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Here, I
use the definition of Swing States by the Swing State Project. Please
select your state of interest to proceed. (If there is no link, that
means there is no content for that state yet).
ARIZONA 11/2/04_4
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More voting
irregularities in Arizona include display of large photo of President
Bush at polling site, understaffed polling location leading to extra
long lines/delays and a closed polling site in an area with a large
Mexican-American population Election
Protection reports
this:
Understaffed
Polling Place in Arizona Leading to Long Lines
Voters in Maricopa
County, Arizona report to the hotline that there is only one
person reading the list of names from the rolls, which has created
an extremely long backlog.
(November 2, 2004
02:30 PM )
Arizona:
Maricopa County Polling Place Reportedly Closed
An Election
Protection volunteer in Maricopa County reports that one polling
site in an area with a large Hispanic population is closed.
(November 2, 2004
12:51 PM )
Arizona
Polling Place Reportedly Displays Picture of President Bush
The hotline
received a call from Maricopa County, Arizona that the polling
site is displaying a large picture of President Bush. The caller
states that the employees at the Armory say that the picture
should stay up because it demonstrates the chain of command.
Although County Election Officials have said that the picture must
be removed, on site personnel reportedly refuse to take it down.
(November 2, 2004
12:47 PM )
11/2/04_3
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Some democratic voters in
Arizona went to wrong polling sites due to fraudulent calls Election
Protection reports
this:
The hotline received
a call from Pima County, Arizona, indicating that Democratic voters
received calls throughout Monday evening, providing incorrect
information about the precinct location. Voters have had to be
transported en masse in order to correct the problem.
11/2/04_2
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Lawyers' Committee on
Civil Rights files FBI complaint saying that at least one voter in
Arizona got an automated call urging the voter to vote tomorrow - and
that the called ID was that of the Tucson GOP HQ Via
Campaign
Desk, we have this report at TAPPED:
On the same conference
call, Barbara Arnwine just relayed that the Lawyers'
Committee on Civil Rights filed a complaint with the FBI today
against the Arizona Republican Party. The Lawyers Committee received
a call from a voter in Tuscon who received an automated call
instructing her to vote tomorrow. The number that showed up on the
voter's caller ID led to Tuscon's GOP headquarters.
11/2/04_1
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Older News: Fox News
reporter intimidates students registering new voters in Arizona,
suggesting that they were potentially signing up students to commit
felonies Via PFAW/NAACP,
a report in The
Nation:
Juliana Zuccaro and
Kelly Kraus thought they were exercising their civic rights and
responsibilities on August 31 when, as officers of the Network of
Feminist Student Activists at the University of Arizona in Tucson,
they helped set up a voter-registration drive on the UA mall.
Imagine their astonishment when the local Fox affiliate news team
showed up and lit into the young women. "The reporter asked if
we knew that we were potentially signing students up to commit
felonies," Juliana told me--by registering out-of-state
students to vote in Arizona. When Kelly then asserted that Arizona
law requires only that those registering be resident in the state
twenty-nine days before the election, Natalie Tejeda, the Fox
reporter, insisted it was illegal to register students. On the news
that night, student voter registration was the crime du jour:
Tejeda: What
many don't realize is that legally, students from out of state
aren't eligible to vote in Arizona because they're considered
temporary residents.
Chris Roads [Pima County Registrar's office]: If
they are only here to attend school and their intention is to
immediately return to where they came from when school is over
then they are not residents of the state of Arizona for voting
purposes and they cannot register to vote here.
Tejeda: ...Those caught misrepresenting their residency can
face a severe punishment.
Roads: The form in Arizona is an affidavit; it is a felony
offense if you are lying on that form.
Tejeda: So how easy is it to get caught? Well, starting
this past January all voter applications are cross-checked with
the Motor Vehicles Department and Social Security Administration.
If they find that you are falsifying your residency you could be
prosecuted. At this time we don't know if anybody has yet been
indicted, but Roads says one of the easiest things you can do to
avoid all that is simply go online or pick up the phone, call your
home state's elections office and ask for an absentee ballot.
Anchor: Better to be safe on that one. Thanks, Natalie.
Misguided youth or
hardened criminals? They report, you decide.
When an urgent e-mail
from UA professor Laura Briggs about the Fox broadcast flashed
across my screen a few days later, I assumed that such an egregious
example of voter intimidation by proxy--with GOP TV standing in for,
well, the GOP--would be all over the media by the time my next
column deadline rolled around, so I passed on it. Silly me. As I
write three weeks later, almost nothing has appeared outside the
local press. The silence persisted even after the Feminist
Majority--which had spearheaded the students' drive as part of its
Get Out Her Vote campaign--held a press conference to publicize the
incident. In those three weeks, how many stories have you read
bemoaning the apathy of youth, and in particular the fecklessness of
young women too "busy" shoe shopping and barhopping to
focus on the election?
In fact, despite a
1979 Supreme Court ruling affirming their right to vote where they
attend school, students often encounter difficulties when they try
to exercise that right. A recent Harvard survey of 249 colleges and
universities found that more than one-third weren't complying with
the law requiring them to help students register and vote. What's
more, local and state officials have tried to prevent students from
registering or voting at William and Mary, the University of New
Hampshire, Skidmore, Hamilton and Henderson State University in
Arkansas, among others. Students at predominantly African-American
Prairie View A&M in Waller County, Texas, were threatened with
prosecution if they voted without "a legal voting address"
by the District Attorney in a series of letters to the local paper.
