The BBC has an article on the GOP's Florida election activities; intercepted documents and at least one eyewitness report indicate that hundreds of voters in traditionally black and Democratic areas of Jacksonville alone have had their names collected in preparation for a mass voter challenge operation, which is already underway at Florida's early voting stations. This is exactly the same tactic the GOP is using in Ohio, right down to the organized use of returned mailings from the postal system as an address probe.
Florida is another state with a large number of new registrations and an mportant minority vote, in a large swing state. With schemes like this exposed in Ohio and Florida, I suspect my own close-polliing swing state of Pennsylvania can not possibly have escaped the same tactic.
We've been waiting for the October Suprise and wondering who it would help. Is this it? Issue after issue has been unable to change the mind of Democratic and Republican voters alike throughout this election season, which has turned more on matters of the heart. Could this speak to the conscience of Republican voters? This is one party's plot to disrupt the fundamental act of our democracy with a systematic nationwide effort to derail enthusiastic new voters. Bare technicalities make it legal by a stretch of the definition, but that in no way makes it right. Aren't all of us, of all parties, still American first, American enough that this should disgust us and make us withhold our vote from anyone who would do such a thing?
Posted by William at October 27, 2004 08:10 AM