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Skriven 2006-11-21 02:04:00 av ROSS SAUER (1:123/140)
Ärende: Dirty tricks
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Why do they do this?
Obviously, because it's the only game they know.

The GOP's dirty deeds of 2006

Salon's guide to robo-calls, push polls, vigilantes and other murky 
dealings from this year's elections. 

By Alex Koppelman and Lauren Shell

Nov. 21, 2006 | Before the 2006 midterm election, you couldn't escape 
the predictions of Election Day disaster: voting machine meltdowns, 
interminable lines, endless recounts. But the control of both houses of 
Congress was decided without interference from Diebold or hanging chads, 
so few (outside of Florida's 13th Congressional District) are suffering 
flashbacks of 2000 and 2004. 

But while this year might not have included any repeats of Palm Beach 
County or Ohio, that doesn't mean the midterm elections were squeaky 
clean. This November there were some old-school dirty tricks that had 
nothing to do with voting machines or secretaries of state. An 
unscientific sample seems to show that most were the product of a party 
that was desperate for something, anything, that would help it protect 
its doomed congressional majorities. The bulk of this year's murky 
dealings took place in those tightly contested races -- from the battle 
for Virginia's Senate seat to House races in Illinois, New York and 
Connecticut -- that were crucial to control of Congress. 

Fortunately, politicians in several states and the U.S. Senate are 
taking steps to criminalize some of the more heinous tricks played this 
year. Before any of the bad deeds from this election are forgotten, 
here's Salon's Cheat Sheet -- our top 10 list of dirt. 


In Maryland, Republicans turn Democrat -- and truck in homeless men to 
spread the word 

In some states, like deep-blue Maryland, being a Republican is a 
political liability. Still, it's not often that you see Maryland's top 
Republican candidates actually pretending to be Democrats -- but that's 
exactly what Gov. Bob Ehrlich and Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who was 
running for the state's open Senate seat, did. 

A flier distributed in majority black Prince George's County, and 
unsubtly hued red, black and green, featured three prominent black 
Democrats -- Kweisi Mfume, a former congressman and former head of the 
NAACP; Wayne K. Curry, the former county executive in Montgomery County; 
and Jack B. Johnson, Prince George's county executive -- stating that 
each endorsed Steele for the U.S. Senate and Ehrlich for governor. In 
reality, none of them had endorsed Ehrlich, and only Curry had endorsed 
Steele. On the back of the flier was a "Democratic Sample Ballot" that 
endorsed Ehrlich for governor and Steele for Senate. 

The men who were passing out the deceptive fliers were homeless, and had 
been trucked in from Philadelphia specially for the event with the 
promise of three meals and $100 cash in exchange for one Election Day's 
work. 


In Virginia, voter intimidation 

It's not illegal to be registered to vote in two places, as long as you 
don't vote in both. But that's not what Timothy Daly, of Clarendon, Va., 
was told. Daly got a message on his answering machine that told him that 
the nonexistent "Virginia Elections Commission" had "determined you are 
registered in New York to vote." 

"Therefore," the message said, "you will not be allowed to cast your 
vote." It ended by promising Daly, who has voted in Virginia since 1998, 
that if he did come to vote, he would "be charged criminally." 

Daly wasn't the only Virginia resident to receive such a message; enough 
similar calls were made, in fact, that the FBI has opened an 
investigation into the allegations. It's not yet known who was behind 
the calls, but it seems likely they would have taken an organized 
effort, or at the very least no small investment of time -- whoever 
called Daly and the other victims of the scam would have had to comb 
through voter registration data to find voters registered in multiple 
states. In the end, Democrat Jim Webb defeated incumbent Republican Sen. 
George Allen by just over 7,200 votes. 


