Why worry about Election Day 'terra' NOW? 'New product development'

[AirAmFan]

at the White House in an election year.

Remember when Andrew Card, WH Chief of Staff, said, "From a marketing standpoint, you don't roll out a new product in August"? That was in August 2002, when Card was caught selling some "Saddam is a very bad man".

Well, apparently you DO roll out new products during July of a Presidential election year. WH marketing is quite different this year. The main scoreboard that counts this year is Electoral Votes in November. Not "tax cuts" delivered to the ultra-wealthy, not bills enacted into law, not Supreme Court victories,

This year we have the Big Sales Contest. It's time for heavy promotion of political products that would add to a Republican margin of victory over Democrats in states where electoral votes are up for grabs.

Now Dubya's White House is not the first to face this problem. Prior Republican market research shows clearly how to eke out close wins in tight states.

The key is Segmented Marketing. It would be great to develop new products that exploit geographic and ethnic imbalances in the tendency to vote Republican or Democrat.

The ideal new product would

(1) Raise voter turnout at least a few percent in neighborhoods and ethnic groups that tend to vote Republican and

(2) Lower voter turnout at least a few percent in 'hoods and ethnicities that tend to go Democrat.

If a product would not satisfy BOTH objectives, then accomplishing EITHER (1) or (2) would be great.

Apparently, Karl Rove, John Ashcroft, Tom Ridge, DeForrest Soaries, and others have just rolled out a product engineered to accomplish goal (2).

(a) URBAN neighborhoods where masses of people congregate for long periods in confined spaces tend to vote Democratic.

(b) AFRICAN-AMERICANS and MEXICAN-AMERICANS tend to go Democratic rather than Republican, African-Americans often by 10-to-1 margins. They also tend to fear getting hassled by armed men wearing uniforms. Police generally can question and search people under "criminal justice supervision" whenever they want. And, because of discrimiation in the "justice" system, MAJORITIES of men in many predominantly minority and poor neghborhoods are under such supervision. Guards at polling places can deter such voters just by standing there, or by asking for ID.

"HOMELAND BALLOT SECURITY" is a product that will exploit both (a) and (b).

DO YOU AGREE?

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(a) In often-Democratic URBAN areas especially, "Homeland Ballot Security" plants a seed in people's minds that going to the polls on election day elevates risks of being mowed down in a subway car, blown up by a car bomb on the street, etc, etc. In the more-Republican suburbs, people have to go out of their way to become part of a crowd. Shopping mall sales may decline on election day, but they're not on the WH scoreboard, at least not this year.

(b) Homeland ballot security has many of the same properties as "ballot security efforts against VOTE FRAUD". Republicans have long experience with this: see the quote from "American Prospect" below. Do you think this new WH fearmongering might be tied to minority vote suppression plans? Just as "All the President's Men" taught us to "follow the money" under Nixon, "Bowling for Columbine" has taught us to "follow the fear" under Dubya and Karl Rove. The lead person for the new "homeland ballot security" effort is a former pastor of an African-American congregation and a former NJ Secretary of State. See post the bios in Bush_Eats_Beef's thread at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1973367 .

Having been Christie Whitman's Secretary of State, Soaries must know how suppressing African-American votes succeeded in squeezing 911 Commission chair Tom Keane into Morven (the Governor's mansion) during the Reagan era. Maybe Rove is coaching him on how to take Kean's "Republican Ballot Securty Task Force" concept nationwide, at tazpayer expense.

From http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V13/23/mcdonald-1.html

'Americans might like to think that discrimination against minority voters ended with the civil-rights movement, but it's been going on in many parts of the country ever since. And BALLOT-SECURITY programs have been the usual vehicle. A notorious "anti-fraud" initiative was implemented before the 1981 gubernatorial election in New Jersey. The Republican National Committee formed a National Ballot Security Force.... On election day, the security force dispatched armed off-duty police officers wearing official-looking armbands to heavily black (and Democratic) precincts in Newark, Camden and Trenton. The Republicans also posted signs warning that the polls were being patrolled by security-force members and offering a $1,000 reward for anyone giving information leading to the arrest and conviction of election-law violators....

The Democratic National Committee filed suit against the New Jersey and national Republican parties, and it was eventually settled. The defendants agreed not to post security forces at polling places or allow any other election tactics that targeted minorities or deterred them from voting. Despite the agreement in the New Jersey case, the Republicans resorted to similar maneuvers in Louisiana in the 1986 U.S. senatorial campaign involving Democrat John Breaux and Republican Henson Moore. ... Republicans ... launched still another ballot-security program in North Carolina in 1990, during the heated U.S. Senate contest between Republican Jesse Helms and Democrat Harvey Gantt.... After the election -- which Helms won -- the Justice Department sued the North Carolina Republican Party and the Helms for Senate Committee. The defendants, without admitting any wrongdoing, entered into a consent decree in which they agreed not to undertake similar ballot-security programs in the future without court approval.
Copyright © 2002 by The American Prospect, Inc.'

[revree]

1. Or they could just scare the hell out of blue state voters

by saying there is a massive terrorist attack planned on BLUE STATES ONLY...

