The vote fraud fraud continues
by digby
And they're getting slipper and more violent. My piece in Salon this morning takes up the story of vote suppression and voter intimidation in Wisconsin. A three judge panel of the 7th District Court just ok'd the Wisconsin voter ID bill, leaving almost no time for official or unofficial outreach to let voters know how to obtain ID necessary for voting this November. An estimated 300,000 eligible voters don't have ID. (Scott Walker's election is likely to be a lot closer than that.)
So, now everyone can relax, knowing that there is no way that the thus far nonexistent voter fraud could ever happen in the future, right? Well, not exactly. It would appear that vote suppression may not entirely get the job done. Just because you have an ID doesn’t mean you should be voting and even if True the Vote is patting itself on the back for its success, there are still some good Americans out there who are willing to make sure that you don’t. This time they are going for full-blown voter intimidation.
A local Wisconsin activist named Meg Gorski captured a screen shot of some tweets by a group calling itself the Wisconsin Poll Watcher Militia:
It fairly clear what they mean by “look.” According to this account, the Facebook page (now removed) left little doubt what they were talking about:
A visit to the group’s Facebook page features makes it clear exactly who they are targeting. All of the pictures on the page feature African-Americans. The group is trying to get African-Americans who may have outstanding warrants arrested in order to keep them from voting. The group wants people to report those they suspect of having warrants out on them to the police on election day, “Do the community a favor and keep an eye out for people wanted on warrants and report them to the police on election day.”
The “poll watchers” also plan on harassing and following people who they suspect of being wanted on warrants to their homes. The plan seems to be to use the police to intimidate African-Americans into not voting in November’s election.
There are more threats at the link. They have, of course, abandoned their web site with the information about "training" as well as invitations to go to the shooting range. It's lovely.
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