Large amount of dirty tricks switching Dems to Repubs in swing states-why?

[berniew1]

There was a lot of dirty tricks to switch Dems & Greens to Repub. registration in swing states like Florida, Pennslvania, & Ohio- documented by elections official and EIRS reports & Media.
This doesn't gain any votes and makes the voters mad, yet was widely done. Why???

Only thing I can think of is to cover up the fact they weren't going to get enough actual votes to win, and were using it to cover the big Dem advantage in new Registrations so official vote wouldn't look too strange when they switched a lot of votes by touchscreen fraud- which has been documented in about 15 states.

Is this a likely explanation? If not, why would they do it??

[Goldeneye]

1. do you have one of those lists put together for this?

I'd like to see.

[berniew1]

10. See Florida or Ohio or New Mexico in main URL

http://www.flcv.com/ussumall.html

Fl Orange, Leon, Pinellas,Hillsboro, Pasco,etc.

Ohio see the files with dt

Penn see Penndt.html


some other states also
can't remember specifics beyond Florida where I'm from but in files
with dt

[distantearlywarning]

2. I also wondered that same thing a few months back.

I came to the same conclusion you did: one of the reasons this was done so that the evil-doers could claim (as they did in many places) that a plausible reason for statistically strange Republican upswings was a better GOTV campaign by the GOP ("just look at how many party registration changes we had 2 months before the election!"

In Pittsburgh, where I live, this was done to students, and they changed their polling places as well. The change of polling places was an effort to stop Democrats from voting (because many students don't have cars and Pittsburgh is difficult to get around in), and/or to force them to vote using provisional ballots, which apparently don't count as "real" votes. I think that in this case, the reason their party regs. were changed was just out of spite or to try to irritate the students further or something. General mean-spiritedness (what else would you expect from Repukes?)

[Old and In the Way]

3. I've come to the conclusion that

the only way to truely know the results of the 2004 election is to repoll all Democrats and Kerry voting Republicans to see if our results match the reported results.

If secret ballots are being used against us, we best understand this soon. If I were Dean (hoping he gets the DNC chair), the 1st order of business would be to get a seriously deep and accurate polling (by signed affidavit) atesting to the votes. I'd also include other questions that could help Democrats understand what the true priorities of the rank and file are. Our message to and from the Democratic leadership is being distorted by the lens of the Republican corporate media. Time to test the lens and see if it's accurate or not.

[Wilms]

4. If you register declaring a party, they start mailing you stuff.

So how would you get those Dem fliers with the polling place listed on it?

Sure. Switch the voter to Repub, but don't send mailers if possible.

Plus, I like that idea about pumping the "registration" numbers up to help explain the tally.

[Mabus]

5. might cut down on participation in the primaries

This serves two purposes.

Say, you find out your registration has been switched from Democratic to Republican when you went to vote on Nov. 2. You get pissed but realize you can still vote for Kerry. After voting you go home and watch election returns. You don't think about your registration until you go to vote in a mid-term primary. If you are in a state with closed primaries you'll find you will be handed a Republican ballot because you are no longer a Dem. You get pissed and then remember to try to make time to change your registration back. In the meantime, you have been effectively shut-out of the primaries for mid-term elections. Let's just hope the GOP hasn't run some stealth candidate in your area. Locally (Kansas) the guy who won the Democratic primary for US Senator dropped out of the race before Nov. 2.

Not only that but the newspapers will report that voting for Democratic candidates is down. This helps to remind us that it is hopeless.

At least, that's what I think they are up to.

[Nothing Without Hope]

6. Yes, I think it's to explain away discrepancies, & not just electronic

Only thing I can think of is to cover up the fact they weren't going to get enough actual votes to win, and were using it to cover the big Dem advantage in new Registrations so official vote wouldn't look too strange when they switched a lot of votes by touchscreen fraud- which has been documented in about 15 states.

This sounds about right to me, except that it isn't just touchscreen fraud and voter intimidation/poll squeezing (my term for long lines, other conditions to keep voters from voting). There were lots of other tactics.

Did you see this story about the stickers on the Ohio ballots - a expose by Raw Story, discussed while it was breaking on this DU thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x305634
The Raw Story article was posted online midway through the thread. It's here:
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=7
This is an amazing, must-read story.

Yes, there were lots of dirty tricks to steal votes, so they had to do what they could to pad the registration numbers to make it look less suspicious and confuse the voters, interrupt the flow of their information.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. It doesn't matter. They claimed that Dems voted Republican.

[spooked911]

8. Hmmm-- good point. (eom)

[KaliTracy]

9. a friend of mine told me about her experience at the polls this week

she isn't computer savy, and didn't know about the problems on election day. She just started telling me what happened to her
1. She was sent a registration card that said she was a Republican
2. When she went to vote she complained about the Republican Registration card, said she didn't want to be pegged to any party, that she voted for who would do the best job, and in any given year that could be a Republican or a Democrat, but she did say she was going to vote for Kerry.
3. She wanted to change her designation there, since she hadn't requested it, and they couldn't/woouldn't do that.
4. They told her she had to vote with a provisional ballot. (I was not sure why she was made to do this)
5. She was angry because they wouldn't let her put her provisional ballot in a box, they wanted it on the table.

She's my hairdresser, and of course, at the end of a 2 and 1/2 hour perm, as I am paying, this information/conversation comes out -- she was livid, "I know they just threw my vote away" (of course she doesn't know this, but from the way they treated her, she thought it could be a possibility). I had no time to go into all the things that happened in Ohio. I had a copy of the Conyers report printed and bound, so the next day, I took it to her, with his address in it, and told her to send him her story.

Sure, she shouldn't have mentioned who she was going to vote for -- but in any case It Shouldn't Matter if she did or not.

On edit -- by the way, I am in Ohio -- this was either in Bulter or Hamilton County.