Read it on Salon
Overheard On The Daily Show
Sponsored Post
Friday, Oct 26, 2012 8:59 PM UTC
Karl Rove-style dirty tricks in Ohio
Voter intimidation, sketchy voting machines, misinformation: Are Karl Rove & Co. up to no good?
Topics: Mitt Romney, Karl Rove, Ohio, 2012 Elections, voting, Politics News
Are Karl Rove and his friends up to their old tricks again in Ohio?
As I report in “Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom of Power,” in 2004 the presidential race ultimately came down to Ohio. Today, with the election neck and neck once again, observers are asking whether the election will rest on a variety of unusual tactics used by the GOP to game the system in favor of the Republicans.
Among the GOP techniques used in 2004, Democrats complained about the unequal distribution of voting machines, which resulted in students at liberal Kenyon College waiting in line for as long as 11 hours while conservative voters at evangelical schools zipped through with no lines at all. There were “caging” tactics to challenge the voter registrations of college students, African-Americans and others who vote heavily Democratic. Republican volunteers known as the Mighty Texas Task Force were widely accused of intimidating would-be Democrat voters.
And there were numerous anomalies that some attributed to a computerized “Man-in-the-Middle” attack made possible by the fact that Secretary of State’s office in Ohio used a firm with strong GOP ties, SmarTech, as the “fail-over” site to handle returns on election night.
The final result? Even though the exit polls had Democrat John Kerry winning Ohio by 4.2 points, in the end George W. Bush emerged victorious.
For the most part, these unusual techniques could be attributed to Kenneth Blackwell, who, as Ohio’s Secretary of State, was charged with overseeing the election in a fair and impartial manner but who also happened to be co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, and, as such, was one of Rove’s chief lieutenants. As a result, many people believe Karl Rove stole Ohio to win the 2004 election.
This time around, Rove is not as close personally to Mitt Romney as he was with George W. Bush. But he is still a party boss of sorts — the king of the super PACs, which are funding the political ads that that are flooding the airwaves in Ohio. The Secretary of State of Ohio is Jon A. Husted, a Republican who was a veteran of Rove’s 2004 campaign in that state. Finally, with the race neck and neck on October 26, pundits at Real Clear Politics and elsewhere are speculating that once again the entire race may come down to Ohio.
Already, a number of interesting developments have begun to take place. This time, SmarTech does not have a clearly defined role as it did four years ago. But three days ago, I reported that votes in several counties in Ohio were being counted by Hart Intercivic, a voting machine company linked to the Romney camp, even though a study by the state of Ohio had labeled its voting system a “failure” when it comes to protecting the integrity of elections.
That is not the only questionable happenstance in Ohio. According to a recent report by Reuters, billboards have begun to appear in low-income neighborhoods in Cleveland and elsewhere in Ohio asserting that “Voter Fraud Is a Felony!” punishable by up to three and a half years in prison and a $10,000 fine. According to a Cleveland city councilor, the purpose of the billboard campaign was likely to confuse and intimidate ex-criminals from voting — even though it is perfectly legal for them to do so once they have served their time. “I’m worried they will actually scare some of the ex-offenders, people with felony records who can vote,” said Phyllis Cleveland, whose district includes several of the billboards. She added that there is confusion about felons voting because it is illegal in some states — but not in Ohio, 12 other states and Washington, D.C. The billboards, which are paid for by an anonymous group, have been put up mostly in black and low-income communities that tend to vote heavily Democratic.
Most Read
Comments
0 Comments