsend\'s focus is in Prince George\'s and Montgomery counties and Baltimore City, the three heavily Democratic jurisdictions that are expected to provide much of her support.

But with minority voters less likely to vote in nonpresidential election years, Democrats are organizing sophisticated operations to get voters to the polls - including the plans to pay Election Day workers.

At Western High School yesterday, hundreds of people drawn by the promise of being paid $100 registered with party officials and then boarded vans and buses that took them to various city neighborhoods. The workers were to be trained in those neighborhoods yesterday on what they should do on Election Day.

Montanarelli, the state prosecutor, visited the training, where Democratic Party officials and lawyers assured him activities by paid workers will be limited to strictly nonpartisan get-out-the-vote efforts.

The prosecutor - who made it clear he was not happy with the Democrats\' tactics - said he would prosecute people if the law is violated.

"If I get complaints, we are going to prosecute them." Montanarelli said.

But Republicans continued to criticize the plans and said they may take other steps.

"We want to do anything we can to make sure we are playing on a level playing field," said Ehrlich\'s campaign manager, James C. "Chip" DiPaula.

That was a waste of space... you still haven\'t proven that any voter intimidation took place.

Progress.org is heavily biased and lacks any credibility.

Your second article quotes some left wing nuts spouting gibbly goo about their fears that Baltimore FOP are going to disguise themselves as GOP Poll Workers to intimidate voters.

Also learn to edit and post only relevant parts of articles that may support your argument.