J. Melcher dropped an old but fascinating story in the comments of the post on vote monitoring below. It's the sort of story that should have provoked intense reforms, but of course did not.
[Dallas] may have developed an entrenched system of voter fraud because that system serves certain people's key interests at certain key moments.
Nancy Moffat, a volunteer poll-watcher ... found herself wondering about it while she stood there witnessing the absentee vote-counting rodeo at the Dallas County Elections Department on June 2 [2001]
"That just makes me sick to my stomach."
Moffat found [were] organized teams of "vote-brokers," [who] show up at an elderly voter's house the same day an absentee ballot is delivered by U.S. Mail. The brokers talk the voter into voting for the candidate who hired them. Then they talk the voter into giving them the ballot. They hoard the ballots they have collected, waiting to turn them in until the last day, so that the opposing campaign can't see from whom they've gotten ballots and can't check up on how they did it.
Moffatt is in place at Dallas County election headquarters ... The elevator door opens. Off steps a "courier," but instead of a nefarious fake UPS uniform, he's wearing a [campaign] Caraway T-shirt. He is accompanied by a woman and a small child and is toting a big U.S. Postal Service box of absentee ballots. Moffat steps up to the guy and says, "Where did all these ballots come from?" "Oh, from [ my candidate] " he says. "Yeah, the office at 1418 Bonnie View. That's one of the main offices." Now here's the kicker. Even though the man had just confessed in front of everybody that he had picked up this bundle of 160 ballots at a ... campaign office, the ballots were counted anyway, because the ... campaign had put a different address on the guy's courier slip.
Now this is the sort of Dallas story that inspired the effort of poll watchers in Houston. Remember them? "True the Vote" ?
2 comments:
Ah. I linked to THAT story, (a more complete later analysis) so I could link to THIS one ... about poll watchers.
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/vote-early-vote-often-6391857
[Dallas] may have developed an entrenched system of voter fraud because that system serves certain people's key interests at certain key moments.
Nancy Moffat, a volunteer poll-watcher ... found herself wondering about it while she stood there witnessing the absentee vote-counting rodeo at the Dallas County Elections Department on June 2 [2001]
"That just makes me sick to my stomach."
Moffat found [were] organized teams of "vote-brokers," [who] show up at an elderly voter's house the same day an absentee ballot is delivered by U.S. Mail. The brokers talk the voter into voting for the candidate who hired them. Then they talk the voter into giving them the ballot. They hoard the ballots they have collected, waiting to turn them in until the last day, so that the opposing campaign can't see from whom they've gotten ballots and can't check up on how they did it.
Moffatt is in place at Dallas County election headquarters ... The elevator door opens. Off steps a "courier," but instead of a nefarious fake UPS uniform, he's wearing a [campaign] Caraway T-shirt. He is accompanied by a woman and a small child and is toting a big U.S. Postal Service box of absentee ballots. Moffat steps up to the guy and says, "Where did all these ballots come from?" "Oh, from [ my candidate] " he says. "Yeah, the office at 1418 Bonnie View. That's one of the main offices." Now here's the kicker. Even though the man had just confessed in front of everybody that he had picked up this bundle of 160 ballots at a ... campaign office, the ballots were counted anyway, because the ... campaign had put a different address on the guy's courier slip.
Now this is the sort of Dallas story that inspired the effort of poll watchers in Houston. Remember them? "True the Vote" ?
But that's still another story ...
Tom Wolfe's A Man In Full gives a good summary how this happens in Atlanta. A little different, but just as bad.
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