Disenfranchisement?

[digitaldiscipline]

[from various sources, including jabber and gothnation]


"Voters Outreach Of America" Illegally Trashes Democratic Voter Registrations: Entirely funded by the Republican National Committee

(Oct. 12) -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at Democrats. The focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assistant to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.

The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there.

It's going to take a while to sort all of this out, but the immediate concern for voters is to make sure you really are registered.

Call the Clark County Election Department at 455-VOTE to see if you are registered.

The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.
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Comments

[jruske.livejournal.com]

Well that's more than just blatant. That's really illegal!

Never in dhaving your personal identification information thrown in a trash bin.

Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.

Good luck. With the high alert forpotential terrorist acts, the FBI has limited resources to deal with this stuff right now. It's sad that that is being taken advantage of, but we should have expected as much from scumbags.

[bynner.livejournal.com]

I blame Americans. We are quick to be outraged and indignant but too lazy and jaded to actually get off our asses to do anything about it. Until the people are willing to rise up with torches and burn down the offices of the Republican National Committee, or the Insurance or Pharmaceutical companies, or whomever else royally screws them over in the name of power and profit, it will continue.

As Robert Hutchins once so wisely observed:

"The death of Democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."