The Social Security Administration gets into the act 

Illinois Democratic congressional candidate Tammy Duckworth, running for 
the open seat that once belonged to Henry Hyde, wanted to extend Social 
Security benefits to illegal immigrants. At least, that's what one 
mailer to district residents said -- and there was no reason to doubt 
it. After all, it was from the Social Security Administration. The 
mailer came in a yellow-brown envelope whose front bore the image of an 
eagle and the words "Notice: Social Security Benefit Change Proposal." 
To be fair, the letter did acknowledge its source -- the National 
Republican Congressional Committee -- at the bottom of the page and 
again on the back of the envelope, where the return address listed 
"Social Security Benefits Proposal c/o National Republican Congressional 
Committee." But some of Duckworth's supporters have alleged that the 
mailing was more than just deceptive: It could, they say, be considered 
mail fraud for seemingly imitating mail from an official government 
agency without the disclosure required of any non-governmental entity 
sending out such a letter. On Election Day, Republican Peter Roskam beat 
Duckworth by less than 5,000 votes.


"Not like in Mexico, here there is no benefit to voting." 

This October, nearly 14,000 Orange County, Calif., residents received a 
letter stating that if they attempted to vote on Nov. 7, they could face 
jail time or deportation. The recipients -- all of whom had Latino last 
names and were registered as Democrats -- were discouraged in formal 
Spanish laden with grammatical errors from voting in the midterm 
elections. The letter not only targeted illegal immigrants and legal 
immigrants who are not naturalized citizens; it also went to naturalized 
legal immigrants, who are eligible to vote, and to many native-born 
Latinos. Although early investigations by the state attorney general 
pointed to an independent anti-immigration group as the source of the 
letter, it was later discovered that campaign officials working for 
Republican congressional candidate Tan Nguyen were responsible for 
composing the letter and compiling names for the mailing list. Nguyen, 
who is a staunch supporter of anti-immigration legislation, has said 
that he had nothing to do with the letter, but believes it was legal. 
Not everyone agrees with Nguyen’s assessment, though; the California 
Attorney General's Office is weighing criminal charges. 


Blood runs thicker than party affiliation 

Family ties can make for some strange political situations; perhaps none 
was stranger this year than the saga of the Ford family in Tennessee. 
Though it was Rep. Harold Ford Jr. who received the lion's share of the 
attention as the Democratic candidate for Senate in a key state, his 
younger brother Jake was on the ballot as well, hoping to take over the 
9th District House seat Harold Jr. had vacated to run for Senate. Jake 
Ford was running for Congress as an independent after losing the 
Democratic primary. But that's not what Ford family patriarch Harold 
Ford Sr. said. 

The elder Ford, himself a former congressman, is famous for his 
unofficial party ballots, handed out to the black voters of Memphis. 
This year, like every year, he printed and distributed a "Ford 
Democratic ballot." This time, though, one candidate stuck out -- Jake 
Ford, who made the sample ballot over Steve Cohen, the real Democratic 
candidate. Cohen easily beat Ford in the general election. 


The robot that called. And called. And called 

If you're the average American, you've gotten a call from a 
telemarketer. You've probably gotten a call from a telemarketer who was 
really a robot. And if you're like most of us, you've probably hung up. 
But what if the robot didn't get the message? 

In this year's biggest dirty trick, that's what happened to voters 
across the country, who were deluged with robo-calls that purportedly 
were coming from Democratic candidates. The calls started innocently 
enough, by offering information about the local Democrat. But if you 
hung up, the robot would call back. Hang up again and, like some 
character out of a Stephen King novel, the robot would call again. And 
again. And again, sometimes as many as seven times before it gave up. So 
the voters who had the temerity to want to enjoy their dinner unmolested 
were left with the impression of a Democratic candidate who simply would 
not leave them alone; those who stayed on the line were instead treated 
to a string of disinformation about the Democrat. The calls, which were 
paid for by the NRCC, hit many of the House races vital to Democrats' 
chances to take back the House. They ran in at least two key Illinois 
districts, including Duckworth's, and in Connecticut, where vulnerable 
Republican incumbent Chris Shays survived a stiff challenge from 
Democrat Diane Farrell, and in other races in states as diverse as 
Georgia, California, Pennsylvania and New York. In all, a total of 1 
million calls were spread over 53 House races; this means that an 
average of 20,000 calls were made in each district, each of which 
contained about 200,000 votes. The calls could potentially have reached 
one out of every 10 voters in the targeted races. 

