Are Republican fraudsters throwing away absentee ballots that they have promised to deliver for shut-ins, while claiming to be working for the Obama campaign, or are Obama campaign workers violating policy? Some little old ladies in Colorado have told Democratic phone bankers that "nice young men from the Obama campaign" came around and offered to deliver their absentee ballots. The campaign says that it never does this. Do campaign workers all know that?
The phone bankers explained that this seemed to be voter suppression, in which the women's absentee ballots were most likely thrown away or destroyed, and that they needed to make arrangements to vote in person. The women in question agreed with this suggestion, even though it will be difficult for them, and so as far as we know those particular votes will be cast and counted, one way or the other.
What we do not know is whether this really is voter suppression, and if so, how extensive it is, and what effect it will have. I have heard only from one phone banking location. There is a very close race in Colorado, one of the swingiest of swing states, though not one likely to be essential to the outcome. (Nate Silver gives it a 5% chance of deciding the Presidential election.) It is very unlikely that this kind of retail fraud would change the outcome in an entire state, and it is unusual for national elections to hang on the results in one state, but it can happen.
We know that Republicans rely on the cumulative effects of a variety of voter suppression measures in as many swing states as possible, including voter ID laws, threatening billboards, lying on official Secretary of State Web sites, mailers giving incorrect dates for the election (sometimes but by no means always in Spanish: Ohio, Arizona), lying text messages to phones, police intimidation, and throwing people off the voter registration rolls for a variety of supposed reasons. Among the excuses used are having names similar to supposed felons, or non-citizen immigrants. The idea is to get rid of voters with Democratic-sounding names (mostly Hispanic) or in Democratic-leaning demographics. In Florida in 2000 they engaged in half a dozen different kinds of voter suppression and other election chicanery in order to steal a state where the official outcome was Bush by only 537 votes, and thus steal eight years of US and world history, economic, military, and social.
I heard about this problem in Colorado over the phone just now from an old friend whose cousin was one of the phone bankers. This is fourth-hand information, so don't try to make too much of it yet, until we can confirm it or find out that what happened is not what we assumed. I don't know any more, yet, but we are going to see whether we can get this information set down in an organized and complete way and bring it, if necessary, to the attention of the Obama campaign, election authorities, activist organizations, and the media. So I will tell you all more when I know more.
But in the meantime, we can discuss what this means, share information, and set it in the context of all of the other campaign dirty tricks we know about, and how well we are doing at uncovering them, stopping them, and even undoing their effects.
What's your story? (See poll, and tell us about it.)
I believed this story as soon as I heard it, based on other shenanigans that we know about. But it isn't my immediate belief that counts. We need reality. If it is true, we need documentation rising to the level of legal evidence. We need an investigation to tell us how widespread this activity is, and who is behind it. If not, the Obama campaign in Colorado needs to explain its policies better to its workers and volunteers.
Have you heard about any such things? If so, has anybody done anything about it? Has anybody in the local or national media taken notice? Are there any legal actions specifically on this problem taking place?
I am in contact with Colorado Common Cause to look into this further. Their legal person told me what I did not know at first, that it is legal in Colorado for people to take ballots in for other people. So at this point I do not know whether this is incompetence or malice. I try always to assume incompetence first, because that is almost always the case. But not always always. Certainly not in voting in swing states in the US, and most certainly not in Colorado, any more than in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Arizona, and the other states where people, corporations, and the Republican Party have been caught at it repeatedly. (I will agree that corporations are people the day they are freed from chattel slavery under the terms of the 13th Amendment, that is, the day they all become non-profits.)
We know of other legal actions over voting in Colorado, specifically lawsuits against Secretary of State Scott Gessler, plus a certain amount of pointing and laughing, or shaking of fists, in his direction when he appears at True The Vote voter suppression events or spews their propaganda.
