Reply #29: A Smoking Gun? Operatives in FL Suddenly Avoided Poll Challenges; Why?

[dzika]

Saturday, December 25, 2004

A Smoking Gun? R* Operatives in FL Made Suddnly Avoided Poll Challenges; Were They Instructed? to Hold Off?

By ADVOCATE STAFF

As the attention of progressive recount activists remains fixated, and understandably so, on the State of Ohio, a stunning development in the State of Florida -- which Al Gore would have won in 2000 with the benefit of a statewide manual recount, but which George W. Bush mysteriously carried by more than 380,000 votes in 2004 -- has engendered new questions about whether and how top G.O.P. officials orchestrated the theft of a presidential election on November 2nd, 2004. News of this development nearly escaped the attention of The Advocate, released as it was (quite inadvisably, some would say) on Christmas Eve.

Observers of national politics will recall that, before the 2004 election, there was a good deal of chatter about a prospective G.O.P. effort to place so-called "poll-watchers" in selected precincts in battleground states. These "poll-watchers" were to be tasked with one mission, and one mission only: to challenge any and all likely Democratic-leaning voters whose registrations or identities could be challenged were they to appear in person at a polling place. The tacit purpose of these challenges would be to either disqualify the affected voter or else force him or her to vote by "provisional ballot" -- a form of voting in which the voter's ballot has (if recent trends are any indication) a greater than 20% chance of being thrown out post-election. The placement of poll-watchers was seen as an ideal opportunity for Republicans, under the cover of the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and state election statutes, to substantially reduce and/or intimidate large blocks of heavily-Democratic, largely-minority voters at polling places around the county. The BBC even obtained a copy of a so-called "caging list" from a county-level G.O.P. office in Florida. The list -- allegedly one of hundreds or thousands of such lists -- identified a long roll of voters the Republican Party intended to challenge at the polls on election day.

Then, just seventy-two hours before polls were set to open on November 2nd, 2004, something changed -- and it changed most dramatically in the State of Florida, unquestionably the most hotly-contested state in the entire election cycle, the state which nearly cost Republicans the presidency in 2000. The state which the G.O.P. had lavished more time, money, and attention on than any other.

State Republican operatives in Florida received word that a decision had been made not to challenge Democratic-leaning voters at the polls; in the final accounting, of the millions -- and millions -- and millions -- of Florida voters (over 7.5 million total), only 63 were challenged at the polls.

continued...
http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2004/12/news-election-2004-smoking-gun.html