Republican dirty tricks

[lenbrazil]

I posted this to another forum in 2006

The University of Pennsylvania’s journalism school concluded that National Republican Campaign Committee consistently resorted to deceptive and factually incorrect attack ads.

www.factcheck.org/article460.html

In one of those ads they alleged that a Democratic candidate billed a call to a phone sex line to taxpayers. The truth which even the Republican’s don’t dispute is that he or an aide accidentally dialed the wrong number the 1st brief call was immediately followed by a longer one to the same number in a different area code. See the ad here and watch Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY), chairman of the NRCC, defend such tactics.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8JDRiwoiZw

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) said of the White House / GOP intentional distortion of Kerry's “stuck in Iraq” remark: "A fundamental premise of politics is: We can make this work if people just never figure it out." and "Well, it's pretty standard fare in political discourse. You misconstrue what somebody said. You isolate a statement, you lend your interpretation to it and then feign moral outrage."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0LmTkAiJ9M

In other words leading Republicans think it’s OK to lie to achieve your political objectives and aren’t ashamed to admit it. This however had gotten very little play in the supposedly “liberal media”.

It is interesting to note that when a Democrat (Kerry) flubs a line (stuck in Iraq) the media did very little to make it clear he (as even Armey admitted) meant something else but when a Republican (Bush) made a similar mistake (“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”) the press quickly pointed out the obvious, that he had misspoken.

The Democrats unfortunately are incompetent in the PR game. Armey and Reynolds made their admissions BEFORE the elections but the Dems apparently DIDN’T make anything of this (I can’t be sure since I’m not in the US). Obviously if the Democrats had made similarly deceptive ads and leading Democrats bragged about it Rove and his clones and their spin machines (not to mention Ann Coulter et. al.) would have had a field day

And now for an update:

Ex-GOP operative tells cautionary tale about 'how to rig an election'

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (CNN) -- Allen Raymond is living proof that political dirty tricksters do exist.

The former Republican political operative went to federal prison after he pleaded guilty to charges of phone harassment. He jammed the phone lines of New Hampshire's Democratic Party on Election Day six years ago.

[…]

According to federal prosecutors, two top Republican Party officials tapped Raymond's Virginia-based telemarketing firm for the operation.

[…]

In his book, "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative," Raymond details how he got caught. An hour and a half into the jamming operation he received an e-mail from a Republican official, frantically telling him to shut down the calls. The e-mail read: "Chairman wishes not to proceed with this project ... insists it violates federal law."

[…]

One of Raymond's alleged co-conspirators, James Tobin, was a top official with the National Republican Senatorial Committee that year. He went on to serve as George W. Bush's Northeastern regional re-election chairman in 2004. Tobin was initially convicted. But he succeeded in having that decision overturned by an appellate court. Just last week, Tobin was again indicted in the case on two counts of making false statements to a federal agent. His lawyer had no comment.

Another co-conspirator and former chairman of New Hampshire's Republican Party, Charles McGee, pleaded guilty to phone harassment in the case and served seven months in prison.

www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/22/rigging.election/index.html

Dirty tricks in 2002 and in 2006. Nixon of course used them decades earlier. Is more of the same planned for 2008?

What of the faux Acorn scandal? So far zero evidence has been produced people running the group tried to register fake voters often they were the ones who told the relevant authorities the cards were suspect? Nor has any evidence produced the phony registrants were planning on voting which would require fake state issued photo ID something very difficult to obtain in the name of a non-existent person.

…University of Washington law professor Eric Schnapper says the idea of fake cards turning into real votes is a myth.
"There are no known instances of fictitious people actually voting," Schnapper said. "You look at some of the names: Mickey Mouse. Dr. Seuss. Mickey Mouse only votes in Disneyland. He's not going to show up at a critical precinct in West Virginia or North Carolina."

Schnapper said that if anyone should be upset, it's ACORN.
"The victims of this are the people who paid these workers $8 an hour to go out and find legitimate voters, and ... they didn't get their $8 worth; they put down phony names," Schnapper said.

[…]

Threats of criminal prosecution may scare some groups into closing voter registration drives, according to Schnapper. It could scare actual voters away from the polls as well, he said, "and that really does affect the outcomes of the election."

A report from the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School supports his claim. Researchers reviewed voter fraud claims across the country and found that most were caused by technical glitches, clerical errors or mistakes made by voters. One other finding: A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to impersonate another voter at the polls.

www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/22/voter.fraud/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

[Jason]

ACORN is not a faux scandal.

[gillianren]

Actually, I read that book. It's fascinating and painful, all at once.

