on BOE in Warren County, Ohio (I think) who resigned his job after he found someone 'on the vote counting system' who no longer worked for the voting machine company and should not have had access to system. He raised the issues with the 'bosses' and they were not concerned about the guy or the voting machine company -- they actually gave him a dressing down for bringing up the issue. He resigned his job in disgust.
How can we imagine that GOPers are commiting election fraud on a large scale and Dems aren't aware of it: GOPers are getting away with it across the nation because they have been trained in GOP workshops how to conduct elections unethically and illegally and Democrats just don't see it coming. In my little town we have had Gerrymandering, our voting machines don't print paper ballots so we could not recount the very close last Congressional election, and our voter registration rolls have just been privatized - and NO ONE thinks anything is really wrong. Yes, the GOPer on the County Council have been a little 'heavy handed' -- but could their behavior be similar to that of GOPers across the nation? It is, but the vast majority of US citizens and Dems have no clue.
Read this: My Right Wing Degree by Jeff Horwitz
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/05/25/blackwell/index.htmlMay 25, 2005 | One recent Sunday, at Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, a dozen students meet for the second and final day of training in grass-roots youth politics. All are earnest, idealistic and as right wing as you can get. They take careful notes as instructor Paul Gourley teaches them how to rig a campus mock election.
It's nothing illegal -- no ballot stuffing necessary, even at the most liberal colleges. First you find a nonpartisan campus group to sponsor the election, so you can't be accused of cheating. Next, volunteer to organize the thing. College students are lazy, and they'll probably let you. Always keep in mind that a rigged mock election is all about location, location, location.
"Can anyone tell me," asks Gourley, a veteran mock electioneer, "why you don't want the polling place in the cafeteria?" Stephen, a shy anti-abortion activist sitting toward the rear of the class, raises his hand: "Because you want to suppress the vote?"
"Stephen has the right answer!" Gourley exclaims, tossing Stephen his prize, a copy of Robert Bork's "Slouching Toward Gomorrah."
The students, strait-laced kids from good colleges, seem unconvinced. The lesson -- that with sufficient organization, the act of voting becomes less a basic right than a tactical maneuver -- doesn't sit easy with some students at first. Gourley, a charismatic senior from South Dakota and the treasurer of the College Republican National Committee, assures them: "This is not anti-democracy. This is not shady. Just put
somewhere where you might have to put a little bit of effort into voting." The rest, Gourley explains, is just a matter of turnout.
<snip>
There is no better place to master the art of mock-election rigging -- and there is no better master than Morton Blackwell, who invented the trick in 1964 and has been teaching it ever since. Blackwell's half-century career in conservative grass-roots politics coincides neatly with the fortunes of the conservative movement: He was there when Goldwater lost, when Southern voters abandoned the Democratic Party in droves, and when the Moral Majority began its harvest of evangelical Christian voters. In the 1970s, Blackwell worked with conservative direct-mail king Richard Viguerie; in 1980, he led Reagan's youth campaign. Recently, he's been fighting to save Tom DeLay's job.
In a similar vein:
Paul Weyrich, Father of the Reagan Revolution, Founding Father of the Social Conservative Movement, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation speaking in a church to Republican activists (and probably not knowing he was being recorded) said this:
How many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome? Good government.
They want everybody to vote!
I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now.
As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as voting populace goes down.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=428116Think also about GOP motivations:
"Business ethics" reigns in the GOP and the business ethics can be reduced to "Do anything you can get away with".
And: People never do evil so happily or so well as when they believe they are doing good. The GOP - especially the religious fundamentalist foot soldiers believe they are doing God's work to prevent gay marriage, to end abortion, to "put God back in government". In Ohio, Blackwell has done a lot of work to portray himself as a good Christian man and is working closely with "Patriot Pastors".
In sum: Dems don't see it coming. What benefits Dems is for everyone to vote. We don't expect our GOP neighbors and colleagues on BOEs as being capable of acting unethically.
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