The uproar that followed hasn't escaped the attention of politicians. 
Sen. Barack Obama has introduced a bill that would criminalize the 
practice, and on the local level several states are considering similar 
legislation. 


Push polls 

The robo-calls weren't this election season's only example of trick by 
telephone; another old tactic was trotted out this year: the push poll. 

Relying on the public's trust of pollsters as objective questioners, not 
partisan propagandists, push polls come from callers pretending to be 
interested in recipient responses -- but what they really care about is 
their own message, which is slipped into the question. 

One group, Common Sense Ohio, was responsible for many of the push polls 
this year, which hit key Senate races in Maryland, Montana, Ohio and 
Tennessee, along with the governor's race in Ohio and a ballot 
initiative in South Dakota to overturn an abortion ban. In Missouri, 
where stem cell research became an issue with the intervention of 
Parkinson's-stricken actor Michael J. Fox, voters were asked about their 
support for medical experiments on babies still in the womb -- and were 
then told that Democrat Claire McCaskill did. 


The progressive group that wasn't 

Bob Casey, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, isn't 
your typical Democrat -- pro-gun, pro-death penalty, antiabortion -- but 
he was running against a Republican, Rick Santorum, who made him look 
positively liberal by comparison. 

Still, there was ample room for anyone who wished to attack Casey from 
the left -- and there were plenty who did. Like the people behind the 
Progressive Policy Council, a self-described nonprofit organization that 
popped up just before the election to denounce Casey's conservative 
stances. But the group, which appeared to have no signs of actual life 
other than mailers sent out attacking Casey, may not have been as 
"progressive" as advertised: It's represented by the former deputy 
general counsel to President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, who has 
also worked for the Dole campaign and the Republican National Committee. 

It wasn't the only attempt by Republicans to hit Casey from the left. 
The race's Green Party candidate was funded entirely by donors who 
normally support Republicans. 


Case of the vanished polling place 

Most people -- well, most people other than Ann Coulter -- try to make 
sure they're voting in their assigned polling place. But voters in 
several states had their polling place changed just before the election. 

At least, that's what the phone calls told them. Voters in New York, New 
Mexico and Virginia were told by anonymous callers that their polling 
places were changed and they were given erroneous directions to new 
polling places that didn't exist. In New Mexico, at least one call 
giving incorrect information about a polling place was actually traced 
back to the local Republican Party. Republicans claimed it was a 
mistake, but in response the state's Democrats unsuccessfully petitioned 
a judge to enjoin the state GOP from calling any more Democrats at all. 


And last, but not least -- vigilantes 

On Election Day, a posse of three men in Tucson, Ariz., proved that the 
Wild West still lives. 

The group, which was three strong, and allegedly composed of two anti-
immigration activists, Russ Dove and Roy Warden, carried a camcorder, a 
clipboard -- on which, they said, was information about a proposed law 
to make English the state's official language -- and a gun. While one 
man would approach a voter, holding the clipboard, another would follow, 
pointing the video camera at them. The third would stand behind, holding 
his hand to the gun at his hip in what activists on the other side 
called classic voter intimidation tactics in a precinct one local paper 
had previously declared the bellwether of the area's Hispanic vote. 

It's not the first time Dove and Warden have been accused of this type 
of act. Dove, who is a convicted felon and former militia member, 
patrolled Arizona's polls in 2004 as well, and Warden has publicly 
burned a Mexican flag (for which he was charged with in arson) and 
acknowledged that he sought a concealed carry permit for a gun, partly 
in hopes of enticing a local police officer to attack him and force 
Warden to use deadly force in self-defense. 

-- By Alex Koppelman and Lauren Shell 

Copyright ©2006 Salon Media Group, Inc.

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