Colorado Secretary of State Gessler: "Critics of voter ID ignore fraud"
Colorado Voter Suppression - Election 2012
On October 7th a Denver judge allowed Denver County to mail ballots to its residents who are marked "inactive -- fail to vote' because they did not vote in the last general election. Since the court ruling 9 additional counties have decided to mail ballots to these so - called inactive voters.
Secretary Gessler argues that the law prohibits counties from mailing to these voters. The reality is that the Colorado election code, particularly in mail ballot elections, demonstrates that the legislature intended to increase voter participation, not decrease participation in Colorado elections.
Colorado Common Cause has asked to join this case because making it more difficult for Coloradans to vote violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to U.S. Constitution in addition to Article 2, Sections 5 and 10 of the Colorado Constitution.
Mi Familia Vota Education Fund and the Urban League are also involved, as this story tells us.
Voter Suppression Comes to Colorado
Kossacks have played their part, too, and been noticed doing so. From the Salon.com post above:
I never got a letter. But I found out I had been removed from active voter status. I have lived in CO all my life, I was born here. I have never missed an election. However, about a decade ago I changed my registration from Republican to Democrat. I have voted in every election since too. They are quietly moving people off the lists. [Comment on Daily Kos article 8/29/2012]
…
The Daily Kos revealed that Gessler’s efforts are “ALEC-inspired and Koch brothers-funded,” not surprisingly.
In addition, the criminal corporation, Strategic Allied Consulting, hired by the Republicans to register Republican voters but throw away Democratic registrations in several states, including Colorado, is under indictment and continuing investigation in Florida, and one of its people is under indictment in Virginia for throwing away voter registrations. The company has been fired, and the Republican Party is shocked, shocked to discover voter suppression going on!
We have done fairly well this year in pushing back against the most egregious voter suppression measures in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, Texas, and several other states. We have gotten Clear Channel to take down its voter suppression billboards, and outed the Einhorn Family Foundation that paid for them, funded by Wisconsin-based venture capitalist and Republican donor Stephen Einhorn and his wife. We are pushing hard against lying text messages to cell phones, lying state government Web sites, lying robocalls, and even the outright ballot theft described here.
The evidence is that we are probably doing enough to win this election. Nate Silver has Obama's chances up to 80% again today. Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium rates Obama's chances even higher. They agree that Democrats will keep the Senate, and Wang sees a good chance for Democrats to take the House.
But are we doing enough to win the future? Will we have to do all of this over again in two years?
Further Reading
One could write a book on Republican voter suppression tactics. Actually, several people have.
- Electoral Dysfunction: A Survival Manual for American Voters by Victoria Bassetti, Heather Smith and Mo Rocca (Sep 18, 2012)
- Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps by Greg Palast (Sep 18, 2012)
- The Politics of Voter Suppression: Defending and Expanding Americans' Right to Vote (A Century Foundation Book) by Tova Andrea Wang and Janice Nittoli (Aug 21, 2012)
- The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown by Richard L. Hasen (Aug 14, 2012)
- The Myth of Voter Fraud by Lorraine Carol Minnite (Jun 10, 2010)
- Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008 by Mark Crispin Miller (Apr 1, 2008)
- Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression by Spencer Overton (Jun 5, 2006)
Here is a DVD of a TV special on the subject.
Moyers & Company: Suppressing the Vote Starring Bill Moyers, Keesha Gaskins, Michael Waldman, et al. (Sep 19, 2012) DVD
The Daily Beast, not generally my favorite source for reality-based news, but not a total loss either, has a story on it.
As Election Nears, Voter Suppression Efforts Kick Into Gear
by John Avlon Oct 31, 2012 2:02 PM EDT
Books pushing the myth of voter fraud are one of the tools of choice among the voter suppression crowd.
- Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy by John H. Fund (Jul 21, 2008)
- The Dead Always Vote Democrat: But Our Troops Don't Get to Vote by Ben Brink (Sep 3, 2012)
- Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk by John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky (Aug 14, 2012)
Note: I meant to publish this yesterday evening, but the server went down, and I put it aside for several hours.