> > Transcript of Jack Hitt's report on election fraud for This American
> > Life.
> > (Real Audio available here)
> >
> >
> > There are already hundreds of alarming stories this election year,
> > and as a public service, I've immersed myself in this hideous sump
> > of pond scum. It's deep here. So deep, that to give you even a bare
> > sense of the sheer profundity of this abyss, I'm going to have to
> > resort to one of the oldest gimmicks in radio broadcasting. That's
> > right, speeded up music.
> >
> >
> > [begin music]
> >
> >
> > Nevada: Dan Burdish, former director of the state's Republican
> > Party, filed a complaint to remove 17,000 voters from the rolls
> > because they had failed to file a change of address card. State law
> > doesn't require it and, in fact, allows you to vote after moving.
> > When asked why he did it Burdish told the press, "I am looking to
> > take Democrats off the voter rolls."
> >
> >
> > Florida: Senior citizens in Democratic precincts are calling their
> > election boards by the hundreds reporting that strangers claiming to
> > be from the elections office are offering to "hand deliver" their
> > absentee ballots for them, even though there is no such program.
> >
> >
> > Wyoming: Secretary of State Joseph Meyer interpreted the statutes
> > there to outlaw voter registration drives, like the kind where a
> > group sets up a card table at a mall or library. One of Meyer's
> > oldest friends, a classmate in both high school and college, is Dick
> > Cheney.
> >
> >
> > Philadelphia: Three weeks before the election, a white Republican
> > alderman named Matt Robb requested that 63 polling stations in
> > African American neighborhoods be relocated, thereby making it more
> > confusing for 37,000 Democrat leaning voters.
> >
> >
> > Florida: Once again, as in the 2000 election, the state compiled a
> > list of felons to be barred from voting. Throughout this election
> > year, Governor Jeb Bush's administration struggled to keep this list
> > secret. After a lawsuit forced it into the open, people quickly saw
> > that, while some 23,000 Democrat leaning black felons were barred
> > from voting, almost the same number of hispanic felons in Florida,
> > who tend to vote Republican, were somehow not on the list.
> >
> >
> > Ohio: Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has ruled that anyone showing
> > up in the wrong precinct will not be able to vote there, even by
> > provisional ballot. Immediately afterward, people begain to report
> > odd phone calls telling voters that their voting place had changed,
> > sending them to the wrong precinct.
> >
> >
> > Arizona: Students at Arizona State University were told by a
> > reporter at Fox News and the Republican county vote registrar that
> > registering students was a federal crime unless students planned to
> > stay in Arizona "indefinitely" after graduation. The Supreme Court
> > of the United States long ago ruled otherwise.
> >
> >
> > [end music]
> >
> >
> > There are some stories, though, where you really want to slow down
> > and relish the details. Take New Hampshire.
> >
> >
> > On election day two years ago the Democrats offered their voters a
> > hotline to call if they were disabled or aged and needed a ride to
> > the polls. Early in the morning, the phones started ringing
> > continuously, but when the volunteers answered, the callers would
> > hang up. This jammed the lines and legitimate callers couldn't get
> > through. The Democrats complained to Verizon, which immediately
> > traced every one of the calls to a Virginia company called GOP
> > Marketplace. After a police investigation, the president of that
> > firm and the former executive director of the New Hampshire
> > Republican Party both pled guilty to criminal charges and admitted
> > that they'd hatched the plan to have callers from GOP Marketplace
> > jam the line in order to prevent elderly and disabled Democrats from
> > getting to the polls.
> >
> >
> > But that's not the end of the story.
> >
> >
> > The court documents refer ominously to an unindicted co-conspirator,
> > a national strategist, who arranged the entire dirty trick. The
> > Democrats launched a civil suit to find out how far up the line the
> > order went. In October, the Democrats lawyer, Steve Gordon,
> > scheduled a routine deposition of one of those involved. Twenty
> > minutes before they were all to meet in Gordon's office, a call came
> > in. It was the Justice Department of the United States in
> > Washington, John Ashcroft's office, issuing an emergency halt to the
> > deposition. The deposition would have to be postponed until after
> > the election.
> >
> >
> > This federal intrusion into local politics was so ham-fisted and
> > extraordinary that it got tongues wagging all over the state, and
> > soon enough the tongues shook loose the identity of the mystery
> > phone jammer as one of President Bush's top strategists, Jeffrey
> > Tobin [sic]*, the regional director of Bush/Cheney '04 for the
> > entire northeast. Two weeks ago, he resigned.
> >
> >
> > In the past, all these tactics would have been found out by the
> > media weeks after the election when the perpetrators would be long
> > gone and the damage done. But this year, the Internet is ready.
> > Every day new accounts of political scamming surface on blogs like
> > Atrios or Daily Kos. There's even an archive or dirty tricks
> > maintained over at eRiposte.com, and when you browse these sites,
> > once hidden patterns suddenly appear. It's sort of like how
> > historians say that serial murder was only discovered after the
> > invention of the telegraph, which allowed cops to quickly share
> > evidence. This year the blogs have allowed us to see, for the very
> > first time, the wide, wide world of serial vote suppression.
