More on Electioneering
Dave Pentecost (weblog) ostensibly worked with Michael Moore's ominously low-key Video the Vote program.
Pentecost was in Ohio monitoring a polling station in a black neighborhood. He posted a reaction to his experience last Wednesday. Here's the rather inconclusive footage that Pentecost is offering as a first glimpse. (Video clip in Quicktime format.)
I'm still sitting on the fence on this one. It's hard to tell exactly what is going on in most of the scenes, especially the ones with shadowy white men talking on cell phones. Overall, it seems like chaos is the main culprit for the screw-ups, although Pentecost also blames undertrained or careless poll workers. That chaos seems to stem from these unidentified "challengers" who are prowling around, but whether they could be identified and tied to any Republican organization is doubtful.
In the end, it seems like a brilliant tactic: mess with the voter rolls, but just a little; send in challengers to stir things up, but don't press too hard; send in another group of "challenge adjuncts", who are later thrown out. Each case causes just a bit of chaos, just a little confusion, and distracts from the voting proceedures just a tiny bit. Repeat in the entire state of Ohio....
If that's what we're really seeing here, then it's a form of voter intimidation that probably isn't even prosecutable under current law.
Pentecost was in Ohio monitoring a polling station in a black neighborhood. He posted a reaction to his experience last Wednesday. Here's the rather inconclusive footage that Pentecost is offering as a first glimpse. (Video clip in Quicktime format.)
I'm still sitting on the fence on this one. It's hard to tell exactly what is going on in most of the scenes, especially the ones with shadowy white men talking on cell phones. Overall, it seems like chaos is the main culprit for the screw-ups, although Pentecost also blames undertrained or careless poll workers. That chaos seems to stem from these unidentified "challengers" who are prowling around, but whether they could be identified and tied to any Republican organization is doubtful.
In the end, it seems like a brilliant tactic: mess with the voter rolls, but just a little; send in challengers to stir things up, but don't press too hard; send in another group of "challenge adjuncts", who are later thrown out. Each case causes just a bit of chaos, just a little confusion, and distracts from the voting proceedures just a tiny bit. Repeat in the entire state of Ohio....
If that's what we're really seeing here, then it's a form of voter intimidation that probably isn't even prosecutable under current law.
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