Dirty tactics in the presidential race

[Happy Monkey]

A quick rundown of problems in Ohio.

[Happy Monkey]

If someone drops by to "pick up" your absentee ballot for you, don't give it to them!

[Happy Monkey]

And a corrupt elections registrar in Maine.

[Undertoad]

I expect what we have here is not some new rash of problems, but increased attention to things that were there all along. Which is a good thing.

[Happy Monkey]

This isn't specific on tactics, or specifically about the presidential race, but it's indicative of attitude:

“It’s time now for the American people to understand that we (the GOP) are a permanent majority.”
Tom DeLay, August 18, 2004

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I expect what we have here is not some new rash of problems, but increased attention to things that were there all along. Which is a good thing.

Mostly things that have existed for some time and should have been resolved before the primaries but weren't. That's a bad thing.

[Happy Monkey]

A possible challenge list in Florida:

It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."

We'll see if they do use it that way.

As an aside, it looks like the annoying Republican habit of using "Democrat" as an adjective has spread across the pond.

[Happy Monkey]

At least in Ohio, they're challenging them a week early:

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections must find more than 17,000 registered voters by Friday to tell them they may be culled from the rolls by Republican challengers

[jinx]

<hbr></hbr>Republicans Urge Minorities To Get Out And Vote On Nov. 3

[Happy Monkey]

Ah, the Onion. Too often proven prescient.

Anyway, back to Florida.

Local 10 has learned that many as many as 58,000 ballots that were supposed to mailed out on Oct. 7 and 8 could be missing.The Broward County Supervisor of Elections office is saying only that the situation is "unusual," and they are looking into it.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Ah, the Onion. Too often proven prescient.

Anyway, back to Florida.

If it was deliberate, I hope they give whoever did it 1 year on each count of election fraud and mail fraud, for each of the 58,000 pieces of mail.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

At least in Ohio, they're challenging them a week early:

A follow-up:

The Ohio Republican Party last week challenged the validity of 17,780 voter registrations in the county.
But records show that more than 9,000 of these registrations are for "inactive" voters who should remain on the rolls according to the federal National Voter Registration Act.

[Clodfobble]

...Does that mean that just under 8780 of those registrations should not remain on the rolls?

[Happy Monkey]

No, it just means that those challenges can't be summarily ruled spurious according to this particular rule. But 8780 challenges will waste far less time than 17780, so we're moving in the right direction.

[Happy Monkey]

OK, these are dirty tactics, and they're election-related, but they're not actually dirty tactics to win the election.

The College Republican National Committee has raised $6.3 million this year through an aggressive and misleading fund-raising campaign that collected money from senior citizens who thought they were giving to the election efforts of President Bush and other top Republicans.
...
But all of those groups, according to the small print on the letters, were simply projects of the College Republicans, who collected all of the checks.
And little of the money went to election efforts.