From the Times:
With heavy voter turnout expected on Election Day, both parties are amassing thousands and thousands of lawyers to keep an eye on the polls.
Senator Barack Obama’s campaign is expected to send at least 5,000 lawyers to Florida alone. The first recruitment e-mail message the campaign sent out nationally received 6,000 responses from lawyers willing to volunteer. Meanwhile, Senator John McCain’s campaign has lined up “Lawyers for McCain” to spread out at polling places in closely contested states as advocates for the ticket.
Both campaigns plan to use the lawyers to protect their supporters at the polls, help untangle ballot problems and run to court should litigation be necessary (Emphasis added)
Both campaigns are looking to “protect their supporters at the polls”. Right. If you read closely you’ll see there’s a slightly different emphasis. The Obama lawyers will be out there making sure people get to vote. The McCain people? Not so much:
Mr. Cairncross said Republican lawyers would be on the lookout for voter fraud, and would work to halt such previous stunts as having busloads of voters show up to keep polls open beyond their statutory closing time.
Mr. Cairncross said that “lots of times,” Republicans had been “cast as leading a massive voter-suppression effort and trying to keep people from voting.”
The reality, he said, is that “we are civic-minded citizens who are taking the better part of the day and who have been through an Election Day training course.”
Hmmm. Right. It’s not voter suppression if they teach you how to do it first.
People need to go to jail for this sort of stuff. It should be the first order of business for the next attorney general.
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