liz_marcs | Who needs to wait until Nov. 2 for voter fraud?

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Who needs to wait until Nov. 2 for voter fraud?

Holy-fucking-god...

I've been watching this story unfold all day on The Daily Kos and Eschaton.

Other places where you can find information as it unfolds: MetaFilter, Talking Points Memo, and Blogging of the President: 2004 have been also covering peices of it.

It all seemed to start last night when KLAS-TV broke the news about Voter's Outreach of America, which is apparently paid directly by the Republican National Committee, has been trashing voter registrations where the "D" box was checked off. End result? An untold number of people who thought they were registered to vote for the Presidential Election are going to find themselves shut out come November 2. The problem: Nevada has no motor-voter registration, unlike a number of other states. If someone's registration was trashed by these guys, they are flat out of luck.

Then, like dominoes, numerous other pre-election dirty tricks are coming to light, all of them Republican and all of them designed to suppress voter registration and turn out. A lot of them involve Voters' Outreach of Ameria, aka Sproul & Associates, aka America Votes.

Please check in with The Daily Kos and Eschaton for more information. From all accounts, it looks like this story is about to break big and hard in some fairly nasty ways. The local media markets are picking up on it, and some Repub (albeit disgraced) officials are going nuclear over the voter registration fraud issues now lapping at the party's national committee.

Go read all about it.

In other news, for those of you following it: the Sinclair Broadcast Group is getting hammered seven ways to Sunday. Talking Points Memo has been taking the lead in this and Daily Kos as a dKosopedia about the company and the issue. It appears that boycott threats to local advertisers by people in those local markets, coupled with huge drops in Sinclair's stock prices, seems to be hammering at the group.

This story is extremely interesting. For those of you who don't know, Sinclair Broadcast Group is owned by neocons who've popped up on the outrage radar already in this campaign season. When Nightline planned to read the name of the Iraqi war dead (our troops only) over the air, Sinclair ordered a blackout of the show to all its stations. Now, Sinclair plans to broadcast Stolen Honor, a virulent anti-Kerry piece produced by the same hitmen behind the Swiftboat Veterans for Lies, Lies, and More Stinkin' Lies just days before the election.

Hey, if the republicans can successfully make CBS not air a Reagan biopic, than I say good on the locals in Sinclair's 62-station broadcast range for smacking the shit out these guys.

Anyway, keep up with that unfolding story on Talking Points Memo and The Daily Kos.

Ahhhh, and don't forget to check out Media Matters for a round-up of Sinclair stuff. Nothing like someone who was blinded by the right to play watchdog on this shit.

You know, when I told my mom that I had a feeling October was going to be fucking bloody in the presidential campaign, I sure as fuckety fuck didn't expect shit like this. This? This makes Watergate dirty tricks look like nothing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Vote fraud has a long and distinguished history here in the US. We just don't like to admit it. From JFK's election to the pre-Civil War fuss over Kansas' admission to the Union, elections have been influenced, if not acutally changed, throughout our history. The Chicago Democratic Machine is one of the most infamous examples of that, but hardly the only one.

It's not that it isn't a serious issue, but both sides do it. The stupid ones just get caught.

I heartily agree. Nothing like having the dead vote, or my personal favorite election day joke, "Vote early and vote often."

As much as we want to believe we run good, clean elections, in the country as large as ours, you know there's some funny business going on at the local level. Mayor Daley, godresthisdoggysoul, and the beloved Boston Mayor Curley (The Rascal King) where masters of the art of the vote.

It's just the sense that for every crooked vote, there were 100 that balanced it all out (with the possible exception of the Kennedy campaign where Daley did deliver Chicago, although in the end Kennedy didn't need Chicago to win the Electoral College).

It's just I've never seen it so blatant, from voter suppression efforts to the Diebold machines. That's what has me furious. And yes, I'd be just as furious if I saw the Dems doing the same thing.

Maybe it's because of Florida 2000 (REMEMBER BROWARD COUNTY!) that this is suddenly so high on the radar, that and the fact that new voter registrations are at an all time high.

It's just the sense that for every crooked vote, there were 100 that balanced it all out (with the possible exception of the Kennedy campaign where Daley did deliver Chicago, although in the end Kennedy didn't need Chicago to win the Electoral College).

Nope. Those were balanced out too. Nixon knew about the crooked votes in Chicago, but never complained, in large part because of Republican shenanigans in Southern Illinois. There was a lot of crookedness in that election. Daley's just the more famous story.

I've been following this, too... it's so very scary. I know that fraud happens, that it's pretty much par for the course, but this... I have to believe that this is beyond what it's been in the past.

The good thing is, I suppose, that it's out now... the cockeyed optimist in me can't believe that this is going to just go away. Not when they have stuff on videotape. I could just be living in dreamland, though.

Hope they nail Sproul on all sorts of felony charges, at least.

