Voter Fraud Alert!
Voters throughout the United States have lately been bombarded with reasons to worry that their franchise is in trouble. Republicans and Democrats have engaged in an historic battle to get out the vote for their party candidates, and this has led to allegations of voter registration fraud. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), registering Democrats, is the most discussed, but only one among many who are being examined for fraudulent practices. Among the problems dogging ACORN are a number of registration forms filled out by “Mickey Mouse.” (See “Mickey’s” registration form below.) Republicans too have been charged with voter registration shenanigans, for example, Young Political Majors (YPM), stands accused of tricking registered Democrats into changing their party affiliation to Republican.
Another group has come forward as well. Throughout the U.S. a growing number of voters reveal that they were tricked into registering as a member of a party they disdain, at best. Their stories are similar. Disaffected with the Republican banner, or erstwhile independents searching for a party to call their own, t
hese voters often say they were approached while recumbent in the back of an emergency vehicle. Some tell of being solicited while undergoing pelvic or prostate examinations. Others mention that their registrations were changed during funerals, when nursing crying infants, while ducking gunfire, or during their wedding vows. A few maintain that voter registration forms were pushed under the doors of public toilet stalls.
Regardless of the where or when of their solicitation, they relate that canvassers painted a picture of a new political party they’d never heard of, the “Grand Old Party,” (GOP). And the GOP’s philosophy was appealing. As explained to them, here was a party that promised to extend equality to all, to provide economic incentives to each American, to pursue a foreign policy based upon negotiation from strength, and to responsibly work our country out of its fiscal and debt crises. “This was what I’d been seeking,” says John, an Internet tube inspector, who w
as solicited while using a bus terminal urinal. “After eight years as a Republican I was ready for a change, but the Democrats are just too far leftie for me, and I have no idea what the ‘Independents’ stand for. So, after hearing about the ‘GOP,’ I decided they sounded like the party for me,” summed up Mr. Enfield.
Surprises were to follow, however, when these new GOP members learned that the “GOP” was actually the Republican party. “Surprised?” asked 81 year old retired suffragette Julia, “I was floored, or I would’ve been had I been standing up.” (Julia had been solicited for her registration while prostrate in a hospital ICU.) Her doctors report that Julia’s heart rate went through the roof when she learned that her GOP registration actually kept her in the Republican party, quite contrary to her wishes. “For God’s sake,” she muttered through a breathing tube, “I already was a goddamned Republican! And I wanted to get away from them like a Kennedy from a temperance meeting.” John the Internet tube inspector also felt badly used, “I changed my registration from Republican to the ‘GOP’ because they sounded so totally unlike the Republicans I’ve voted for. You know, that GOP registration guy talked about the GOP’s fiscal responsibility, their sane foreign policy, equality, and all that stuff so un-Republican. I was hoodwinked.” And with a palpable sense of loss, he says he’ll never again talk to anybody while using a urinal.
So he was being palpated at the urinal? And felt loss? Disturbing, most certainly.