Blogged by Brad from somewhere near Portland…
Here’s a chuckler. From Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic…
The strategists and consultants all would speak only on the condition that their names and affiliations not be used because they were not permitted to divulge the information, they did not want to disclose internal deliberations, and because the issue is still being discussed within the party.
Sources with direct knowledge of the coordinated Republican effort this year say that high-ranking Republicans, including some within McCain’s campaign, are convinced that GOP efforts in 2004 were damaging.
“Spreading 10,000 lawyers around the country and announcing a challenge to 40,000 new registrants in Ohio was counterproductive,” a Republican familiar with the situation said.
And if you believe the GOP has any intention of scaling back any such thing in 2008, we’ve got a swell bridge, beautifully located near Manhattan, to sell ya.
But just to drive home the point that we’re equal opportunity disbelievers, there’s this old standby from the Obama camp, later in the article…
So if, as Bauer claims, the Obama campaign intends to “have a strong, comprehensive program to promote and protect the vote,” why didn’t they bother to “protect the vote” by asking for a full hand-count of all ballots in New Hampshire after the anomalous Primary results were reported by Diebold’s known-hackable voting machines? They could have done so for the bargain price of just $2,000 at the time, but chose not to.
We’d also ask why Obama’s camp didn’t bother to demand that some 12,000+ perfectly-countable ballots cast in the Democratic Primary on Super Tuesday in L.A. County actually be counted at all. Or don’t those folks deserve to have their votes “protected”?
Of course, this item was originally supposed to about the Republicans’ bullshit. Don’t blame us if there’s just too much bullshit to go around…
Be careful Brad…criticism of Obama tends to rub some folks the wrong way.
Sue me for saying this, but I’m about ready to write in Ron Paul.
There seems to be an awfully glaring lack of real integrity from our 2 major political parties.
Ron Paul did not ask for a recount either, in that very irregualr NH primary that showed all kinds of wierd things in regards to Paul’s count. It was a great chance for checking electronic counting given the presence of paper ballots (poorly secured but at least something to check beyond a memory card)Paul left that recount to the much less popular Republican candidate Howard. This lost opportunity in my mind was a much worse decision by Paul than Obama’s.
Obama was clearly a close contender and had much political capital to lose that early in the race by claiming vote counting fraud and it seemed he’d have a decent chance at winning even if some of his votes didn’t get counted (as was proven out), but Ron Paul was clearly an underdog and only had a chance if all his votes were counted. I would have loved to have seen your ilk, Ron Paulites, kicking up dirt in a NH recount, it might have even gotten some mainstream media coverage.
Paul’s lack of action in NH really was a huge huge missed oppurtunity by probably one our best hopes this primary election season to highlight the myriad election problems. Shame on him for missing it…
My thought on the matter is that the GOP intends to count on the tried and true method of obfuscation. They will tell people that even if they have an unpaid parking ticket, they’ll go to jail, they’ll write or tell them their polling place has been changed, they’ll try to convince them that the vote is to be on wednesday, et cetera, ad nauseam – and of course, 49% of the people are still voting on the one-armed bandits – – –
You might want to keep handy the Voter Protector Hotline’s freecall number, just in case:
1-866-OUR-VOTE (that’s 1-866-687-8683).
You may also want to contact local law-enforcement agencies with reports of real or suspected voter intimidation, especially that involving National Minorities or the disposessed.
Especially if the groups involved have suspiciously patriotic-sounding “feel-good” names to conceal their trick and deceit, usually operating out of mail drops to avoid attracting attention (or so they think).