Republican tactics

Democrats.org has a post called "GOP Boasts About "Caging" Efforts" that's worth checking out...

"In a recent e-mail to party supporters, Kansas GOP Chair Kris Kobach bragged about the Republican Party's efforts at "caging" voters. In an e-mail message sent to state Republicans, Kansas Republican Party Chairman Kris Kobach reviewed the party’s accomplishments this..."



So, this wasn't exactly what I thought I would be writing about when I revived my little political rant blog, but in reading the short blog story linked to above, I am reminded of something that happened 8 years ago when I worked for the Kansas Democratic Party during the 2000 election cycle.

Let me first say that I cannot say with certainty that Democrats don't do this kind of thing, but, I can say that the particular state party that I worked for did not. My impression, as well, is that conventional wisdom generally says the more people who vote, the better Democrats tend to perform in the resulting elections. So, if that theory holds true, and most democratic political operatives believe it does, democrats are better off going door to door to offer rides to polls to get as many people as possible out to vote. Hence the advent of the Get Out The Vote programs you often hear about as election day nears.

But anyway, back to this memory...it was the eve of the election. Several candidates were using a relatively new tool to contact voters...the recorded phone call. You use a phone list, like you would a mailing list and the computer calls the list to play the recorded message reminding people to vote or passing along whatever information the candidate chooses.

The morning the polls opened, we began getting calls from irate voters complaining that our candidates had been calling them at 1...2...3am with a message attacking the conservative opponent. Ironically, staffers working for the candidate the message supposedly came from received calls as well. Hmmm.

Our office was responsible for coordinating the use of this service for our candidates, we made all the arrangements with the company providing this service and after confirming with them, we found that there were no calls scheduled nor performed at those hours and well, we had no knowledge of any planned negative attack message either.

So you tell me? Who ends up benefiting from calls made at 2am claiming to be from the democratic candidate attacking his opponent on the eve of the election?

And now tell me that the story above isn't just more of the same, 8 years later. What is so offensive about this to me is that they were bragging about it in the referenced email.

"Hey, we managed to keep more voters away from the polls in a complete and utter corruption of the political process! Yeehaw!"

Look, everybody is trying to find that edge to increase the numbers in their favor, I know that; our office spent time doing just that, knocking on some doors, but not others, knowing that spending more time with certain people is a better use of resources...but not once, during the entire process did we ever do anything or even entertain the idea of trying to discourage people from voting.