Republicans Pressed To Halt Voter-Suppression Efforts

[cal04]

With political analysts agreeing that voter turnout, especially of minority and youth voters, will likely determine the outcome of next Tuesday’s presidential election, civil and human rights groups are pressing the Republican National Committee (news - web sites) (RNC) to call off plans aimed at discouraging people from casting ballots.

At a press conference held in front of RNC headquarters here Thursday, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the country’s largest civil and human-rights coalition, demanded that RNC chairman Ed Gillespie ensure that the party does nothing to suppress the vote or try to intimidate voters, particularly in minority communities.


“In state after state, Republican officials and operatives are working to deny American citizens the right to vote,” charged LCCR executive director Wade Henderson. “We’re today to ask the RNC Chairman to put a stop to these activities.”


With the election just four days away and the polls showing a statistical tie between Republican President George W. Bush (news - web sites) and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), many veteran observers believe that outcome will depend on voter turnout.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=655&e=1&u=/oneworld/20041029/wl_oneworld/4536969831099053816

[Dem Agog]

1. Why is this news?

What I mean is, instead of just reporting that these people are out there trying to take away a fundamental right, why aren't we shipping them straight to jail?

[sui generis]

2. because you can be sure that the rethugs are within the

micro-letter of the law, mostly. That's how they operate. And wherever someone is actually caught breaking the law, why, they're a subcontractor over whom the republicans have no direct control . . .

[Warpy]

5. Actually, they have been committing felonies

all over the place. The problem has been attaching a particular scumbucket to a particular crime. An example would be the registered Democrats who have had change of address cards sent in by GOPs. Another would be the people who have registered as Democrats and had their registration cards ripped up by Sproul employees.

Now the latter may result in some interesting civil rights suits, since some people have kept their registration card receipts and employees in Nevada snatched some of those ripped up forms out of the trash, but this will be few and far between, I'm afraid.

What is so startling is that this stuff is occuring so blatantly. Apparently the Bush entitlement to flout the law has extended to the filth they have working for them at all levels.

[moggie]

8. Boiling a frog

You're probably familiar with the story. If you drop a frog into a pan of hot water, it will jump out. But if you put it in a pan of cold water, and gradually heat the pan, the frog won't notice anything wrong until it's too late. How hot are you feeling right now?

[sally343434]

4. My reaction too

Look what out country has become. "Oh please, criminals. Please stop committing felonies. Please?"

Why the hell aren't these people being rounded up and put in jail?

These bastards have utterly destroyed the country.

[Doug Decker]

6. Not sure but rate it up please n/t

[JoFerret]

12. Good reminder to decent right wingers

- get with democracy people.

[RedEarth]

3. Good luck.....look at this link to the NewDonkey...it shows Rove plans

for Ohio and I'm sure for all the other battleground states...

Thursday, October 28, 2004
The Rove M.O.
The latest political news from Ohio is important and instructive. A federal judge in Columbus blocked Republican efforts to force county election boards to review tens of thousands of new voter registrations. Before the ink was dry on the judge's order, the Ohio GOP's top lawyer said the action meant the GOP would challenge such voters at the polls on November 2. "We wanted to have all these questions resolved this week," said attorney Mark Weaver. "Now they won't be resolved until Tuesday, when all of these people are trying to vote. It can't help but create chaos, longer lines and frustration."

In other words, the GOP is using the demise of one prong of its voter supression strategy to pre-justify the other. And I wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly the way they planned it. Now they can can get their "volunteers" out to "create chaos, longer lines and frustration" in minority polling places and sadly say that an "activist judge" who didn't care about voter fraud left them no choice. It's going to get worse, too: mark my words, when Democrats, civil rights attorneys, and voters themselves get visibly angry about this gambit, the GOPers will start whining about "potential violence" at the polls, and even pretend their goons are being intimidated and harassed. If nothing else, it will give them an excuse to go to court to contest Ohio's outcome if the state goes for Kerry.

Now I have no direct evidence that Karl Rove has planned and is executing this voter suppression strategy, though it's interesting that every Republican hack and pundit in the universe started singing like a cicada about "voter fraud" about a week before the Ohio story got into the national news. But it sure as hell fits Rove's M.O. like a glove.

The Florida debacle of 2000 illustrated two Rove tactics that are devilishly effective:

(1) Getting in front of media interpretation of a controversy in a way that reshapes public perceptions of the actual event, and sticking with the spin come hell or high water. In retrospect, the war for Florida was half-won the day after the election, when the Bush campaign (knowing Katherine Harris would give the spin official sanction as soon as she could) announced it had won the state, and then began a relentless and ultimately successful campaign to depict efforts to get a full and accurate count as an attempt to reverse the outcome.

http://www.newdonkey.com/2004/10/rove-mo.html

[cthrumatrix]

7. there was discussion earlier that the "mail returned" was Registered

mail from the GOP to new registered voters. If you don't pick up your package ...the repugs assume you have given wrong infor mation.

Who wants to go to the post office and pick up their package... this is a Rovian plan.

[AndyTiedye]

9. Some of them Probably Thought it was a DRAFT Notice

Possibly that backdoor draft of the IRR that they're doing.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

10. WHY DO REPUBLICANS HATE DEMOCRACY?

DO they hate us for our freedoms?

[WHAT]

16. THEY CAN"T COMPETE...SO THEY HAVE TO CHEAT...

They can't compete...so they have to cheat.

[Sinnerman]

11. The only way we move forward is Kerry Victory

[carolinalady]

13. attention Jacksonville Fl

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm
make sure you are not on this list!
Good luck on Tuesday!

[Supersedeas]

14. Fat chance...Eddie knows there's no way he can win fair and square

[Overseas]

15. Rating this highly on Yahoo

Need to keep focus on all the irregularities in voting.
Also to counteract the RNC's Mary Poppins scenario.