[lenbrazil]

Oct 23, 2008 11:44:58 GMT -4 Jason said:

ACORN is not a faux scandal.

I assume then you have evidence that…

• ACORN staff members (as opposed to temporary employees) submitted voter registration cards they knew or suspected were fraudulent without notifying the relevant authorities.
  
  
• Anyone who had been registered under a fake name by them attempted to obtain fake state issued photo ID in order to vote more than once

Any reaction the use of deciet by the GOP and its endorsement by high ranking party officials?

[Jason]

I'm not going to argue the issue.
Of course Republican politicians have hyped-up the threat ACORN represents to the voting system, but that doesn't mean that ACORN is innocent.

Look at Missouri alone:
In 1986 12 members of ACORN were convicted of voter fraud in Missouri.
In December of 2004 in St. Louis six volunteers plead guilty to dozens of election law violations for filling out registration cards with the names of dead people and other bogus information.
On February 10, 2005, Nonaresa Montgomery, a paid worker, was found guilty of vote fraud. She had hired about 30 workers to do fraudulent voter-registration canvassing by writing out names and information from an outdated voter list instead of going door-to-door. 1,500 fraudulent registration cards were turned in.
In October 2006, St. Louis election officials discoverd at least 1,492 "potentially fraudulent" cards turned in by ACORN volunteers.
In November 2006, 20,000-35,000 questionable voter registration forms were turned in by ACORN officials in Missouri, most from the St. Louis and Kansas City areas. Workers admitted on camera that they were coached to tell registrants to vote for Democrat Claire McCaskill.
In 2007 in Kansas City Missouri, 4 ACORN employees were indicted for fraud. In April of 2007 8 ACORN employees in St. Louis city plead guilty to federal election fraud for submitting bogus voter registrations.

Current investigations of ACORN are going on in:
North Carolina (at least 100 forms with the same names over and over again from ACORN)
Ohio - a Cleveland man said he was given cash and cigarettes by ACORN activists in exchange for registering 72 times. Witnesses have been subpoenaed to testify against the group.
Nevada - authorities raided ACORN headquarters on Oct 7 after a month-long investigation. Fraudulent voter registrations included the Dallas Cowboys starting line-uo.
Indiana - 2,000 registration forms in Lake County filled out by ACORN employees were bogus. Officials stopped processign a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the Oct 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony.
Connecticut - Officials are investigating a complaint against ACORN in Bridgeport, where about 8,000 cards were submitted. In one instance a card was filled out for a 7-year-old-girl.
Missouri - ACORN officials agreed that at least 4% of their registrations are bogus.
Pennsylvania - 252,595 registrations were submitted in Philadelphia - 57,435 of them were rejected, most submitted by ACORN.
Wisoncsin - in Milwaukee ACORN used felons as registration workers, which is illegal.
Texas - of the 30,000 cards ACORN turned in, Harris County tax assessor Paul Bettencourt says 10,000 are invalid.
Michiagn - ACORN in Detroit is being investigated.
New Mexico - the Bernalillo County clerk has notified prosecuters that 1,100 fraudulent voter registration cards were turned in by ACORN.

You might be right that ACORN staff members themselves are doing what they can to prevent fraudulent cards from getting through, but if that's the case then they obviously aren't doing enough.

[lenbrazil]

Since all citizens over the age of 18 (except those convicted of certain felonies in certain states) are entitled to vote, there only would be fraud if ACORN employees knowingly tried to:

- register people ineligible (due to age, felony conviction or being a non-citizens) or
- have eligible citizens register and vote more than once using false names

Both of the above would quite difficult because even if the phony registration forms passed the scrutiny of the relevant state authorities, which wouldn’t be easy, the faux voters would have to obtain fake state or federally issued photo ID, which would be very difficult.

So far I’ve seen no evidence that any fake voters were registered let alone they tried to get fake ID, let alone that they received it and voted or tried to.

The story is basically the following; ACORN pays people, low wages to sign up new voters. These people have quotas to meet. Some of these people submit fake registration cards to keep their jobs. Thus ACORN is the victim of rather than the perpetrator of fraud. Thus it is a faux scandal. Perhaps they should have done a better job weeding out fake cards but the only victims were state agencies who were given extra work load.

As to the number of rejected cards, it does not follow that all rejected cards were fraudulent many could simply have been improperly filled out or the people checking them could have been over zealous.

[Jason]

ACORN is a victim because they refuse to clean up their act and perform proper checks of the names they submit?

[gillianren]

My understanding is that it's illegal to destroy voter information cards once they've been filled out. I don't know if that's true in all jurisdictions, but I certainly believe that's valuable information to have to hand.