Ought Six
Membership Revoked
Post all the stories of voter fraud, intimidation, harrassment and suppression here! Please check what is already posted to avoid duplicate postings. Thanks!
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Civil rights groups, GOP trade charges of dirty tricks
By Julia Malone
Cox News Service, via The Palm Beach Post
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
WASHINGTON — Civil rights groups, in an election eve report, charged that dirty tricks, "unprecedented" challenges of voter eligibility, and bureaucratic bungling around the country are threatening the turnout in minority neighborhoods.
The incidents are signs of "the racist impulses of people who are so desperate to prevail that they will break the law again and again and again," said Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, one of the sponsors of the study.
Bond charged that in recent years, Republicans have tried to suppress voting, especially in the African American community.
The Republican National Committee countered that dirty tricks are also being used to dissuade and confuse their voters and charged that the report was part of a deliberate Democratic strategy to allege voter intimidation, whether it exists or not.
The 21-page report catalogs voter complaints, including many logged in by lawyer volunteers working for a nationwide Election Protection hotline run the NAACP, People for the American Way and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Among the examples cited:
—A bogus flyer with the emblem of McCandless Township, Pa., instructs voters, "Due to the immense voter turnout that is expected on Tuesday, the state of Pennsylvania has requested an extended voting period." The flyer says Republicans should vote Nov. 2 and Democrats on Nov. 3.
—A faked letter using NAACP letterhead in Columbia, S.C., claims that those with an outstanding parking ticket or unpaid child support would be arrested if they vote. (A similar letter from the apparently non-existent "Milwaukee Black Voter League" tells voters that if they have been guilty of even a traffic offense and vote then "you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you.")
—In Miami, Haitian Americans complained last week that "thugs" had walked along the waiting lines at the Lemon City Library early polling site and demanded to see identification, while telling voters that they could be deported.
—In south Georgia's Atkinson County, almost 100 registered voters with Hispanic names had their eligibility challenged before the local board of registrars tossed out the cases based on concerns that the challenges might violate the 1964 federal Voting Rights Act.
The report also criticized the Ohio Republican Party's attempt to place 3,500 "challengers" inside the polls to question the qualifications of some of the hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters.
With hours to go before Election Day, the Ohio Republican plan has been barred by a federal court order, but the GOP has appealed.
Republican National Committee spokesman Jim Dyke, responding to the civil rights groups, offered his party's list of grievances.
Among them:
— Flyers that show a photo of a fireman hosing a black man in what appears to be a civil rights confrontation from the 1960s in the South appears to blame Republicans for past and present voter discrimination. "This is what they used to do to keep us from voting," the flyer states. It adds that "Republicans are trying to keep African Americans from voting now."
In fact, as the NAACP's Bond told reporters Monday that, through the mid 1960s, it was the Democratic Party that controlled the South and kept African Americans from voting.
The flyers are being distributed in Missouri and Wisconsin by America Coming Together, a pro-Democratic independent voter mobilization group.
—A faked letter purportedly from the Republican National Committee has gone out to Wisconsin voters saying the party's chairman has endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.
—Telephone calls to senior citizens in Pennsylvania advising them that President Bush is going to take away their Social Security benefits or giving them incorrect information about where to vote.
As both sides exchanged charges, other problems appear to affect voters on both sides. For example, the civil rights report cited a massive failure by some counties, especially Broward in Florida, to provide tens of thousands of absentee ballots requested by citizens, many of them elderly and too infirm to vote in person.
And the civil rights advocates warned of the possibility of a torrent of litigation after Election Day.
"I believe on Wednesday morning there will be huge fights over provisional ballots," said Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. Provisional ballots are those that will be cast by people who appear in person to vote but find their names missing from the registration lists or who fail to show the proper identification, where that is required.
The civil rights coalition has recruited 25,000 volunteers, including many who will show up at polling places in minority neighborhoods sporting T-shirts saying, "You have a right to vote" and the hotline number (1-866-OURVOTE).
=============================================================
Peoria Voter Intimidation Claim
Week.com - NBC Ch. 25
November 1, 2004
On the eve of the election, some registered voters in the city of Peoria received an anonymous postcard in the mail.
It read:''Your registration maybe(sic) under suspicion. Voter fraud equals 5 years in jail.''
Lavetta Ricca says her granddaughter, who is a Bradley University student, received one of the anonymous voter fraud postcards. ''I think it's intimidation, '' said Ricca. ''It's wrong.''