> >
> >
> > For example, let's look at the accounts of two librarians, who've
> > never met, from opposite sides of the country. In September, Meghan
> > O'Flagherty [sp?], a librarian in Medford, Oregon, got a letter.
> >
> >
> > [Meghan speaking] The letter that came to me... It's on Sproul &
> > Associates, Inc. letterhead... "Our firm has been contacted to help
> > coordinate a national non-partisan voter registration drive. We
> > would like to be able to register people to vote in front of your
> > location."
> >
> >
> > [Reporter voiceover resumes] That name, Sproul & Associates... I
> > want you to remember that. Now let's leave Oregon, fly off to
> > Pittsburgh, PA, where Holly McCullough [sp?] at the Carnegie library
> > got a similar request: Nathan Sproul, for a non-partisan
> > registration drive. But things weren't what they seemed. Holly, for
> > example, had patrons complaining that the Sproul workers were
> > quizzing them about who they would vote for.
> >
> >
> > Unfortunately for Sproul & Associates, they tried to deceive the one
> > group of Americans whose job is research: reference librarians. So
> > both Meghan and Holly started digging, and here's what they found
> > out.
> >
> >
> > Sproul, as it turns out, is a partisan group, run by Nathan Sproul,
> > the former director of the Arizona Republican Party and the state's
> > Christian Coalition. Sproul has received more than $3,000,000 in
> > contracts this year from no less than the Republican National
> > Committee to pump up party registration. And these last two weeks,
> > Sproul has been popping up everywhere, in as many as 10 states.
> > Let's soar off to one of them: West Virginia.
> >
> >
> > Lisa Bragg [sp?] is a temp worker there who signed on with a half
> > dozen other temps for work described as "customer service." She
> > remembers it required a day of training.
> >
> >
> > [Lisa speaking] They presented us with some paperwork, and on one of
> > the papers, on the top of the paper, it says Sproul & Associates,
> > and it's a script, a voter registration script, and it gives you
> > different scenarios, one is for Bush and one is for Kerry, as to how
> > you would speak to people...
> >
> >
> > [Reporter speaking] Right. Do you remember, sort of, what those
> > scripts were?
> >
> >
> > [Lisa] It's right in front of me. I kept these forms.
> >
> >
> > [Reporter] Oh really? Oh great! Can you just... just, if you were
> > approaching me on the street, how would you... how would it go?
> >
> >
> > [Lisa] OK, I can do that. OK, I would say, "Hello. We are doing a
> > simple survey. If the election were held today, would you vote for
> > President Bush or Senator Kerry?" If you were to say Bush, I would
> > say, "Great! Well, this is a very important election year. Are you
> > registered to vote at your current residence?" If you would say no,
> > I would say, "All right, can you please fill out this voter
> > registration form?"
> >
> >
> > [Reporter] If I had said "Kerry," what would you have said to me?
> >
> >
> > [Lisa] "Thank you very much for your time. I will record this."
> >
> >
> > [Reporter] Oh, so you wouldn't hand the person a registration card
> > at all?
> >
> >
> > [Lisa] No.
> >
> >
> > [Reporter voiceover resumes] Lisa said she quit. She didn't like all
> > the secrecy and covert operations involved.
> >
> >
> > [Lisa speaking] I mean, another thing that said this is very
> > suspicous and very underhanded was on another sheet of paper, it
> > says... they were telling us if the media approached us, to go to a
> > pay phone and call this number. They didn't want us talking to the
> > media.
> >
> >
> > [Reporter speaking] And what... when you called that number, what
> > was supposed to... what were you supposed to just say?
> >
> >
> > [Lisa] Uh... "The media's coming! The media's coming!" I don't know!
> >
> >
> > [laughter]
> >
> >
> > [Lisa] "Help! The media's here!" I don't know!
> >
> >
> > [laughter]
> >
> >
> > [Lisa] I don't know what I was... I didn't want to be put in a
> > position like that. To me, that just said, this is not good, you
> > know?
> >
> >
> > [Reporter] Right. Right.
> >
> >
> > [Lisa] And, not only was I lying to people, you know, about what I
> > was doing, but... I was going to hide from the media? That's crazy.
> >
> >
> > [Reporter voiceover resumes] OK. Tinkerbell, are you ready to fly
> > off to the next spot? Look! There's Nevada. This week, though, what
> > happens in Vegas isn't staying there. It's the latest chapter of the
> > Sproul story, one that will soon get told in criminal court.
> >
> >
> > A former Sproul worker has hired a lawyer named Paul Larsen, who
> > explains the upcoming case.
> >
> >
> > [Paul] This young man didn't do the screening process and just
> > registered everybody who, you know, would let him do it. This is
> > according to his sworn affadavit. The organization had indicated to
> > him that, you know, we're not paying you to register Democrats, and
> > actually tore up several of these in front of him, which he
> > retrieved from the trash, and we provided them to the court as
> > exhibits.