[AirAmFan]

9. They're more sophisticated than that. They're IMPLYING Election Day attacks

are much more likely in CITIES, which just happen to be predominantly "blue". See the map link in post #8/

[seabeyond]

2. i have a 46 dollar warrant i have paid on twice

that i got when preg with my now 6 year old for going 86 on a 5 lane friway down a mountain at 11 p.m. roads empty.

as i said paid on twice, was lost for three years, and now, i have a money order, and went down to pay the remainder, ............they cannot find it anywhere in the system. for over a year now.

so yes, at 42 white female tugging two little kids with me to the voter booth, i too could see the intimidation of a cop running a check on us all before a vote

[AirAmFan]

3. Unlike you, most people find it hard to see the world through somebody else's

eyes. That's one big reason why "ballot security" vote suppression has been going on for so long.

The beauty of the racial aspect of "ballot security" is that at polling places in "mixed" areas, there will tend to be two radically different reactions to the presence of the same uniformed guards. People who learned, "the police are your friend", are likely tol feel safer. People who learned, "the police can come into your house anytime, without a warrant" may turn around and walk the other way.

[seabeyond]

5. i am watching too many people spending time in jail

i tell of the 97 year old woman to the beauty parlor, arms behind back and cuffed and taken to jail for a warrant, in texas. tell me the threat she was to these burly manly men.

and the 71 woman in oregon death adn a fake eye, popped out with the pepper spray and taken down,. her eye popped out, cause she didnt hear the cops

no many dont see the threat.

two years ago at an airport a man was brought over to me specifically to intimidate me. silly me i didnt realize til i walked away i was suppose to be intimidated. i tell my right wing males that wouldnt allow a man to intimidate me for my life time, the day you stand back and allow this, cause i said this is a bunch of crap, is the day they got you by the balls. something is seriously wrong that you allow and are not outraged.

[ThoughtCriminal]

4. Easy proven methods

All they have to do is slow down the process. It's not a new product.

Long lines in the right places discourage they ones who are trying to vote on lunch break. Add 30 seconds to each ballot cast in a line with 60 people and watch the magic of anti-democracy.

And then there are the fake brochures in minority neighborhoods that inform readers to make sure that all fines and tickets are paid before attempting to vote.

[AirAmFan]

6. Funny you should mention "slowing things down". The new honcho of

"homeland ballot security" is DeForrest Soaries, former pastor of an African-American congregation in NJ. I wonder how much of Ed Rollins's money he got? Remember Ed Rollins, Ronald Reagan's campaign manager and "Geraldo" regular on CNBC?

Do you think it would be easier to slow things down for uniformed guards outside the polls, or precinct workers inside?

Rollins bragged openly about having paid off Democratic precinct workers to slow things down, and about having paid NJ ministers to keep quiet about Democratic candidates.

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From http://archives.cjr.org/year/94/1/cynicism.asp

Columbia Journalism Review January/February 1994

"Insider Cynicism: Ed Rollins Meets the Press, by Christopher Hanson

Rollins is, or was, a Republican political consultant. The Sperling breakfast is a Washington institution of sorts -- held some 2,600 times over the past twenty-seven years -- in which journalists, hosted by The Christian Science Monitor's Godfrey "Budge" Sperling, gently question figures like Rollins and report the responses they find newsworthy.

At a November 9 Sperling breakfast, Rollins, boasting about how he had just helped win a governorship for New Jersey's Christine Todd Whitman, said the campaign had spent about $ 500,000 to suppress the black vote. He said GOP operatives had made payments to Democratic precinct workers in black areas on condition they sit on their hands on election day. And he said the Whitman campaign had contributed to church charities in return for black ministers keeping mum on the virtues of Democratic incumbent James Florio.

Paying off black clergy? Suppressing the votes of a group that had fought a bitter, protracted struggle to secure the franchise? These were explosive assertions.

How did the reporters react? A person unaccustomed to the ways of Washington might imagine a mad dash as the session broke up, reporters elbowing each other to get through the doors and grab the phones, hell-bent on double-checking Rollins's claims, eager to file big take-outs for the next day's editions.

This was not exactly how things went, however. Of the fourteen to twenty daily newspaper reporters at the breakfast (estimates vary), at least nine did not file on Rollins's suppression remarks that day -- including representatives of the McClatchy newspapers, the St. Petersburg Times, Hearst, Media General, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer....

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today each kissed the story off in a couple of paragraphs. The Los Angeles Times buried a truncated 344-word version of a Washington Post account on page A21.

It was later reported that Rollins had made similar statements about vote suppression three days prior to the breakfast -- in conversations with GOP spinmaven Mary Matalin, who co-hosts a CNBC political talk show; semi-retired columnist Rowland Evans; and MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour reporter Margaret Warner. None of the three had seen fit to report Rollins's assertion prior to the breakfast. (Warner told The Washington Post that, after she read the breakfast stories, "In general, though not in every specific, I had the feeling I'd heard it before.")"

[AirAmFan]

8. There's little that's completly NEW in this world, but I think there are

a few new "wrinkles" in "Homeland Ballot Security". The top 3:

(1) A federal agency with a virtually unlimited budget pays for election disruption designed to tilt the vote to the incumbent.

(2) A debate of "homeland ballot security" apparently was timed to drown out Kerry's introduction of his VP choice to America.

(3) FEAR of grievous bodily harm en route to the polls is being targeted on whole cities, which are predominantly "blue". See the high geographic concentration of "blue" (Gore) counties at http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/cbc/map.htm . Gore won the popular vote overall, but he was victorious in only 676 counties, compared to 2436 for Bush. The square mileage of these Gore counties was less than 24 percent of the square mileage of Bush counties. This map is likely to have been an important part of the "market research" that went into planning "homeland ballot security".

[Eloriel]

7. kick

:kick:

[AirAmFan]

10. Thanks for the kick!

[AirAmFan]

11. Night shift kick