More important than the media's reporting of individual instances of vote suppression/fraud is turning on the media to the wider PATTERNS of these events.
These "isolated" instances are, in fact, not isolated at all, but rather part of a much wider effort by the RNC and the Bush campaign to steal or suppress votes this year.
While we have seen reporting on these efforts here and there, focusing frequently on isolated cases, there has been little or no reporting focusing on the systemic, coordinated and organized Republican efforts with and across battleground states.
But we can be the media's eyes and ears...
(more)
Therefore, I suggest the following:
1. We document the individual instances of fraud/suppression and put each instance into a particular "bucket." For example, the Sproul & Associates efforts in multiple states to destroy, discard or not register Democrats while misrepresenting themselves as representatives of a legitimate GOTV organization might be its own bucket called Registration Fraud. (There may be other RNC-funded outfits doing the same things in additional states.) Intimidation of voters - either through a police presence or a Republican-paid voter challenger at polling places -- would be another. Fraudulently collecting absentee ballot applications would be a third, etc. Each of these buckets would include instances by state. Conversely, the instances could be cross-referenced by state as they could by bucket (a simple sort/spreadsheet design).
2. Media members, both local and national, who are covering instances of fraud and suppression are identified and added to a master list. Team members from kos are assigned one or more reporters.
3. Individual kos members get assigned a particular media member in key markets in swing states. For example, one kos member would feed both the BUCKET info and the local/state info to a particular reporter at the Columbus Post Dispatch who has been covering instances of voter fraud. We can assign team members by city or state, simply using e-mail to convey the information to our targeted reporters, be they print or broadcast. The idea would be to quickly establish a relationship of trust between the kos team member and the targeted reporter. Keep in mind that reporters are busy covering their own stories, and are, therefore, time-constrained on seeing the bigger picture. We become the eyes and ears for that reporter, accumulating information and uncovering the patterns.
4. We do the same thing for national media, print and broadcast. It might be best to have a single kos member be in contact with particular reporters. For example, today's NY Times has a front page article about Republican efforts to post paid staffers at polling places in predominately minority neighborhoods to challenge voters. We need to get to those reporters with examples of the same sort of possible intimidation tactics in other swing states. These reporters need "stringers" to feed them stories of related activities in additional locations.
5. We do our own research and look for links that tie these activities directly back to the Bush campaign and/or the Republican National Committee. In the Sproul case, the online and in-print recruitment ads were marked with a "Paid for by the Republican National Committee" sign off at the bottom of the ad. Registrars were paid with checks from the account of Sproul & Associates. So in this case, the links are direct.
6. One of us (me?) accumulates the fraud/suppression news of the day each day by 5:00 p.m. (CST) and posts it somewhere on kosopedia or on the main page for distribution to the assigned media members.
7. Assigned kos team members "pick up" that day's accumulated new information and forward it, with a cover note, to their assigned reporter(s).
I think we could pull this together relatively quickly and execute on this daily from now through election day. Not only would it garner additional media spotlight on these undemocratic efforts by Republicans, it would also document these abuses for the Democratic Party should the need arise to challenge results in key states.
Please recommend this diary if you believe this warrants further discussion among the community at large.
Thanks.
