www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_31.php#003908
print) Just off the AP wire, the real story on Drudge's bogus Philly voter fraud story ... An army of zealous, partisan political operatives descended on polling l ocations around the state Tuesday, looking for any signs of voting irre gularities, and election officials planned to spend the day investigati ng fraud allegations. Republican observers in Philadelphia lodged some of the earliest complai nts, claiming that voting machines in the city already had thousands of votes recorded on them when the polls opened at 7 am City election officials and the district attorney rushed to some of the precincts in question, and quickly said the GOP poll watchers had gotte n it wrong. Deputy City Commissioner Ed Schulgen and Cathie Abookire, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Lynne Abraham, said the observers had pulled the numbers from an odometer that records every vote ever cast on the machi ne in every election - and not the counter that records how many votes will be counted for this election. Ridiculous or not, rumors of widespread fraud quickly made their way on to the Internet and circulated nationally. It was planted the re as part of the Republicans' battle plan today. And how surprising tha t these good souls just happened to misread the machines in the heavily African-American neighborhoods in Philly.
Philadelphia City Commissioner, the official responsible for overseeing elections in the c ity. "Recent press reports have stated that machines in at least one precinct were not properly calibrated to ensure an accurate accounting of the n umber of votes cast." "These allegations are completely unsubstantiated and have no factual basis whatsoever."
print) Before we get started today, a quick election day survival guide. I'm not just speaking about the public polls, but the private ones -- specifically the Republican o nes. But the Bush ca mpaign has a lot of incentives to try to get this one into overtime. And we'll see various bogus stories and funny-business throughout the cours e of the day. To start with, for instance, don't rely on right-wing agit-prop sites for your news about alleged instances of 'voter fraud'. Wait till you hear real information from real news outlets. The GOP is going to be pulling this stuff through the course of the day t rying either to use it to ramp up their suppression activities or lay th e groundwork for challenges to what some are starting to fear won't be g ood results.
Exits come out in a several batches over the course of the day. Democrats , on average, tend to vote later in the day than Republicans. Not always , but that's the pattern, for fairly straightforward demographic reasons . And for that reason their exit poll numbers tend to get better over th e course of the day. So if you see less than perfect numbers plastered around in the early afternoon, don't let that rattle you.
stop trying to intimidate voters on Indian reservations in the s tate. Specifically, folks from the Thune camp may not write down license plate numbers of Indian voters or follow them home from the polling pla ces.
print) In Michigan, phony phone calls using homophobia to suppress the black vot e and others telling people to go to the wrong polling places. And the p olling place shenanigans are happening in Ohio too.
excellent blog for polling analysis -- especially because it's by a guy who -- unlike most of us who chatter about polls -- actually know s what he's talking about.
Bush's aides predicted victory when talking on the record, pointing to p olls showing that the race remained a tossup, both nationally and in ke y states. But despite the insistence that all was well, the erosion in the moods of Bush's inner circle over the past two weeks was unmistakab le. Several of his close advisers said they were concerned because the president had achieved no last-minute momentum, and Democratic turnout was looking as if it might swamp the Bush-Cheney campaign's projections . A GOP official who is privy to Bush-Cheney strategy and polling said tha t as the incumbent, Bush should be further ahead of Kerry in polls. "So me of them have been moving in the right direction, but it isn't enough ," the official said.
is a big believer in the bandwagon e ffect, but there has been nothing over the past week for the president to use it to turn it around." The reports I get from sources inside that operation paint a similar pict ure.
But the short version is that it was a trade-off with c hanges that were made to make the site download more quickly. But for now, if you want to copy some text for whatever re ason, click on the 'print' link up at the top right hand side of the pos t That will take you to a version where cutting and pasting is as easy as, well ...
print) I must say, when they're cruising through elections, it's all inclusion a nd compassion and 'reaching out' (as that idiotic phrase has it). But wh en things are going south the GOP is truly the party of Jim Crow. There' s no other way to put it -- Advertisement out on the Indian reservations in South Dakota, in the inner city neigh borhoods across the upper Midwest and in various other ways. I like to think of myself as fairly hardened to this stuff. But it's brac ing to actually see it happening, even though it's all from the Rove pla ybook. You can see on the commentary this evening that Bush is hemorrhag ing. And they are going to amazi ng lengths that even I have a hard time believing. In any case, as nearly as I can tell, the Democrats are on top of the sit uation and mobilizing rapidly. The key is that folks should just go to p olls and vote. The aim here is to create rumors and a perception that people will have p roblems and in so doing get a lot of them not to show up at the polls at all. The truth is that people will be available to make sure things go smoothly and that folks won't have any undue difficulties. Go to the polls, vote, and let President Bush know that democracy starts at home. We'll try to have more updates on this stuff this evening.
ABC got a group of its producers to go to Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards e vents wearing the other campaign's T-shirts. The rules were to get the t ickets completely legitimately and maintain entirely courteous behavior at the events. At one Kerry-Edwards event, the BC04-clad producers were surrounded by si gn waving Kerry supporters, in attempt to make the purported Bush suppor ters invisible to the press. In this case, one of the volunteers later s aid, "My job tonight was to run interference so that we didn't have any negative situation on our hands ... Our job was to stand in front of the m and make sure that, number one, that press had access to Kerry stuff a nd not necessarily Bush." At another event, a Kerry campaign worker approached the producers and to ld them that they had the right to eject them if they made any disturban ce. The guy in this case told them, "We hold the right to remove you, bu t other than that, enjoy and hopefully at the end of the event you'll wa nt to wear a Kerry T-shirt." You could say it didn't go quite so well in Bush-Cheney land. When the pr oducers tried to get into a BC04 event, they simply weren't allowed in a t all. A campaign volunteer told them: "I'm sorry, but they're Kerry shirts ... We were told not to let people with Kerry shirts into the rally." And as they approached the gates of the stadium, Lance "Chip" Borman, a Bush campaign worker and attorney who worked for the Coalition Provisio nal Authority in Iraq, directed them toward the Brevard County sheriff' s deputies waiting at the exit. When some others slipped into their Kerry-Edwards-wear when they were alr eady inside, this happened ... A second team of ABC News producers waited until entering Space Coast st adium before showing its Kerry-Edwards T-shirts, but was still quickly spotted and ordered out by Borman, who identified himself as working fo r the Republican National Committee. He said the rally of some 18,000 people was a "private event," and it ma de no difference that producers Christine Romo and Jessica Wang had tic kets and remained silent and respectful. "And honest ly, if you would have come without ...
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