Mail scheme earns stamp of disapproval

Jay Bookman - Cox News Service - November 01, 2004

[...] Recently, tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio were sent registered letters from the state Republican Party. If the targeted voters weren't home to sign a receipt when the mail carrier came — if they were working, or at school, or serving in Iraq, for example — they were left a note, telling them they would have to go down to their local post office during the work day to sign for and receive the campaign literature.

If you live in a swing state such as Ohio, you're deluged with campaign ads and pieces of campaign mail. So it's not surprising that 35,427 Ohio voters declined the chance to go down to the post office to sign for yet another pamphlet. They had better things to do, and they had no way of knowing that their refusal would become trumped-up evidence that almost cost them the right to vote.

You see, the registered mail was Step One of a sophisticated scam. Armed with a list of those who didn't pick up their registered letters, the state Republican Party initiated Step Two by filing legal challenges against their right to vote, claiming those voters either didn't exist or didn't live at those addresses.

The idea was to force all 35,000 to either appear at Board of Elections hearings to prove their right to vote, or be stricken from the rolls.

Fortunately, the whole thing collapsed at Step Three, when the challenge hearings were held. In Summit County, where more than 950 challenges were filed, the process was abandoned after the first four cases.

The voters who showed up were outraged at having to take time off from work to defend their right to vote, as they should be. And when the Republicans were asked to produce their proof that the voters were ineligible, all they had was the failure to sign for a registered letter.

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