I got forwarded the following article from the Herald-Times. This is scary and fucked up. Keeping elections up to board is fine, not discussing your tactics and motivations is shady.
Voters may face challenges
Monroe County GOP plans to check on voters at polls
By Katy Murphy, Hoosier Times
October 31, 2004Republicans in Monroe County plan to assign challengers to the polls on
Tuesday, GOP county Chairman John Shean said Saturday.“We’re going to have people trained to look for people who might not be
properly registered,” he said.The news distressed Monroe Democratic Party Chairman Dan Combs, who fears
the challenges will target low-income and homeless voters.“If it happens, it will be appalling,” he said. “It is really the lowest
technique there is.”Earlier in the week, Shean said he planned to conduct an audit of the
12,000-some newly registered voters before deciding whether to use
challengers.“If we believe that there is a real potential for voter fraud, then we
will probably have challenges,” he said on Thursday.That evening, however, Shean said he had not begun the audit and that he
had not determined how party activists would go about looking for “red
flags.”Shean would not comment Saturday on the methodology to be used to identify
potentially invalid voters, such as non-U.S. citizens.“I’m not going to discuss that,” he said. “I don’t see the wisdom in
divulging all of that to a reporter.”Poll challenging is not a new practice, but it has come into prominence in
many swing states across the country amid an exceptionally tense and
polarized presidential election.Republicans, who are organizing the bulk of the challenge campaigns, tend
to see it as a way to protect the integrity of the system, while Democrats
say it is merely a way to suppress the vote of low-income or minority
voters.While the presidential race is hardly close in Indiana, many state and
local races are competitive and contentious. Kip Tew, chairman of the
Indiana Democratic Party, said Democratic volunteers and attorneys will be
stationed in polls statewide, especially in parts of Marion County, to
counter what he sees as vote-suppression efforts.Combs earlier in the week dismissed the practice by local Republicans as
unlikely. On Saturday, he said he had heard rumblings that low-income and
homeless voters who list the Shalom Center or other shelters as an address
will be targeted.“The people most susceptible to challenges are new voters, low income
voters,” he said.While the Democrats don’t plan to challenge voters on Tuesday, Combs said,
they do plan to post poll watchers and pollbook holders at each site. The
party’s volunteers are equipped with cellular phones, he said, which they
will use to contact party lawyers if anything out of the ordinary is
taking place.Combs said the Democratic volunteers would not interfere with voting or
any challenges made, but that they will follow challenged voters outside
and make sure they were given provisional ballots.Indiana law gives any citizen the right to challenge the election process.
It also entitles each political party to station at each polling site a
partisan challenger who is credentialed through the party chairperson. In
Monroe County, the clerk receives a list of challengers and other party
volunteers on Election Day.When someone has reason to believe that a voter is under 18, lives out of
the district or isn’t a U.S. citizen, among other qualifications, they
fill out an affidavit provided by the election staff that indicates their
suspicion.In Monroe County, bipartisan election staff (a Republican inspector; and a
judge and a clerk from each party) would then give a challenged voter a
counter-affidavit, in which he or she swears to be a legitimate voter.
Then the person casts a provisional ballot, and the county’s bipartisan
election board must decide by Nov. 8 whether it should be counted.That process would likely require the voter — and the challenger — to
return to the election offices later that day or week and present evidence
to the election board, said Steve Hogan, the board’s president. Depending
on the number of provisional ballots cast, that could mean that close
elections might remain open for nearly a week.While many Democrats, like Combs, see challenging as a suppression tactic,
Republicans who support the practice say it is important for the system’s
validity.“We know that voter fraud can and does happen,” Shean said. “I agree: I
want everyone who’s qualified and registered to vote, to vote — once.”He added, “I don’t accept the premise that properly registered voters
might be intimidated that there might be a challenge at the polls. It’s
typically only those who are breaking the law that are intimidated by the
process.”Clarence Gilliam, president of the Monroe County chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, expressed concern that
voters will become intimidated if confronted. He said his organization
advises voters to stay calm and “see what the remedy is” in the event of a
challenge.“It’s going to be very important that every vote counts,” Gilliam said.
Although registered voters cannot be required to show identification at
the polls, Gilliam recommended that people bring a photo ID and proof of
address, such as a utility bill, bank statement, or a number of other
documents.Monroe County Clerk Jim Fielder, the nonpartisan member of the election
board, initially downplayed concerns about challengers. But later, he
said, “That would certainly complicate things a great deal if we had a
major challenge campaign this fall. Hopefully, that will not be the case.”