Paying a man in crack cocaine to register new voters is just the latest shenanigan from the Democrat playbook.
Most Americans are somewhat familiar with the words from Emma Lazarus’ poem, The New Colossus," that is inscribed on a plaque inside of the Statue of Liberty. However, few people are aware that the Democratic Party in recent years altered this marvelous prose for the plaques that they place inside all their national campaign headquarters:
Give us your liars, your boors,
Your starving lawyers burning for a fee,
The horrid jurists rewriting our laws.
Send these, the shameless, corrupt-most of thee.
We give our stamp to all that Liberty abhors!
Clearly, there has been no finer example of the strict adherence to this Democratic Code of Campaign Misconduct than what transpired yesterday in Ohio when a representative of the NAACP apparently gave crack cocaine to a man as payment to go out and register people to vote. As reported in the Toledo Blade:
Defiance County Sheriff David Westrick said that Mr. Staton was working on behalf of a Toledo woman, Georgianne Pitts, to register new voters. She, in turn, was working on behalf of the NAACP National Voter Fund, which was formed by the NAACP in 2000 to register new voters.
Sheriff Westrick said that Pitts, 41, of Toledo, admitted she gave Mr. Staton crack cocaine in lieu of cash for supplying her with completed voter registration forms. The sheriff declined to say how much crack cocaine Pitts supplied Mr. Staton, or to say whether Pitts knew that the forms Mr. Staton gave her were falsified. Defiance County sheriff's deputies and Toledo police searched Pitts' home on Woodland Avenue and found drug paraphernalia and voter registration forms, the sheriff said.
The article goes on to say that of the 130 voter registrations that this man turned in, only six were legitimate. That means that 95% were fraudulent. In addition, his 130 registration forms were among a total of 80,000 submitted to state officials by this same National Voter Fund’s office in Ohio. Should we assume that 76,000 of these were obtained in similarly nefarious ways, and that this is indicative of the kind of registration efforts that are going on all around the country? Is this the state of modern American politics — where it’s become acceptable to give illegal drugs to addicts in return for their services? I quite imagine that the likes of Adams, Jefferson, and Madison are rolling in their graves as they watch the continued degeneration of a process that they once held as sacred.
If only that was the sole abhorrent campaign activity witnessed yesterday. Unfortunately, in a potentially unrelated event, according to AP, Democratic campaign representatives yesterday were spotted giving out pillboxes to attendees of a Kerry-Edwards rally in West Palm Beach, Florida. This has to raise a fascinating question even to the least inquisitive. What is the Democratic Party’s sudden penchant for giving out drugs and drug-related paraphernalia to the electorate? After all, Kerry voted AGAINST giving seniors a prescription drug benefit in October of 2003. Or, is he only opposed to the lawful distribution of pharmacological products?
Unfortunately, these incidents, along with many that have been occurring this year, point to the insanity of this campaign season, the pending election, and what lines the Democratic Party is willing to cross to be victorious. In fact, we were summarily warned last week of what we should expect in the next fourteen days by RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie in an announcement he made at the GOP website concerning a DNC memo instructing Democrats to “make up charges of voter intimidation even if no signs or evidence of voter intimidation actually exist.” This unbelievable DNC report was first uncovered by Matt Drudge, and he later posted a page from it at his website.
Even more fascinating was the DNC’s response. In an effort to suggest that this was all a red herring created by the GOP, the Democratic Party released a statement on Thursday that not only confirmed what Drudge was avowing, but also expanded on it. In this pronouncement, DNC Communications Director, Jano Cabrera, first gave a list of supposedly recent voting irregularities by the Republican Party, and then went on to elucidate a variety of prophylactic measures that the DNC is implementing to try and counter these shameful behaviors. These include (directly from this DNC statement):
2. If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a "pre-emptive strike" (particularly well-suited to states in which their techniques have been tried in the past).
• Issue a press release
i. Reviewing Republican tactic used in the past in your area or state
ii. Quoting party/minority/civil rights leadership as denouncing tactics that discourage people from voting
• Prime minority leadership to discuss the issue in the media; provide talking points
• Place stories in which minority leadership expresses concern about the threat of intimidation tactics
• Warn local newspapers not to accept advertising that is not properly disclaimed or that contains false warnings about voting requirements and/or about what will happen at the polls4. Plan and completely prepare for possible legal action well in advance of election day
Taking this a step further, the LA Times on Sunday reported that, “More than 25,000 poll watchers, including lawyers and computer experts, are expected outside and inside precinct stations to report problems and in some cases to intervene if they believe poll workers are violating voter rights or making technical mistakes.”
Certainly, this is not what our founding fathers were thinking about when they first drafted election rules more than two centuries ago. Unfortunately, the problem is that, as a result of what transpired in Florida in 2000, how close this election is supposed to be, and how much anger still exists as a result of how the last presidential election ended, we are likely going to see activity in the next two weeks that is going to make what happened in past elections look almost chaste.
To truly understand the gravity of this looming election crisis, all one needs do is consider that in the year 2000, there were five states where the margin of victory was less than 1%: Florida; Iowa; New Mexico; Oregon, and; Wisconsin. This year, there are several other battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and Maine that might also end up being this close. As a result, we could see Florida 2000-style recounts in multiple locations this time with significantly more mobilized and prepared forces than four years ago. On top of this, and potentially much more frightening, is the possibility that both sides are going to have more violations and irregularities to complain about given all the shenanigans that we are already witnessing like the two highlighted at the beginning of this article.
The bottom line here is that given how close this race is and is likely to stay, it seems almost inconceivable to envision a scenario whereby we will crown a winner on November 2nd. In fact, even with war raging all around them, and an election still more than two months away, it appears somewhat more feasible that in its first such attempt at democracy, Iraq will determine a new leader before we do.
slep@danvillebc.com
Read more articles by Noel Sheppard