Strangely enough, it was earlier attempts to suppress the vote of
Prairie View students that prompted the Supreme Court's 1979 ruling.
When I spoke to Chris
Roads, the official quoted in Tejeda's story--yes, he's a
Republican--he claimed that Fox had quoted him out of context. His
mention of "felony" was originally addressed to a
"hypothetical" posed by Tejeda: What would he say to
someone who planned to flat-out lie--who said, "I don't live
here, can I fill out the form?" Roads says he was "shocked
when it blossomed into a story about prosecuting people" for
registering--in fact, he told me, no one has ever been prosecuted in
Arizona over residency requirements. What is residency, exactly?
"Residency means you intend to remain," he went on.
"So it's a
subjective thing?" I asked. "You look into your
heart?"
"That's
right," he said. "You look into your heart."
Roads is a genial man
and I enjoyed our chat. Like "intend," "remain"
turns out to be a verb as flexible in meaning for registrars as
"is" was for Bill Clinton, and don't get him started on
"resident"! But despite demands from the students and from
Feminist Majority, he did not publicly clarify his comments on Fox
News. That was left to his boss, F. Ann Rodriguez, a Democrat, who
finally stated on September 9 that out-of-state students may vote.
Fox has not only failed to correct its original report; it has
continued to suggest on the air that out-of-state students who
register in Arizona are breaking the law and could end up in big
trouble. And the state bureaucracy is still providing misleading or
confusing information: When Nation intern Raina Lipsitz
called the Arizona Secretary of State's office to ask if an
out-of-state student may vote, she was repeatedly told that she
couldn't register in two states at once and, finally, that she
should read the statute herself.
The young feminists
have done a wonderful job of publicizing the right of students to
register and vote. They've held a press conference and reached out
to the community, Democratic lawmakers and other student groups.
Even the young Republicans--whose registration efforts down the mall
from the young feminists were ignored by Fox--have supported them.
Juliana and Kelly are now hard at work planning their next
registration drive. They're calling it STILL Getting Out Her Vote.
10/31/04
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Arizona's Republican
Superintendent of Public Instruction issues memo advising schools
serving as polling places to take security measures (including police
presence) - based on a recent school 'terror alert' from the Bush
Homeland Security department that had already been shown to be highly
dubious and possibly bogus
First, via Mbryan
at Dailykos, here's a report in the
Arizona Republic (bold text is my emphasis):
Arizona schools that
double as voting precincts are being asked to consider implementing
security measures on Election Day that voting-rights advocates say
could violate federal and state laws.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne sent the
letter Monday, advising district and school administrators to monitor
all voters who come on campuses and to consider implementing
emergency-response plans during Tuesday's election. Horne added that
the memo does not require any school to take any action.
John Hartsell, Arizona director for the Election Protection coalition,
said, "Our only concern is that, while protecting students, you
may infringe on the rights of voters. If folks have to show
identification to get on campus or get into the polling place, that's
a violation of the Help America Vote Act and of state statutes."
About one-third of
Arizona's 2,109 precinct polling places are at schools.
...
Horne's memo to
administrators says, "It has come to the attention of the Arizona
Department of Education that there may be a potential security risk at
schools that are a polling place for elections. . . . We recommend
that all schools that are a polling place take steps to monitor
voters. . . . If needed, schools may use their existing Emergency
Response Plan (ERP) as the means for implementing these
measures."
Horne said the memo was prompted by an Oct. 6 federal Department of
Education notice advising school officials nationwide to take
precautions after Chechen separatists slaughtered 331 people in early
September at a school in Beslan, Russia.
Horne acknowledged that his office issued an earlier advisory on that
topic, which did not mention election security. He said his safety
specialist prepared the more recent letter, and he is not certain what
led to it.
Horne emphasized that the memo does not require Arizona education
officials to take any action on polling day but merely recommends
security precautions. "The last thing in the world I would ever
want to do is discourage anyone from voting," he added. "All
I did was ask people to be vigilant, and I'm not doing anything beyond
that."
Hartsell noted that the memo advocates a police presence that could be
chilling to some voters. If Horne's advice is followed by school
administrators, he added, "We would have to take legal
action."
Now, here
is something that Atrios had previously pointed out about the
school "terror" alert from Homeland Security:
Call Them Out
Is the media ever going to hold these people accountable for making
military decisions and releasing terror alerts for political
purposes? They're not even trying to hide it anymore. Could anything
be more outrageous? I don't think the Rude Pundit is rude enough
sometime.
First,
we have this:
- Civilians involved
in the process also told the Times that the new approach was
formulated in part to counter criticism from President Bush's
Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, that the administration
has no plan for Iraq.
And, then we have this,
regarding the "your children are all going to die" terror
alert:
- The Department
of Homeland Security official said the material was associated
with a person in Iraq, and it could not be established that this
person had any ties to terrorism. He did have a connection to
civic groups doing planning for schools in Iraq, the official
said. (eRiposte emphasis)
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