Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Jane Galt:

So the Republicans are claiming

So the Republicans are claiming fraud, while the Democrats are claiming fraud and voter intimidation:

YOU WANT DIRTY TRICKS? VOILA! What made Jonathan Last's article -- which we commented on yesterday -- so breathtakingly dishonest wasn't just the way he fudged his examples, but the way he ignored the far greater evidence of Republican (or, at any rate, pro-Republican) dirty tricks in this election. We've already noted how South Dakota television reporters close to Republican John Thune tried to gin up a mostly bogus voter-fraud scandal, which was followed by the GOP sending voters a misleading flier saying that "Tim Johnson and the Democrats are hiding the truth about voter fraud" and conducting sleazy push-polls. But there's more. So much more.

Counterspin Central has a good roundup of stories on Florida, where the the national GOP has dumped millions of soft dollars via a process designed to turn it into "hard" money, which the Center for Public Integrity's Chuck Lewis describes as "money laundering." But wait! In a last-minute bid to dampen Bill McBride's turnout, Jeb Bush hasn't been averse to a little race-baiting, telling crowds that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are in town campaigning for McBride. According to some early reports, voting machines in some areas will only register a vote for Bush (granted, this could easily be a computer glitch . . . but a very convenient one). Finally, Bush's government not only didn't provide enough machines for everyone to vote -- it recently refused to extent voting hours to make sure all votes are counted.

In Baltimore, somebody has been putting out fliers in black neighborhoods saying that election day is tomorrow, instead of today, and that people with unpaid parking tickets can't vote, which is a lie.

In Texas, two poll watchers from Republican John Cornyn's campaign were ejected from polling places after making racist remarks to some voters, aggressively confronting one elderly voter and otherwise talking to and harassing voters, none of which is permitted.

In New Hampshire, the GOP has put out gay-baiting phone calls to voters.

In Tennessee, the GOP is engaging in voter intimidation on a level not seen since Jim Crow. The Justice Department has confirmed to local election officials that GOP poll-watchers have been instruced "to object when voters who registered under the motor-voter act show up to cast their ballots."

Tapped would love to know how high up these decisions get made. Perhaps this is just decentralized thuggery, with everybody on the same playbook. Republican campaigns don't need to be told to try and suppress the Democratic vote. But when the dust settles, this may go down as a throwback campaign -- the year Republicans, sensing the country moving away from them, decided to try and suppress votes rather than win them.

Well, these decisions don't get made, because:

1) That's not race baiting -- substitute Hilary Clinton for Jesse Jackson, and you'd get the crowd in just as much of an uproar. Isn't the idea that we may never, ever refer to blacks as real people, but only in the terms usually reserved for saints or sports heroes, a litttle, well, racist?

2) The television stations are now reporting that the reported Bush error was a hoax. There is, however, a reported failure to register Republican votes in several precincts that has not yet been debunked, although I expect it will be.

3) The failure to provide adequate voting machines in whichever counties don't have them is the responsibility of the Democratic canvassing boards, not the governor.

4) I dont' think either party's name exactly shines on the gay-baiting issue this election cycle, but anyway, that's neither fraud nor intimidation, but nasty election tactics that have been exploited by both parties.

5) That leaves us with one flier in Baltimore, which is execrable, but hardly rises to the level of organized thuggery. And the GOP instructed to challenge first time motor voters. But isn't that a logical group to challenge, since it represents a large group of people who are unlikely to show up at the polls, and therefore open to having their vote stolen?

I know the left wing half of the Blogosphere is going to take this as evidence that We Wuz Robbed. But honestly, if you follow elections at all, this stuff is petty, well within reasonable tactics -- or it's demonstrably false, like the Republican "roadblocks" in Florida in 2000. Meanwhile, the right is alleging fraud with equally thin evidence. Could we have a moratorium on hysterical charges that the other side is Evil! Evil! Evil! until we actually hear some, umm, proof?

Posted by Jane Galt at November 5, 2002 04:06 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links