I just was made aware of this, in the St. Pete Times (local paper in the Tampa Bay area) and via a fellow Tampa Bay-area Obama volunteer who alerted me to it:
The piece, paid for by the Republican National Committee and authorized by McCain, tells voters it is seeking to double-check their "unconfirmed" party affiliations while asking for money. A letter signed by McCain tells the Democrats: "We have you registered as a Republican."
More, plus a link to DIGG it, at the jump.
UPDATE: H/T to Ladyhawk for directing me to the excellent Voter Suppression Wiki as a resource for reporting voter suppression/fraud incidents.
More from the above-linked St. Pete Times article (bolding is mine):
"I was a little bit shocked and a little bit surprised," said recipient Bill Smith, 81, of Tampa, who calls himself a lifelong Democrat and has been registered at his current address since 2000. The retired plant engineer is one of about a dozen senior citizens that Democratic Party leaders identified as recipients, all of them longtime Democrats.
The RNC declined to discuss the mailer, which Democrats said has landed in five counties: Duval, Hillsborough, Collier, Miami-Dade and Escambia.
Note that these five counties are heavily-populated around major metropolitan areas. Hillsborough is my county (I live in Tampa), and it doesn't take a genius to figure out which large metropolitan area the Miami-Dade County lines encompass.
The article continues with these interesting tidbits (again, bolding is mine):
Some Democrats suspect a motive beyond raising money. The first-class GOP mailing has a "Do not forward" instruction on the envelope, meaning they will be returned to the GOP if a recipient has had mail forwarded, perhaps to a summer address, or has moved.
Letters returned as undeliverable can be compiled into "challenge lists" of unverifiable addresses and can be used to challenge voters' eligibility during early voting or on Election Day. The vote suppression technique is known as "vote caging."
"That postcard is a little disconcerting," said letter-recipient Steve Hemping of Naples, chairman of the Collier County Democratic Party and a state party official. "You don't know if they're going to use it to challenge somebody's right to vote."
The Republicans are clearly at their dirty tricks again, in the swing state that caused all this mess back in 2000. We can't be caught with our pants down a third time in a row; we need to call attention to these voter-suppression tactics swiftly and early. Like, preferably BEFORE the election actually happens. As I saw in another liberal message-board forum, being forewarned is being forearmed.
We need to get the word out, to our conventional-media outlets as well as to other blogs and such. You can start by DIGGing this article here.