> >
> >
> > [Reporter voiceover resumes] Two more former Sproul workers in
> > Nevada and others in Oregon have stepped forward with allegations of
> > more registrations being ripped up. No one knows how many may have
> > been destroyed, so these people, all Democrats, will not be able to
> > vote at all. They think they are registered, and may show up at the
> > polls on election day to learn that there is no legal way,
> > provisional ballot or not, that they can vote.
> >
> >
> > In resposne to the Sproul story, Republicans in Nevada have said
> > that Democrats engage in similar tactics. Chris Carr, the executive
> > director of the state party, made public three Democrat registration
> > forms with non-existent addresses.
> >
> >
> > This is the way these stories go. Both sides make charges that seem
> > roughly the same. But on this issue, there is a qualitative
> > difference between Democrats and Republicans. I called both camps
> > and asked them to give me their worst stuff about the other side.
> > Here's what the Republican spokesman, Scott Hogenson, said.
> >
> >
> > [Scott] We have been compiling hundreds of pages of media reports
> > from all over the country of documented cases of investigations of
> > fraudulent voter registration cases. Everything from police in Ohio
> > investigating a pro-Kerry effort to submit faulty voter registration
> > forms, then pay the people with crack cocaine, to a gentleman in
> > Denver, CO, who brags and laughs on television about having
> > registered to vote 35 times, that it's just the... the number and
> > degree of faulty and questionable and outright fraudulent
> > registrations is really quite stunning in its depth and breadth.
> >
> >
> > [Reporter voiceover resumes] He sent me a copy. It's all newspaper
> > clips, many of them unverified charges. There are a few that check
> > out. There really was, for example, this white guy working for an
> > outfit affiliated with the NAACP, who registered voters under names
> > like Mary Poppins and Jeffrey Dahmer, and it's true, he was paid in
> > crack cocaine. Very bad... and a great story. And then there was the
> > Colorado guy who registered himself 35 times. Also true. Also very
> > bad. But the reason you're going to be hearing about these two
> > examples over and over in the offical Republican talking points in
> > the next few days is that that's the best they've got in their
> > hundreds of pages.
> >
> >
> > Strange enough, reading the very stories they sent often undercut
> > their main argument. For example, that Colorado guy? Here's a line
> > from the article the GOP sent me: "Just because you register someone
> > 35 times, doesn't mean they vote 35 times." Or, here's another one:
> > "Election officials of both parties say that bad registrations do
> > not necessarily translate into election day fraud. New
> > identification laws, as well as signature checks, make ballot box
> > stuffing extremely difficult." Let me repeat: these are quotes from
> > the official Republican vote fraud press packet.
> >
> >
> > Where there are real cases of registration fraud in this compendium,
> > they usually involve poor people getting caught not trying to fix
> > the vote, but trying to squeeze a few extra bucks or, OK, a nice
> > chunk of crack, out of these organizations that stupidly pay the
> > temps a fee for each registration card turned in. But don't take my
> > word for it. Again, the GOP's own clip file... registration
> > irregularities are "not an attempt to commit fraud, but rather the
> > result of greedy workers who get paid for every voter they sign up,
> > or already registered voters who forget and register again."
> >
> >
> > Meanwhile the incidents of vote suppression on the Republican side
> > involve massive numbers and, soon enough, actual jail time for high
> > ranking officials connected directly to the party. Chuck McGee, the
> > executive director of the New Hampshire GOP is scheduled to be
> > sentenced. Sproul is awaiting trial. Then there's Florida's felony
> > purge list, which almost knocked 23,000 African Americans off the
> > voting rolls while keeping arguably the same number of Republican
> > leaning felons free to vote. Recently the Sarasota Herald Tribune
> > wrote the story that Governor Jeb Bush, the President's brother,
> > ordered the state to proceed with the felony purge list even though
> > the database company that put it all together informed him that it
> > was so hopelessly flawed he should "pull the plug."
> >
> >
> > So, are they all the same? Is the crackhead faking a handful of
> > registrations for Jeffrey Dahmer the same kind of thing as wiping
> > 17,000 voters in Nevada, 23,000 voters in Florida, 30,000 voters in
> > Ohio completely off the rolls?
> >
> >
> > The other part of the ground war that's being waged this weekend is
> > to make you think that they are.
> >
> >
> > =====
> > * Jim Tobin
> >
> >
> > Report Election Fraud & Voter Intimidation:
> > Call 1-866-OUR-VOTE
> > (Sponsored by The Election Protection Coalition)
> >
> >
>
> JoAnn W. Rogers Ph.D Student Sociology
> Instructor/ Teaching Assistant
> Sociology/ Women's Studies
> 412 East Hall
> (515) 294-8012
>
joeyr@iastate.edu
>
Voter Fraud Already
Linear Mode