The careerbuilder.com ad was sincerely stupid.

I want to see this on national news, as in tonight.

A lot of this stuff seems to have been breaking locally over the past 48 hours or so. At first it seemed like it was happening in one or two isolated areas (not good, no one's saying it is), but it's beginning to look like a systematic nation-wide thing.

The pessimist in me is almost convinced we'll hear nothing until after Nov. 2.

Thanks for this post. I pointed people over here for a coherent explaination of what is going on because it is something I can't write about well.

I'm still broken down crying over all this. I'll get to the stage where I'm flaming mad but I'm not there yet.

Oh, I'm flaming furious.

It's hard enough to get people to vote. Hell, I remember getting into screaming matches with people during the 2000 elections (the apolitical techie types mostly) who *after* the election bitched and moaned about the recount.

First I'd ask 'em: "Did you vote?"

When they said no, I'd tell 'em: "The shut the hell up. You've decided to give up your right to bitch."

Sorry. I missed one election since I got the right to vote, and only because I moved to a new town two days before election day (it was a primary) and would've had to travel and hour-and-a-half to vote in the town I left.

Hell, I remember getting into screaming matches with people during the 2000 elections (the apolitical techie types mostly) who *after* the election bitched and moaned about the recount....I missed one election since I got the right to vote

Heh, that was me too (the screaming after 2000 at people who felt entitled to complain yet hadn't taken the time to exercise their duty as citizens). Due to some whack voter registration policies in NM at the time -- you had to be eighteen to register, and my birthday's usually right before or right after the election, and you had to register a month before the election -- I didn't get to vote in the first election I could have, and I've been vehement about voting and getting other people to vote ever since.

Not to get all cheezily melodramatic, but I remember a Nightline special on -- hell I forget which country it was, I want to say the Sudan but that doesn't sound right -- people who'd voted to oust a regime, had had their hands or feet cut off, and who were now voting again in the first democratic elections in years. It made me ashamed for all the complacent apathetic "I can't be bothered to vote" people in my country, who don't realize what a power and a privilege it is to be able to vote, even with all the dirty tricks and corruption and outright incompetence that's always there, too.

Voting isn't a duty, it's a privilege. If it was a duty, it would be mandatory not voluntary. The problem in this country isn't not enough people voting, it's too many uninformed people voting. We need less voting, not more. The more voting you have, the bigger risk you run of the idiotic fringe getting their candidate elected. In my opinion, both Bush and Kerry will make bad presidents. Henceforth, I'm not voting. Not that I would vote anyway, I'm an anarchist. I'm also patriotic, which makes for some very strange conversations inside my head. My advice to everyone is, this Nov. 2nd, don't vote unless you are truly informed. Don't vote for Kerry just because you are opposed to the war. Don't vote for Bush just because you don't like Kerry's flip-flops. Leave voting to those who know what they are doing and can make an informed decision on the direction our country will go for the next 4 years.

Love my country but hate what my government has done to it -- Nate Reish

P.S. War IS my voice. 'Cause I hate those stupid protest signs.

Oh I completely agree with you. You don't vote; you can't complain.

I lived voter registration for 2 months. I worked my ass off registering as many people in the community as I could (we targeted the places no other groups go: the gay clubs and other queer events). All the work I put in is still so fresh in my mind. It just hurts to read about this kind of fraud. And it also upsets me because I know the more thing like this get uncovered the harder the job becomes for people legitmately doing voter reg (like me) next time.

You know, when I told my mom that I had a feeling October was going to be fucking bloody in the presidential campaign, I sure as fuckety fuck didn't expect shit like this. This? This makes Watergate dirty tricks look like nothing.

Agreed. It's not that our elections have always been error- or corruption-free (hardly) but at this point the dirty tricks are being done out in the open. The spousal overunit says to take heart from it, that it's a sign of desperation, but I don't know.

An interesting read this. As you may know voting in Australia is compulsory, you may not know that voter registration is controlled by the Australia Electoral Commission (AEC) and it is an independant statutory authority. The current chairperson is a judge.

There's a link below:- I believe points 1 & 2 are what you guys are praying for.

http://www.aec.gov.au/_content/what/about/functions.htm

Basically, no political party plays any part in voter registration.

It's amazing to me that this group could be so blatant about ripping up voter registration cards and believe that they could get away with it. I'm certainly familiar with Mayor Daley and "vote early, vote often", but this is outrageous. The press and the public ignored reports of voters being removed from the rolls and turned away from polling places in Florida. Now we have yet another scandal surrounding democratic voters. I sincerely hope this breaks big, because how people can turn a blind eye to this is beyond me. If this doesn't become a nationwide scandal, I might reconsider my decision not to move to Canada.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Who needs to wait until Nov. 2 for voter fraud?

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People not exercising their duty as citizens.

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