Voter intimidation? Vote suppression? Why, you must be talking about...
The Democrats!
The American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund released a report today which finds that, while neither party is without blame, the Democrats were far more likely in 2004 to have been involved in voter intimidation and vote-suppression than the Republicans.
Despite the whining about supposed GOP misdeeds in Ohio- which, contrary to the election night myth nourished by Dan Rather and CBS News, wasn't actually all that close- Republican get-out-the-vote efforts in that state alone faced a multitude of Democrat vote-suppression strategies, including slashed tires on vans driving voters to the polls and voters receiving helpful, informative phone calls giving them the wrong date for the election. Massive, outright fraud was rife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where illegal voting by felons and multiple voting by others were common. Many Democratic precincts in Milwaukee returned thousands of more votes than voters were recorded as having voted!
And then there was Philadelphia...
The Democrats have a long history of this sort of thing, of course, from the old big city political machines, most famously in Chicago, where "vote early and vote often" remains a kind of running joke with which citizens greet one another on Election Day. The attempt by Democrats to overturn the result of the 2000 election in Florida by manual recount slight-of-hand, as well as by refusing to count legally cast votes by military personnel and the inclusion of thousands of illegal votes by convicted felons has been quite thoroughly documented; if it hadn't been for Democratic fraud in the inital 2000 Florida count, the Bush victory wouldn't have been close enough to credibly challenge. Last year's stolen gubernatorial election in Washington State is, of course, fresh in the minds of all politically aware folks not trying extra hard to forget about it.
The technique of distracting people's attention by whining about the other side while doing it, though, is a comparatively recent wrinkle.
Hat-tips: Sister Toldjah and The Anchoress.
The American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund released a report today which finds that, while neither party is without blame, the Democrats were far more likely in 2004 to have been involved in voter intimidation and vote-suppression than the Republicans.
Despite the whining about supposed GOP misdeeds in Ohio- which, contrary to the election night myth nourished by Dan Rather and CBS News, wasn't actually all that close- Republican get-out-the-vote efforts in that state alone faced a multitude of Democrat vote-suppression strategies, including slashed tires on vans driving voters to the polls and voters receiving helpful, informative phone calls giving them the wrong date for the election. Massive, outright fraud was rife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where illegal voting by felons and multiple voting by others were common. Many Democratic precincts in Milwaukee returned thousands of more votes than voters were recorded as having voted!
And then there was Philadelphia...
The Democrats have a long history of this sort of thing, of course, from the old big city political machines, most famously in Chicago, where "vote early and vote often" remains a kind of running joke with which citizens greet one another on Election Day. The attempt by Democrats to overturn the result of the 2000 election in Florida by manual recount slight-of-hand, as well as by refusing to count legally cast votes by military personnel and the inclusion of thousands of illegal votes by convicted felons has been quite thoroughly documented; if it hadn't been for Democratic fraud in the inital 2000 Florida count, the Bush victory wouldn't have been close enough to credibly challenge. Last year's stolen gubernatorial election in Washington State is, of course, fresh in the minds of all politically aware folks not trying extra hard to forget about it.
The technique of distracting people's attention by whining about the other side while doing it, though, is a comparatively recent wrinkle.
Hat-tips: Sister Toldjah and The Anchoress.
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