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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (340940)	6/21/2007 12:56:31 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1575607

powerlineblog.com - "..In 1996 Sanchez knocked off the controversial Dornan by only 979 votes in the traditionally Republican Orange County. But Dornan's complaints about voting irregularities led to a 14-month probe by the House Oversight Committee. The time-consuming investigation -- that only ended last spring with a ruling that there was voter fraud but did not fault Sanchez and awarded her the seat" cnn.com -- americasfuture.net -- "...The Jenkins campaign conducted a dozen interviews with New Orleans residents -- all of them living in the inner city -- who say they were promised cash for voting. With the understanding that the names of the interviewees would be withheld, the Jenkins campaign allowed NR to review the tapes. The number of illegal votes accounted for in the interviews isn't more than fifty or so. But the illegal practices recounted seem to implicate Mayor Morial's political organization in blatant wrongdoing, and to suggest a larger pattern of illegality that puts the integrity of Miss Landrieu's victory in serious doubt. -- One New Orleans woman explained to a Jenkins investigator that she "was sitting on my porch when this nice person drove up in a . . . car and asked me whether or not I was registered voter or not. And I told him I was but I didn't feel like going. And he said, 'Well, if I paid you would you go then?' And quite naturally, a ride and the money, I got up and dusted off my little pants and got in the car." The woman, who couldn't read, says the man, working off a yellow (LIFE-produced) sample ballot, marked how she was to vote and then took her to three different locations where she voted and signed her name "X" each time. -- A New Orleans man told a Jenkins investigator that he went to three different polling places and voted at each four or five times. He says he was paid $60 for each stop, was carried in a van with several other people, and was handed a yellow sample ballot that fits the description of the LIFE sample ballot (differently colored sample ballots, distributed in massive quantities on election day, are the hallmarks of the various New Orleans political organizations). The man says he didn't have to sign in or stand in line at the various polling places. -- "Well, my friend had asked me did I want to go vote," another New Orleans woman told a Jenkins investigator. "She said they was paying people to go vote for this person. I say who was the person? She say Mary, Mary Landrieu." The woman got in a van that had three bench seats behind the driver and was driven to three polling places and given a LIFE sample ballot off which to vote. She was promised $25 for each stop. "Hey, hey all I got was $25!" she complains in the interview. "We went to three places. The agreement was we was supposed to get $25 each place." As consolation, she was given a Mary Landrieu T-shirt: "They promise you, and then they going give us ol' stanky T-shirt with her picture on it." (She threw the T-shirt away in a dumpster.) All the interviews follow a similar pattern: An election worker promises someone money to vote; he transports him to the polls in a car or van full of people; he gives them a LIFE ballot to show them for whom and for what to vote; the voter either signs his name at multiple polling places or doesn't sign at all or, in one case, signs someone else's name. Some of the interviews suggest a fairly well-organized effort. One woman says that she was taken in a van to a polling place where she voted twice, once in her own name, the second time in a name given to her by the driver. She says the driver selected who would vote at which polling places. The interviews also suggest that polling commissioners -- often long-serving local residents who are cozy with the neighborhood's political operators -- were active participants in the illegalities, allowing selected voters to jump lines at polling places and to vote without signing their names or being checked for identification. One man who says he stood in line for an hour and a half at one polling place complained to a Jenkins investigator that twice he saw four vans pull up full of people who were allowed to jump the line and vote immediately: "They wasn't signing the book or nothin'. Just goin' in and comin' back out." It's not an accident that multiple voters would end up with LIFE sample ballots in their hands. An integral part of Mayor Morial's patronage-fed political machine, LIFE had an enormous presence on the streets of New Orleans on election day. Among the roughly one thousand LIFE street workers were more than a hundred unclassified city employees -- i.e., political appointees -- assigned to its headquarters for the day (another hundred were assigned to other Democratic campaigns throughout the city). In theory, such work is voluntary. In practice, city workers seem compelled to do the mayor's political bidding. According to a sworn affidavit by Victor M. Ortiz, a former assistant city attorney, his immediate supervisor, City Attorney Avis Marie Russell, convened a meeting on Monday, October 28, at which she said "that it was mandatory . . . that all unclassified employees report for campaign activities for Nov. 2 and Nov. 5 or that there would be 'consequences."' ..." encyclopedia.com