|
Dirty tricks to intimidate voters { November 1 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1339356,00.htmlhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1339356,00.html
US Elections 2004
November 01, 2004
Dirty tricks allegations heat ground war to get out vote
By Tim Reid in Washington and James Bone in Green Bay, Wisconsin
AMERICANS go to the polls tomorrow as the biggest get-out-the-vote effort in the nation’s history climaxes, with millions of volunteers knocking on doors amid myriad allegations of dirty tricks.
With strategists for President Bush and John Kerry believing that victory in key swing states now boils down to which side can turn out the most of their core supporters, the campaigns have unleashed a minutely planned 72-hour door-to-door push to send registered voters flocking to the polls, with volunteers even offering to babysit or drive people to polling stations.
But as the ground war hotted up yesterday, mounting evidence emerged of dirty tricks. Bogus fliers, printed on official-looking county notepaper, were handed out in a Pittsburgh shopping mall, announcing that election day had been extended by 24 hours.
In Wisconsin, another flier circulated in Milwaukee’s black neighbourhoods states that if you have already voted in any election this year, “you cannot vote in the presidential election. If you violate any of these laws, you get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you.”
In Ohio, registered Democrats have been receiving calls reminding them to vote on November 5 (three days after the election). In Florida, people have been told they cannot vote if they have unpaid child support. Democrats also allege that Republicans are trying to suppress voter turnout by hiring “angry voters” who wander black neighbourhoods yelling out that lines are hours long. Several states have launched investigations into allegations that Democrat and Republican volunteers have destroyed voter registration forms.
Republicans in another state are investigating claims that more registered voter forms have been returned in one county than there are registered voters. “In my 16 years as an election official, I’ve never seen anything like this,” Ion Sancho, a Florida election official, told the Washington Post.
The liberal activist Michael Moore, director of the anti-Bush film Fahrenheit 9/11, plans to have hundreds of cameramen outside polling places in Ohio and Florida on election day to watch for attempts to suppress voter turnout.
The allegations have done little to suppress the enthusiasm of get-out-the-vote volunteers. No two people better demonstrate that commitment than Pamela Dennison and Kathleen Kelly-Hoffman.
Rival volunteers in Green Bay, part of the potentially pivotal swing state of Wisconsin, Mrs Dennison, a travel agent and devout Catholic, is going door-to-door in the suburban backstreets of this conservative Wisconsin town to remind core Republican voters to vote.
Mrs Kelly-Hoffman, a yoga teacher who preaches “compassion” to her classes, is knocking on doors in a poorer neighbourhood near by to get out the Democrat vote.
The two working mothers, who each have two children, are part of a strategy to reach voters personally, with many turned off by the blizzard of negative advertisements.
In 2000, Al Gore carried Wisconsin, a state of more than five million people, by just 5,708 votes: a margin of victory of about one vote per ward.
Mrs Kelly-Hoffman, who was wooing Democrats, boasted: “I can probably influence at least a dozen people.”
|
|
