Political parties, when desperate will resort to some very low-life and desperate tactics - much like the GOP is doing in California. Folks, this is your enemy.
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http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/the-latest-gop-foot-soldiers-the-homeless/<snip>
Republican operatives in California have cooked up a dirty trick that looks like an election reform measure. They are trying to put an initiative on the ballot to divide the state’s 55 electoral votes between the winner and loser in next year’s presidential race, replacing the current winner-take-all method.
The reason it’s a dirty trick, as the Editorial Page noted recently, is that they are not trying to reform the Electoral College nationally — or to divide the electoral votes of Republican states like Texas. The initiative aims at rigging the Electoral College so that even if the Democrat wins the national popular vote by a wide margin, she or he might still lose the presidency.
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Now, as the Times reported today, there are charges that petition gatherers are going to shelters on Skid Row and offering homeless people Snickers bars and instant noodles in exchange for their signatures.
If the charges are true, the petition gatherers may have broken the law. There’s also the harsh irony that the people trying to buy the votes of the homeless are working to put a party in power that opposes the interests of the poor.
Most of all, though, it’s just creepy to buy hungry people’s political assent by dangling food in front of them.