| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"\Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
03 Aug 2005 07:36:27 PM |
| Object: |
Report Says goose stepping Dems Intimidated Voters |
August 03, 2005
Report Says Dems Intimidated Voters Far More Than GOP In 2004 (Updates!!)
Please be sure to read the update at the end.
Be sure to read UPDATE II as well. The trolls may have overstated the issues
with ACVR as a front.
I missed this when it first came out in yesterday's Arizona Central Bizwire,
but an independent report from the new American Center for Voting Rights
Legislative Fund identifies far more incidents of voter intimidation and
fraud on behalf of Democrats and their candidates than it did on behalf of
their opponents. Their report, available here on their website, makes it
clear that Democrat complaints about Republican conspiracies consist of
little more than a classic case of projection:
While Democrats routinely accuse Republicans of voter intimidation and
suppression, neither party has a clean record on the issue. Instead, the
evidence shows that Democrats waged aggressive intimidation and suppression
campaigns against Republican voters and volunteers in 2004. Republicans have
not been exempt from similar criticism in this area, as alleged voter
intimidation and suppression activity by GOP operatives led the Republican
National Committee to sign a consent decree repudiating such tactics in
1982. However, a careful review of the facts shows that in 2004, paid
Democrat operatives were far more involved in voter intimidation and
suppression efforts than their Republican counterparts. Examples include:
* Paid Democrat operatives charged with slashing tires of 25 Republican
get-out-the-vote vans in Milwaukee on the morning of Election Day.
* Misleading telephone calls made by Democrat operatives targeting
Republican voters in Ohio with the wrong date for the election and faulty
polling place information.
* Intimidating and deceiving mailings and telephone calls paid for by the
DNC threatening Republican volunteers in Florida with legal action.
* Union-coordinated intimidation and violence campaign targeting
Republican campaign offices and volunteers resulting in a broken arm for a
GOP volunteer in Florida.
Most of these incidents have received plenty of attention in the
blogosphere, but have received little systematic analysis in the Exempt
Media. The complaints of the Democrats have received plenty of media play,
and they have formed the basis of some embarrassing grandstanding by leading
Democratic politicians, notably Barbara Boxer's efforts to decertify Ohio's
electors in January which held up the certification of Bush's victory for
two hours. However, the ACVR report shows almost all of their claims to have
no merit whatsoever.
Be sure to read through all the details of the report. It takes a
comprehensive view of all the so-called "irregularities" of the 2004
election and makes minced meat of Democratic claims of victimhood. It will
not change any minds among the True Believers, but the rational moderates
will have this much more information with which to judge the vanishing
credibility of Democratic leadership.
UPDATE: Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice says that the ACVL has some
controversial and potentially partisan financing. He's checking into it now.
It's worth maintaining some skepticism on this report until more is known
about the organization, which came into existence this past February and
describes itself as a non-partisan effort to ensure clean elections. I'd
consider Joe to be a pretty solid resource on this type of issue. I don't
think all the mea culpas he issued on his post were warranted -- after all,
we could get most of the information in this report from media accounts --
but he does have a point about ensuring that the group isn't acting as a
front.
UPDATE II: I still haven't seen much about where ACVR gets its funding. I
have seen plenty about how Mark F. "Thor" Hearne worked on the Bush/Cheney
campaign in 2000 and 2004. But the other signatory to the report is Brian A.
Lunde, who by this description hardly appears to be a right-wing idealogue:
Brian A. Lunde (1976) served as national field director for Jimmy Carter's
presidential campaign, as executive director of the Kentucky Democratic
Party and as executive director for the Democratic National Committee before
becoming a partner in Lunde & Burger, a political consulting and government
relations firm in McLean, Va.
This description also includes Lunde's former DNC board membership as his
background. Also here. Here, too. Lunde shows up attached to Helping
Americans Vote on this site. His only campaign contribution in the past four
years went to Congressman Mike Ross (D-AR). And for those wondering if Lunde
went from Ted Kennedy to Pat Buchanan, here's a tidbit from this past May:
Meanwhile, a federal grand jury reportedly has subpoenaed the records of
two other lobbyists -- Brian Lunde and George Burger -- hired for $50,000 by
Scanlon to win Democratic support for the amendment. Proponents of the
amendment had wanted it attached to an election-revision bill that Dodd had
sponsored in the Senate.
The two Democrats, Brian Lunde and George Burger, in turn are said to have
paid $10,000 to a third lobbyist linked to Dodd, Lottie Shackelford, to
secure the senator's support for the single-sentence rider that would have
unshuttered the casino closed by Texas authorities.
It appears that the report, at least, has some bipartisan credentials, even
if the Democrat has some lobbying baggage. (More on Lunde can be found on
this Google search.) It doesn't mean that it's completely unbiased, but it
doesn't appear to be the fraud that some commenters claim it to be, either.
(h/t: John R.
--
USAF VET
3rd LES CAB, PI
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| User: "Nonames_are_available" |
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| Title: Re: Oh A NeoCon Report, How Credible - LOL |
03 Aug 2005 08:14:56 PM |
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"Whatever the Cons acuse you of, they are guilty of themselves."
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