Mississippi: Ugly Old Trick Targets Espy Voters

[diva77]

(not sure whether this article has been posted already)

November 26, 2018
Greg Palast
https://www.gregpalast.com/mississippi-mike-espy-makes-stunning-charge-of-new-vote-suppression-tactic/
Mike Espy, US Senate candidate, reveals the return of an outlawed vote suppression tactic aimed at elderly voters.

[Jackson, Mississippi] In the vote-stealing biz it’s called “push polling” in which a fake pollster cons a voter out of their vote.

On Sunday, Democrat Mike Espy, who is in a run-off election today for the Senate against Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, told Palast Investigations reporter Zach D. Roberts:

“There were evidently some calls made to Espy supporters… Most of them were older supporters. For example, I was told that one of them said that he was from a survey company. He asked her, ‘Was she going to vote?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ They asked her who she was going to vote for and she said, ‘Mike Espy.’ And she was proud to vote for Mike Espy. And then, allegedly, they told her she did not have to go on Tuesday, because her very acknowledgment over the telephone for me was actually a registered vote for me.”

Espy said they would not have known about this game except, “She was smart enough to call our campaign.” Espy’s lawyers have obtained the victim’s sworn affidavit.

Push-polling was infamously successful in elections in years past. For example, in 1996, supporters of Republican Sam Brownback, posing as pollsters, contacted Kansas voters to ask those expressing support for Democrat Jill Docking if they would change their vote if they knew that “Jill Docking is Jewish.”

Docking, who is indeed Jewish, lost. Funds for the “push polls” were traced back to Koch Industries. (See The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of the Stolen Election.)

In a related matter, Palast Investigative Fund attorneys, led by Jeanne Mirer of Mirer Mazzocchi & Julien of New York, have notified the State of Mississippi that The Palast Fund will file suit under the National Voter Registration Act unless we receive complete information about mass purges in the state prior to the mid-term elections.

Mississippi is part of the infamously biased Interstate Crosscheck program operated by GOP Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

The journalists of the Palast Fund are committed to uncovering racially poisonous vote suppression tactics.

Vote suppression is not a game. It’s a crime.
SNIP

[SCantiGOP]

1. Lee Atwater is given credit for inventing the push poll

A young Jewish man, Max Heller, fled Austria in 1938 when it was annexed by Hitler and ended up in Greenville SC. He went to work for one of the textile mills, became its manager, and later started his own company and built it to 700 employees.
He retired at 49 to devote the rest of his life to public service, and became the very progressive and popular Mayor of Greenville.
In the 1980s SC only had one Republican Congressman when he ran for the seat in the Upstate and was expected to win.
Enter Lee Atwater, who had worked on the Reagan campaign. The phone poll would ask who the voter supported. If it was Heller, a later question was “Is your faith in Jesus important to you?” When the answer was “Of course,” the caller would, while acting like he was going off script, whisper, “You know Max Heller is a Jew, and they don’t even believe in Jesus.”
The Republican won a very narrow victory and went on to become Governor. Atwater developed an aggressive brain tumor and died in his 30s, but not before apologizing to Heller and admitting that what he had done was immoral and un-Christian.
His legacy lives on.

[diva77]

3. I knew of Atwater but had never heard this story. Just wow.

[SCantiGOP]

5. He was also involved in

The infamous Willie Horton ad.
If you want an interesting 10-minute read see his Wikipedia page.
I had a couple of grad school classes with him at U of SC but didn’t really know him other than a few arguments in class where he was greatly outnumbered but held his own.

[java108]

4. His brain tumor was richly deserved.

[47of74]

2. Voter suppression and electoral fraud should be capital offenses

Punishable at the very least by life imprisonment. And public execution on the days when I’m in a bad mood. (I’m guessing Hyde-Smith wouldn’t want to have a front rower seat then since it would likely be her wealthy benefactors and klansmen).

[diva77]

7. There is a serious weakness in our system of gov't that has allowed for

the many facets of election fraud to go unpunished. I hope that the current crop of lawsuits will gather momentum towards getting this problem under control.

[47of74]

8. I honestly think that the punishment must be very severe

I think we have to make people so afraid of what the government will do if they engage in voter suppression or election fraud that it'll even scare off the ones who might otherwise be willing to take one for the team.

[diva77]

9. seems that the only effective means right now are lawsuits which have to be paid for by

citizens and groups like the ACLU, Common Cause, Greg Palast and now Stacey Abrams' new group: https://www.fairfightgeorgia.com/

I hope people will donate to all these.

[bluestarone]

6. If phone calls were made, is there

A way to investigate this shit?????

[diva77]

10. good question