We have confirmed a report of an inaccurate text message circulating in Missoula telling people that local polling places have long lines and that Obama voters should vote tomorrow. Similar jokes and rumors fly every election. While we do not have concerns that many voters will be tricked into thinking that they can vote tomorrow and we do not know whether these messages are intended as pranks or as malicious suppression, we are worried that rumors of long lines and delays could dissuade voters from attempting to participate this year.
We'd encourage local media to highlight that few polling places in Montana suffer from long lines or waiting times to vote and to emphasize that voters do need to go to their polling place by 8pm tonight in order to be able to vote.
Note - we also know that similar text messages are being reported in Florida and around the country, including in this CNN report:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/voting.problems/?imw=Y&iref=m
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Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Vote suppression?
Matt Singer of Left in the West is asking local media to pass this along:
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8 comments:
may Abe Lincoln come down from heaven and pull these #$%@holes heads off. The GOP is just too evil to tolerate anymore.
I was watching the news yesterday afternoon, as a Black Panther, in front of a polling place in Philadelphia was hauled off by the cops for intimidating voters with a police nightstick.
There are also substantive whispers of Dems scurrying on dark errands of election fraud. Dead felons will vote, union hacks are being bussed to multiple polling places, 12-year-olds have false ID's and old ladies are being strong-armed by Matt Singer into voting booths. Yet, as always, only Republican malfeasances are being reported by the bastion of "good goverment", the Billings Outpost.
Jay,
Probably worth noting that shortly after I posted Matt Singer's message, I got an e-mail from Brad Johnson, the liberal Democrat who runs the Secretary of State's office, confirming the rumor and passing along a similar warning. He neglected to mention any dead felons, 12-year-olds or strong-armed old ladies.
I didn't see any voter supression in Billings -
and BTW, I've started blogging again at Downtown Billings.
Thanks for keeping the blogosphere in Billings going David.
Maybe Ed Kemmick will bring back City Lights one day too.
Jay's comments remind me of an interview I saw Tuesday in which a CNN reporter was interviewing a black voter Tuesday in a PA polling place who was gushing about how excited he was to be voting for Obama. So excited, the voter exclaimed, that he'd been back to vote for Obama several times!
"I think that's illegal." said the reporter with a chagrined look on his face he turned back to the camera.
I might have thought it was hilarious, if I didn't suspect that ACORN was encouraging that sort of thing all over the country.
I first heard this joke many years ago, long before the "vast right-wing conspiracy" ever was diabolically conceived. Back when Democrats had always run the country and always would.
The joke ran "due to heavy expected turnout, this year (insert party A) will be voting on Tuesday and (insert party B) will be voting on Wednesday."
It was a joke I heard even before the age of the internet.
The fact that Brad Johnson responded to it as he did is due not to any idea that this kind of prank was a diabolical conspiracy to disenfranchise voters (who would actually believe it?)-- it was due to the toxic atmosphere of this election for Republicans in which the worst would be assumed of us, even more than is usual.
You can be sure that even if Johnson had credible reports of voter irregularities on the part of Democrats, he wouldn't have dared to whisper a word about them, knowing that the next day, yet another piece of hate mail decrying him as an extremist trying to disenfranchise voters would hit every mailbox in the state. It's nice to see that Montana voters rewarded Johnson for his even-handedness through all of this by kicking him out of office.
It is ironic that Montana Democrats thought that the governor's statements about "turning a few dials" was an obvious joke that was being blown out of proportion, and that Republicans needed to lighten up.
And yet in this example, it seems that in a matter in which no Republican official was remotely involved, all sense of humor was gone, and it is Republicans who are "too evil to tolerate anymore."
Humor, anonymous. It was humor! Learn to recognize it.
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