From maverick to misguided renegade
- |
JOHN MCCAIN is no principled maverick; he's a desperate renegade sanctioning numerous attempts to remove legitimate voters from the rolls, disenfranchise minorities and students, and spread false claims about Barack Obama via automated phone calls.
Rolling out McSlime. The Talking Points Memo website says, "McCain has hired the same outfit to robo-slime Obama that hit McCain himself with the scurrilous robocall campaign in 2000 that he decried at the time as 'hate calls.' "
Block The Vote is the national study available on the Rolling Stone website that documents how GOP data thugs used mismanagement of voter lists "to scrub at least 10 million voters from their rolls."
"What list? I run the place." Paul Maez of New Mexico had his name removed from a voter list in his state without his knowledge. For Maez, being dropped was both galling and embarrassing. He's the county elections supervisor.
Lawyering up to gum up the works. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, Republican lawyers will wait at the polls to challenge minority voters and students. Even if they don't disqualify them, it will cause long lines at the polls.
Foreclosure can cost you your vote. The New York Times found that Republican Party operatives in Michigan and Ohio are planning to use the foreclosure epidemic to disenfranchise voters. However, many people live in their foreclosed homes for months and eventually work out a plan that lets them stay there.
The old college try. In Virginia, Colorado, and South Carolina, Republican groups aggressively misinformed college students that they could lose their scholarships and their parents would not be able to claim them as dependents on their taxes if they registered and voted in their college towns. Not so, the IRS says.
Florida, our banana republic state. In Florida, the ruling junta made up of the GOP legislature and the GOP governor passed two laws aimed at disqualifying Democrats. One requires an exact match between a voter's driver's license or Social Security number and the information on the voter list, which is full of minor errors. The second law allows citizens to challenge another voter's right to vote without proving the accusations. The burden of proof is on the challenged voter, who has two days to prove his or her right to vote.
Bad lists. The
The ugliest abortion call. Automated calls placed to North Carolina voters charge - falsely - that in the Illinois Senate Obama voted against having doctors provide lifesaving care to newborns that survived botched abortions.
Putting on Ayers. Nervous Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, nursing a 10-point lead in her reelection battle, told McCain to stop paying for automated phone calls that falsely claimed Obama "worked closely" with "domestic terrorist Bill Ayers." The calls persist to this day.
"I'm going to have to ask you to step outside." The Chicago Tribune uncovered a Wisconsin GOP e-mail seeking "Milwaukee-area veterans, policeman, security personnel and firefighters to work as poll watchers on Election Day at inner-city polling places." File under Jim Crow.
Caging blacks and students. Minorities and students have been targeted in several states for a classic GOP scam called "voter caging." A mailing marked "return to sender" goes out and the names on the mailers that come back are put on caging lists. Those on the list are then challenged at the polls with the claim that they don't live at the address where they are registered.
Will all this matter? Obama has so many resource advantages, it seems unlikely McCain can win using sleazy tactics alone. But as we saw in Florida in 2000, organized cheating and intimidation that ran from Miami-Dade County to the US Supreme Court was enough to steal the presidency.
Dan Payne is a Boston-area media consultant who has worked for Democratic candidates around the country. He does political analysis for WBUR radio. 