Peoria County Democratic Chair Billy Halstead says he has received numerous calls about the postcards. Halstead feels the cards are targeting potential democratic voters. ''We've registered a record amount of people this year, and I feel like this is a tactic to hurt the Democratic Party,'' said Halstead.
Annette Mills, Chair of the Peoria County Republican Party, said she first heard about the postcards from News 25. Mills said she knows nothing about them and that it's an absurd practice.
Jeanette Mitzelfelt, Executive Director of the Board of Election Commissioners, said her office had been taking calls about the postcard as well. Mitzelfelt said she had been encouraging voters to call the state's attorney about the issue.
''I have no idea where it's coming from or why...it sounds like an intimidation tactic,'' said Mitzelfelt.
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Judge blocks Democratic Party from 'further intimidation' of poll watchers
By Robert Perez
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel Staff
November 2 2004
SANFORD -- A Seminole County Circuit Court judge issued an injunction today blocking the Democratic Party from "further intimidation" of Republican poll watchers who may challenge voters' rights to cast a ballot.
The injunction stems from a letter sent to Republican poll watchers by the National Democratic Committee telling them that challenges not based on personal knowledge violate state law and that they could be subject to criminal prosecution.
Seminole Circuit Judge Nancy Alley ruled that the letter was misleading and did have a chilling effect on poll watchers, who could fear criminal prosecution for simply doing their jobs at the polls.
The injunction blocks local, state and national Democratic officials from "further intimidation, further dissemination of these materials designed or intended to intimidate or unduly threaten the activities of poll watchers who are duly carrying out their responsibilities."
Attorneys for both parties, who spent more than two hours arguing the case, agreed that the injunction does little more than affirm Florida statutes involving voter challenges.
However, an attorney for the Democratic National Committee said the injunction might embolden Republicans to challenge so many voters it would disrupt the voting process.
"If I challenge one voter, it's no big deal," he said. "But if I do that a hundred times, what am I doing to the line of voters out there? We want to see that everyone who is legally qualified to vote gets a chance to vote. We don't want to see them [Republicans] use illegal challenges to slow down the process."
The suit, filed by Winter Springs resident and Republican poll watcher J. Thomas Monk, alleges that he was intimidated by the DNC letter. The one-page letter, which began arriving in poll watchers' mail boxes across the state on Oct. 28, "misrepresents the poll worker's legal rights and obligations to make a challenge under Florida law and seeks to prevent poll workers from exercising lawful challenges."
The letter, titled "important legal notice," reminds each Republican poll watcher that the process of challenging the legality of any voter's right to cast a ballot "must not be abused as a means of harrassing or intimidating voters." The sentence in the paragraph warns: "Therefore, should a challenger make a knowingly false challenge, that person could be subject to criminal prosecution."
The issue of Republican poll workers challenging Democratic voters has been a major issue in the Ohio courts, where Republican officials tried to challenge thousands of voter registrations in advance of today's voting.
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Dent investigates report of intimidation by pollwatchers
Southwest Florida Herald-Tribune
November 2, 2004
Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent came to the Newtown Community Center just after 1 p.m. to investigate reports that pollwatchers were intimidating voters.
According to Angela Hamilton, deputy registrar at the community center, the pollwatchers were standing right behind the poll workers and some workers and voters felt uncomfortable.
“You got somebody looking down on you, you feel intimidated,” Hamilton said.
Dent said she asked the pollwatchers to “hang back a little.”
A total of 21 pollwatchers, representing Republicans, Democrats and specific candidates, were signed up to observe at the community center at different times of the day. The center is the polling place for precincts 31, 153 and 83.
It’s been busy, said Izetta Fields, clerk for Precinct 83. She said turnout is 80 percent higher than usual.
According to Hamilton, nobody’s right to vote has yet been challenged. But Newtown resident Monica Brown said she couldn’t vote because she’s a convicted felon. She knew she couldn’t vote, but she came to support her family members anyway.
If she had the chance, she said, she would have voted for John Kerry.
=============================================================
Possible Voter Fraud in Rock Island County
WHBF-TV - Channel 4
November 2, 2004
Rock Island County Republican leaders believe they may have a case of voter fraud in Carbon Cliff.
Just after the polls opened in Illinois Tuesday morning a report of possible voter fraud surfaced in Carbon Cliff. It is suspected that a couple voted by absentee ballot and then also cast another ballot at the polls. Rock Island County Republican leaders, like Pat Johnson, want to get to the bottom of the allegations.
