2 examples of the GOP using the same voting scam on students in FL and PA. Please alert any college students you know.
From Public Radio International's program To the Point with Warren Olney on 10-12-2004:
Ian Sanchow (sp?) Supervisor of Elections for Leon County Florida (includes Tallahassee)
Another activity that we found in Leon County were that individuals were going up to students waiting at the bus stop at FAM U and TCC and asking them if they'd like to sign a petition to legalize marijuana, something that was clearly targeted to young people when they gave their info to the pollsters they received voter registration card that switched their party to the Republican party or in some cases and this happened to my step-daughter she filled out this same petition in Orlando and she was re-registered to vote in Orlando despite being an absentee ballot voter of Tall and her party affiliation was changed so someone is really trying to sow confusion in the one group that confusion could have a negative impact and that is inexperienced young voters and African- American voters.
I couldn't find an official transcript, so I transcribed the above excerpt myself. You can listen to the full program at :
http://www.moretothepoint.com/ The discussion of voter supression occurs 27:05 minutes into the program.
From the NYTimes on 10-29-2004:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/politics/campaign/29ohio.html
The authorities were also investigating reports from students on campuses in Allegheny and in Indiana County, northeast of Pittsburgh, who said their party registrations had been fraudulently switched to Republican after they signed what they had been told were petitions to legalize the medical use of marijuana. In some cases, their addresses were changed, resulting in a new polling place.
The Repugs are doing this so that when these students show up to what they think is their polling place to vote, they will not be registered there. They may end up voting on provisional ballots which would not be counted because they are in the wrong precinct. My guess is that the Repubs are switching the party registration of these students to Republican, so that in the event of a recount or court challenges, they can argue that there is a higher percentage of Republicans on provisional ballots.
The fact that this scam is going on in different states suggests some level of national coordination. This really needs to be investigated for links to the RNC or maybe the College Republicans. Even in FL this type of thing must be illegal.
Please alert any college students you know to the scam and advise them to verify their precinct with the Board of Elections if they think they may have been affected.
Here's some more voter suppression activity in Leon County from the same interview on To the Point:
Ian Sanchow Supervisor of Elections for Leon County Florida (includes Tallahassee)
but, Here in Leon County just my own jurisdiction we have had numerous reports of voter suppression activities and outright misinformation being given to voters, particularly in 2 groups-- young voters and African American voters.
We have at this point for example when we went through the voter registration forms found that Over 2500 individuals who were registered to vote but their original forms were not turned into my office instead what we found were photocopies of the original forms and fraudulent material added to the voter registrations of these individuals. Over 1000 of these individuals are African-American voters overwhelmingly they're under the age of 25. So, it's very clear that shenanigans like this ..