Charges over voter rights intensify
MIAMI -- Democrats and Republicans in Florida and other battleground states yesterday traded accusations of vote fraud and vote suppression as both parties intensified their rhetorical posturing five days before Election Day.
Democrats in the Sunshine State seized on a report by the BBC that it had obtained a partial list of voters that Republicans intended to challenge if they showed up at the polls, suggesting this was a strategy intended to gum up the polls and discourage people from voting in heavily Democratic areas.
''Republicans are yet again crying fraud and spinning a story of chaos at the polls . . . and laying the groundwork for challenges," said Christine Anderson, a Kerry campaign spokeswoman in Fort Lauderdale. ''They're developing lists of voters they plan to challenge. They could bring these to the supervisor of elections office ahead of time to try to get it resolved before Election Day, and they've not done that. They'd rather scare people away from the polls."
Florida Republican Party spokeswoman Mindy Fletcher said the state party had not yet decided how it would instruct its poll-watchers to challenge voters on Election Day, but she chided Democrats for criticizing GOP efforts to counteract vote fraud.
''We haven't made a final decision yet, but our goal is to figure out a way to make sure the laws are enforced on Tuesday so that legal voters don't get their votes disenfranchised through fraud," she said. ''The question for Democrats is 'do they support enforcing the law or not,' and apparently they don't, because they are complaining when we are trying to make sure that only legal voters vote. They're obviously OK with it if dead people vote, I guess."
The state Republican Party released a letter to the BBC explaining that the list of voters it had obtained was created to track mailings sent to newly registered voters that were returned because no such person lived at the address registered. It said the list ''has been used for no purpose other than that," adding that the ''insinuation that it was created for and will be used for the purposes of an Election Day challenge is erroneous."
Nevertheless, Anderson said the Kerry campaign was instructing its volunteer poll-watching lawyers to make sure that any Republican counterpart who files a challenge to a voter submits the objection in writing. Steven Zack, a Miami lawyer who is leading the Kerry campaign's legal precinct-watching, warned Republicans not to be overly aggressive on Election Day.
''Obviously we don't expect them to challenge people they have no right to challenge," Zack said. ''They have to do that under oath, and there are very serious consequences if you do that baselessly under oath."
A similar dispute has arisen in Ohio, another pivotal battleground, where the state's attorney general appealed a federal judge's order that halted hearings on Republican challenges to thousands of voter registrations.
Attorney General Jim Petro said the federal order had ''thrown Ohio's electoral process into disarray, and has opened the door to voter fraud."
The dispute stems from a decision by Ohio Republicans to challenge up to 35,000 registrations statewide after mail to the voters came back undelivered. The GOP says the returned mail indicates the registrations could be fraudulent. Democrats say the GOP is trying to keep poor people and minorities, who move more often, from voting.
On Wednesday, US District Judge Susan Dlott halted hearings on the Republican challenges of thousands of voter registrations in six counties.
Material from Globe news services was used in this report.
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