"If something like this is happening nationwide that is an extreme issue," says Johnson.
The vote in question happened at the United Methodist Church in Carbon Cliff. Democratic poll workers there say the couple in question, Frances and Norman Neely, voted absentee and therefore, didn't vote at the polls.
The case gets confusing since republican poll watchers claim they marked the couples names off their list as they came to cast their vote. Democratic poll watchers also indicated that the Fances and Norman came through as well. The couple claim they did vote absentee but they did not at the polls.
=============================================================
California news station charged with voter fraud and manipulation
Jen Shroder
RenewAmerica.us
November 2, 2004
Only one hour after the polls opened, Mark Curtis of KTVU Channel 2 News allegedly tried to manipulate voters by announcing, "John Kerry has already won the California Electoral Vote!" according to Reverend Austin Miles in Oakland, California.
Miles, keeping a watchful eye on the election, is furious. "The message is that Republicans should forget it and stay home. This is a deliberate attempt to keep conservatives from voting by convincing them 'to not bother.' Conservatives must still get out and vote in California, and then they must file voter fraud charges against the Democrat favoring news media for manipulating the public and ultimately their votes."
"Curtis also made it clear that voters, however, would be deciding the various propositions," said Miles, "after his statement that Kerry had already won the California electoral vote."
Ed Chapuis, KTVU News Director, denies the allegation even though Miles has pinpointed the name of the anchor and said Curtis made this statement "between 8:00 AM and 8:15 A.M." today. Name, date, time and station should not be difficult to verify and it will be interesting to see if Chapuis continues his denial.
Americans are becoming increasingly weary of overt pounding by blatant media bias and dirty politics. Objections to voter watchdogs made by the Democratic party have made their intentions obvious. Regardless of the presidential outcome, our electoral process must be protected from these kinds of abuses.
Citizens are encouraged to persistently endeavor to contact the California Secretary of State toll-free at: 1-800-345-8683 and ask for an investigation immediately. The media needs to be held accountable for its continued attempts to manipulate our nation and our precious election process.
You can also contact:
tim.mcvay@ktvu.comStation Manager
KTVU TV: 2 Jack London Square
Oakland, CA 94607
Telephone # 510/634-1212
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Ballot Box Tampering in Portland, Oregon {TB2k thread}
=============================================================
Civil rights groups, GOP trade charges of dirty tricks
By Julia Malone
Cox News Service, via The Palm Beach Post
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
WASHINGTON — Civil rights groups, in an election eve report, charged that dirty tricks, "unprecedented" challenges of voter eligibility, and bureaucratic bungling around the country are threatening the turnout in minority neighborhoods.
The incidents are signs of "the racist impulses of people who are so desperate to prevail that they will break the law again and again and again," said Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, one of the sponsors of the study.
Bond charged that in recent years, Republicans have tried to suppress voting, especially in the African American community.
The Republican National Committee countered that dirty tricks are also being used to dissuade and confuse their voters and charged that the report was part of a deliberate Democratic strategy to allege voter intimidation, whether it exists or not.
The 21-page report catalogs voter complaints, including many logged in by lawyer volunteers working for a nationwide Election Protection hotline run the NAACP, People for the American Way and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Among the examples cited:
—A bogus flyer with the emblem of McCandless Township, Pa., instructs voters, "Due to the immense voter turnout that is expected on Tuesday, the state of Pennsylvania has requested an extended voting period." The flyer says Republicans should vote Nov. 2 and Democrats on Nov. 3.
—A faked letter using NAACP letterhead in Columbia, S.C., claims that those with an outstanding parking ticket or unpaid child support would be arrested if they vote. (A similar letter from the apparently non-existent "Milwaukee Black Voter League" tells voters that if they have been guilty of even a traffic offense and vote then "you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you.")
—In Miami, Haitian Americans complained last week that "thugs" had walked along the waiting lines at the Lemon City Library early polling site and demanded to see identification, while telling voters that they could be deported.
—In south Georgia's Atkinson County, almost 100 registered voters with Hispanic names had their eligibility challenged before the local board of registrars tossed out the cases based on concerns that the challenges might violate the 1964 federal Voting Rights Act.
The report also criticized the Ohio Republican Party's attempt to place 3,500 "challengers" inside the polls to question the qualifications of some of the hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters.
With hours to go before Election Day, the Ohio Republican plan has been barred by a federal court order, but the GOP has appealed.
