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Volunteers For Voter Suppression Group Installed As Election Officials In Ohio
By Aviva Shen
Conservative poll observers are gearing up for Election Day, when they will watch for possible instances of voter fraud and challenge voters they find suspicious. As ThinkProgress reported, many of these volunteers have been fed false or misleading information about voting rights by the Romney campaign and independent Tea Party groups like True the Vote. True the Vote encourages its poll watchers to “build relationships with election administrators” because “they control the access to the vote.”
But one True the Vote affiliate, the Ohio Voter Integrity Project, is taking their election interference one step further. Ohio VIP has recruited and dispatched poll workers who will not be merely observing, but directly involved in the voting process in a crucial swing state. Hamilton County elections director Tim Burke told the Columbus Dispatch that VIP poll workers will represent the Republican Party:
We know that the Voter Integrity Project has recruited and through the (Hamilton) County Republican Party has placed some poll workers. I have discussed this with my Republican counterpart.
I accept the fact that he understands that the VIP pollworkers are working for the Board of Elections on Election Day and are subject to the board’s instructions, not the VIP instruction. Obviously both sides are going to have observers as well as poll workers. I, and others will spend the day responding to trouble calls.
Ohio VIP provides a 3 hour training for their poll workers, as required by the Board of Elections. The group is advertising these sessions, according to the Dispatch, “as going beyond what the secretary of state tells them.” Ohio VIP is one of the more zealous branches of the already extreme True the Vote national organization; Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) opened a criminal investigationinto True the Vote due to the Ohio group’s attempts to purge thousands of students, trailer park residents, homeless people and African Americans from the voting rolls.
Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/11/02/1133181/volunteers-for-voter-suppression-group-installed-as-election-officials-in-ohio/