Discolor Online

My anxiety over the coming election is growing. I've seen for myself how people I thought were moral, decent people have been completely hoodwinked over such small-potatoes politics as GAMA and Danceygate, and I fear, truly fear what will happen next month with all the dirty tricks and underhanded schemes the big boys are working.

A few examples currently on my radar (any bold/italic emphasis is mine):

...few of those wrongly purged from the voting rolls in 2000 are back on the voter lists. State officials have imposed Kafkaesque hurdles for voters trying to get back on the rolls...

The signs carry the name of the Philadelphia Education Project, a political committee that registered with the IRS just over two weeks ago. Its registered purpose is "to educate the public about important issues of public policy," but supporters of Specter's opponent, U.S. Rep. Joe Hoeffel, think the aim is to associate Republican Specter with Kerry in a heavily Democratic area.

...what was supposed to happen was that one operative was going to come into the campaign office and leave the flyers on a table full of other campaign materials, so that a second operative could come in, "find" the documents, and start raising a fuss. But Fitzhugh's quick-witted and observant volunteer, Kate Honey, spotted the materials and had them thrown away. So then the second operative comes by, expecting to find the materials there, and starts complaining about them -- before realizing that they've already been thrown away. As a backup, he goes out and retrieves them from the trash.

Sproul has become entangled in controversial allegations in at least three states where his company was conducting registration drives paid for by the RNC...

South Dakota campaign official who resigned after questions arose over absentee-ballot applications will work in Ohio for the Bush-Cheney campaign, an internal Republican Party memo indicates. Three other GOP workers who resigned over the application fracas also will be involved in the Ohio campaign...

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett accused Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker of inviting election-night chaos by not printing as many ballots as city officials requested...[city officials charge] that Walker, by holding down the number of ballots printed for the city, is attempting to depress turnout, particularly in central city neighborhoods expected to back Democrat John Kerry in the presidential race...Walker is a co-chair of the statewide Bush campaign.

Federal prosecutors yesterday called a halt just 20 minutes before Democrats were to question a Republican official under oath over the identity of a Bush-Cheney official allegedly implicated in an illegal phone-jamming operation...court filings yesterday identified the alleged co-conspirator as Jim Tobin, director of the 2004 New England regional Bush-Cheney campaign

Let me be clear, I do not approve of vote fraud or dirty tricks no matter what side it benefits. But what disturbs me so deeply about stories like the ones I've quoted above, is that these incidents are not being attributed to just some guys who got carried away and stole or defaced road signs or bumper stickers; each of these stories seems to be part of a purposeful, coordinated effort (some might even say "campaign") whose participants are repeatedly high-up muckety mucks in Republican party, state chairmen and regional directors.

Karl Rove is famous for his dirty tricks, names like Jim Tobin ("Our strategy? We’re playing very hard to win this state," said Tobin. "Our strength is our ground game."), and Roger Stone (remember that mob scene of people protesting the recount in Miami-Dade that turned out to be packed with G.O.P workers brought in from around the country?) sure do seem to pop up a lot, too.