Republican National Committee spokesman Jim Dyke, responding to the civil rights groups, offered his party's list of grievances.
Among them:
— Flyers that show a photo of a fireman hosing a black man in what appears to be a civil rights confrontation from the 1960s in the South appears to blame Republicans for past and present voter discrimination. "This is what they used to do to keep us from voting," the flyer states. It adds that "Republicans are trying to keep African Americans from voting now."
In fact, as the NAACP's Bond told reporters Monday that, through the mid 1960s, it was the Democratic Party that controlled the South and kept African Americans from voting.
The flyers are being distributed in Missouri and Wisconsin by America Coming Together, a pro-Democratic independent voter mobilization group.
—A faked letter purportedly from the Republican National Committee has gone out to Wisconsin voters saying the party's chairman has endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.
—Telephone calls to senior citizens in Pennsylvania advising them that President Bush is going to take away their Social Security benefits or giving them incorrect information about where to vote.
As both sides exchanged charges, other problems appear to affect voters on both sides. For example, the civil rights report cited a massive failure by some counties, especially Broward in Florida, to provide tens of thousands of absentee ballots requested by citizens, many of them elderly and too infirm to vote in person.
And the civil rights advocates warned of the possibility of a torrent of litigation after Election Day.
"I believe on Wednesday morning there will be huge fights over provisional ballots," said Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. Provisional ballots are those that will be cast by people who appear in person to vote but find their names missing from the registration lists or who fail to show the proper identification, where that is required.
The civil rights coalition has recruited 25,000 volunteers, including many who will show up at polling places in minority neighborhoods sporting T-shirts saying, "You have a right to vote" and the hotline number (1-866-OURVOTE).
=============================================================
Peoria Voter Intimidation Claim
Week.com - NBC Ch. 25
November 1, 2004
On the eve of the election, some registered voters in the city of Peoria received an anonymous postcard in the mail.
It read:''Your registration maybe(sic) under suspicion. Voter fraud equals 5 years in jail.''
Lavetta Ricca says her granddaughter, who is a Bradley University student, received one of the anonymous voter fraud postcards. ''I think it's intimidation, '' said Ricca. ''It's wrong.''
Peoria County Democratic Chair Billy Halstead says he has received numerous calls about the postcards. Halstead feels the cards are targeting potential democratic voters. ''We've registered a record amount of people this year, and I feel like this is a tactic to hurt the Democratic Party,'' said Halstead.
Annette Mills, Chair of the Peoria County Republican Party, said she first heard about the postcards from News 25. Mills said she knows nothing about them and that it's an absurd practice.
Jeanette Mitzelfelt, Executive Director of the Board of Election Commissioners, said her office had been taking calls about the postcard as well. Mitzelfelt said she had been encouraging voters to call the state's attorney about the issue.
''I have no idea where it's coming from or why...it sounds like an intimidation tactic,'' said Mitzelfelt.
=============================================================
Judge blocks Democratic Party from 'further intimidation' of poll watchers
By Robert Perez
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel Staff
November 2 2004
SANFORD -- A Seminole County Circuit Court judge issued an injunction today blocking the Democratic Party from "further intimidation" of Republican poll watchers who may challenge voters' rights to cast a ballot.
The injunction stems from a letter sent to Republican poll watchers by the National Democratic Committee telling them that challenges not based on personal knowledge violate state law and that they could be subject to criminal prosecution.
Seminole Circuit Judge Nancy Alley ruled that the letter was misleading and did have a chilling effect on poll watchers, who could fear criminal prosecution for simply doing their jobs at the polls.
The injunction blocks local, state and national Democratic officials from "further intimidation, further dissemination of these materials designed or intended to intimidate or unduly threaten the activities of poll watchers who are duly carrying out their responsibilities."
Attorneys for both parties, who spent more than two hours arguing the case, agreed that the injunction does little more than affirm Florida statutes involving voter challenges.
However, an attorney for the Democratic National Committee said the injunction might embolden Republicans to challenge so many voters it would disrupt the voting process.
"If I challenge one voter, it's no big deal," he said. "But if I do that a hundred times, what am I doing to the line of voters out there? We want to see that everyone who is legally qualified to vote gets a chance to vote. We don't want to see them [Republicans] use illegal challenges to slow down the process."
The suit, filed by Winter Springs resident and Republican poll watcher J. Thomas Monk, alleges that he was intimidated by the DNC letter. The one-page letter, which began arriving in poll watchers' mail boxes across the state on Oct. 28, "misrepresents the poll worker's legal rights and obligations to make a challenge under Florida law and seeks to prevent poll workers from exercising lawful challenges."
