GOP's Get-Out-the-Vote Drive

The New York Times describes a plan by the Ohio Republican Party to pay thousands of people to stalk polling places and turn away as many prospective voters as possible:

The Ohio Republicans also plan to have people in more than 3,600 polling places, mostly in heavily Democratic urban areas, to challenge the right of people to vote on Election Day itself.

Leaving aside the fact that this is obscene, I can't imagine that it will succeed at doing anything but angering voters who witness people being strong-armed out of their vote.

When you couple efforts like this with the Bush/Cheney campaign's weird "loyalty oath" requirement, which prevented undecided and persuadable voters from attending their rallies, I think we may be looking at one of the worst-run campaigns by an incumbent president in U.S. history.

Karl Rove's reputation as a genius has an expiration date of 11/2/2004.

Politics · 2004/10/27 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

A friend of mine, a decent Republican, volunteered to be an observer for the GOP in Lucas County (NW Ohio). After his training session, he told me that expected problems. From the questions other volunteers were asking, he expects many arbitrary demands to produce ID. He is certain there will be many angry voters, and that it will hurt the Republican party.

#1 · douglas Anders · 2004/10/27

No kidding. It would drive me nuts. I'm a yellow-dog Democrat. If I was in a polling place and a Democratic observer challenged my right to vote, I'd vote straight GOP ticket and tell the fucker why I did it on the way out.

#2 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2004/10/28