The letter, titled "important legal notice," reminds each Republican poll watcher that the process of challenging the legality of any voter's right to cast a ballot "must not be abused as a means of harrassing or intimidating voters." The sentence in the paragraph warns: "Therefore, should a challenger make a knowingly false challenge, that person could be subject to criminal prosecution."
The issue of Republican poll workers challenging Democratic voters has been a major issue in the Ohio courts, where Republican officials tried to challenge thousands of voter registrations in advance of today's voting.
=============================================================
Dent investigates report of intimidation by pollwatchers
Southwest Florida Herald-Tribune
November 2, 2004
Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent came to the Newtown Community Center just after 1 p.m. to investigate reports that pollwatchers were intimidating voters.
According to Angela Hamilton, deputy registrar at the community center, the pollwatchers were standing right behind the poll workers and some workers and voters felt uncomfortable.
“You got somebody looking down on you, you feel intimidated,” Hamilton said.
Dent said she asked the pollwatchers to “hang back a little.”
A total of 21 pollwatchers, representing Republicans, Democrats and specific candidates, were signed up to observe at the community center at different times of the day. The center is the polling place for precincts 31, 153 and 83.
It’s been busy, said Izetta Fields, clerk for Precinct 83. She said turnout is 80 percent higher than usual.
According to Hamilton, nobody’s right to vote has yet been challenged. But Newtown resident Monica Brown said she couldn’t vote because she’s a convicted felon. She knew she couldn’t vote, but she came to support her family members anyway.
If she had the chance, she said, she would have voted for John Kerry.
=============================================================
Possible Voter Fraud in Rock Island County
WHBF-TV - Channel 4
November 2, 2004
Rock Island County Republican leaders believe they may have a case of voter fraud in Carbon Cliff.
Just after the polls opened in Illinois Tuesday morning a report of possible voter fraud surfaced in Carbon Cliff. It is suspected that a couple voted by absentee ballot and then also cast another ballot at the polls. Rock Island County Republican leaders, like Pat Johnson, want to get to the bottom of the allegations.
"If something like this is happening nationwide that is an extreme issue," says Johnson.
The vote in question happened at the United Methodist Church in Carbon Cliff. Democratic poll workers there say the couple in question, Frances and Norman Neely, voted absentee and therefore, didn't vote at the polls.
The case gets confusing since republican poll watchers claim they marked the couples names off their list as they came to cast their vote. Democratic poll watchers also indicated that the Fances and Norman came through as well. The couple claim they did vote absentee but they did not at the polls.
=============================================================
California news station charged with voter fraud and manipulation
Jen Shroder
RenewAmerica.us
November 2, 2004
Only one hour after the polls opened, Mark Curtis of KTVU Channel 2 News allegedly tried to manipulate voters by announcing, "John Kerry has already won the California Electoral Vote!" according to Reverend Austin Miles in Oakland, California.
Miles, keeping a watchful eye on the election, is furious. "The message is that Republicans should forget it and stay home. This is a deliberate attempt to keep conservatives from voting by convincing them 'to not bother.' Conservatives must still get out and vote in California, and then they must file voter fraud charges against the Democrat favoring news media for manipulating the public and ultimately their votes."
"Curtis also made it clear that voters, however, would be deciding the various propositions," said Miles, "after his statement that Kerry had already won the California electoral vote."
Ed Chapuis, KTVU News Director, denies the allegation even though Miles has pinpointed the name of the anchor and said Curtis made this statement "between 8:00 AM and 8:15 A.M." today. Name, date, time and station should not be difficult to verify and it will be interesting to see if Chapuis continues his denial.
Americans are becoming increasingly weary of overt pounding by blatant media bias and dirty politics. Objections to voter watchdogs made by the Democratic party have made their intentions obvious. Regardless of the presidential outcome, our electoral process must be protected from these kinds of abuses.
Citizens are encouraged to persistently endeavor to contact the California Secretary of State toll-free at: 1-800-345-8683 and ask for an investigation immediately. The media needs to be held accountable for its continued attempts to manipulate our nation and our precious election process.
You can also contact:
tim.mcvay@ktvu.comStation Manager
KTVU TV: 2 Jack London Square
Oakland, CA 94607
Telephone # 510/634-1212
=============================================================
Ballot Box Tampering in Portland, Oregon {TB2k thread}
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