Webster says UMF College Republicans parked vans (to keep students from voting) on Election Day 2010

[kpete]

Source: Sun Journal

Webster says UMF College Republicans parked vans on Election Day 2010
By Scott Thistle, Regional Editor
Jul 29, 2011 8:20 pm
10 Comments
FARMINGTON — The chairman of the Maine Republican Party said Friday that College Republicans at the University of Maine at Farmington worked to prevent university vans from being used to take student voters to the polls on Election Day 2010.

Charlie Webster, who has been campaigning against a group seeking to overturn a recently passed law that ended same-day voter registration in Maine, said in a phone interview that UMF's College Republicans reserved university vans to use on Election Day last November, but then parked the vans in a lot so they couldn't be used to take students to the polls.

Webster on Tuesday gave the Secretary of State’s Office a list of 206 names of out-of-state University of Maine System students who are registered to vote in Maine. Those students will be investigated for possible voter fraud.

The request for an investigation is part of Webster’s campaign against an effort to repeal a new law eliminating same-day voter registration.

Read more: http://www.sunjournal.com/state/story/1066818

[LiberalFighter]

1. Democrats should be able to exploit what Republicans do and

have good success on election day.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

31. REPUBS CAN'T WIN AN HONEST ELECTION SO THEY MUST DO DIRTY TACTICS

AND THE COLLEGE REPUBS ARE THE CRIB

[laylah]

44. My first thought exactly! Great minds

and all that stuff.

[bjobotts]

53. Proving once again repubs don't believe in a democracy, just in gaining power.

[wial]

61. if they believed in democracy

they'd be democrats. duh!

It's time we started calling them "Tories" again, methinks. That might get a certain very important point across to some of the better intentioned Tea Party followers.

[liberal N proud]

2. Again, Republicans obstructing voters

This is one of their main tools in wining elections.

More voters means they can't win, that is the only deduction one can make when you look at all the ways the GOP fights against voter rights.

[SpiralHawk]

4. Republicons Against America. As usual. The Goon squads are forming

what soul ugliness...

[kenfrequed]

11. You know...

It is sometimes hard to imagine how even students, who are supposed to have some level of idealism about a fair and democratic election. But then, Karl Rove was doing this from college onwards and the Republicans don't really believe in Democracy, they believe in winning by any means necessary.


They believe their way is so right that lying, cheating, and stealing are all justifiable. How long before they go full tilt and once more accept murder as a means to winning.

[liberal N proud]

24. They subscribe to Machiavelli methods

The ends justifies the means.

[Raksha]

26. I think some of them already have.

Re "They believe their way is so right that lying, cheating, and stealing are all justifiable. How long before they go full tilt and once more accept murder as a means to winning."

Of course they can't say it out loud and in public, although a few of them have come pretty close.

[ArcticFox]

57. You think they stopped?

How long before they go full tilt and once more accept murder as a means to winning.

[beac]

3. Sickening. But the paper should have used the word

"bragged" in place if "said" in that first sentence.

[idrahaje]

28. yeah I agree

idiot brags about his election fraud as he's looking at students committing the rare voter fraud.

Not quite as dumb as the lady and the pink handgun without a safety pointing a loaded gun at a reporter. o_O But getting there. Hey Ann Coulter committed voter fraud.

[jerseyjack]

5. Its simple. When you realize your position has no merit, obstruct and commit fraud.

Examples" Bush in Florida. Bush 2004 in Ohio. Wisconsin actions to require voter ID, then make it difficult to obtain that ID.

[defendandprotect]

And Koch "John Birch Society" .... and remember JFK addressing their rw filth ....

Have to look for his comments on the John Birchers --

same philosophy as now!!

And these are the people who infiltrated and influenced the Dem Party for

more han 20 years!!


Wow!

[underpants]

6. "How to rig an election" Alan Raymond - the guy who went to jail for NH phone jamming

http://www.amazon.com/How-Rig-Election-Confessions-Republican/dp/1416552227

Mostly he comes off as naive but Rove is all over that book and there is a really funny story about Mitch McConnell.

[DFW]

7. It should be national news

The ONLY organized efforts to prevent American citizens from voting are undertaken by Republicans.

Doesn't this tell the country ANYTHING???????????????????

[lsewpershad]

9. Screams ...More talk

If democrats don't find effective ways to counteract these repukes nothing will change and all the talk and screaming will achieve
nothing.

[DesertDiamond]

8. Am I reading this right?? Is this a Republican reporting on voter fraud by other Republicans?

[beac]

13. No. Read the whole article. He's BRAGGING about the College Repukes

making the vans unavailable.

(I admit I too was confused about that from the excerpt and went from being shocked that he'd call out fellow GOPers to MORE shocked that he's actually puffed up and PROUD about their work to make it harder for people to vote.)


ETA: I'll bet you $100 that all the out-of-state college kids he's investigating are Democrats.

[Dumak]

18. I'm sure he's investigating only

students who he knows are Democrats, or who are majoring in programs that are heavily populated by the more liberal-minded. And if he has the ability to filter the results list, will simply remove any Republicans from it.

[SpiralHawk]

22. Right. He's bragging that Republicons shit all over American democracy

Dude needs to move to the Totalitarian RepubliCon Homeland of Chickenhawks -- far far away from the America he & his young Republicon ChickenPunks so gleefully shit upon.

[Kingofalldems]

10. K and R

[Lars77]

12. When your strategy to win an election is to keep the turnout as low as possible..

The system is simply broken.

[JAnthony]

14. Another despicable Rethuglican plot against progressives, who would

have imagined it extended all the way to Farmington, ME?

[begin_within]

15. Is there any low they won't stoop to?

[bitchkitty]

21. No, there isn't.

Remember the whack job who cut a B into her face?

[begin_within]

23. Ick!

[Kingofalldems]

16. Yeah but the Democrats did it too! Oh wait, no they didn't.

[socialist_n_TN]

17. See this is why we need an active working class "militia"

made up of people that would protect people who want to vote, demonstrate, etc. In this case, a "student" militia could have "liberated" those vans for the use for which they were intended, i.e., driving voters to the polls.

[Raksha]

27. I think you're right...we need something like the Jewish Defense League in the early days,

before they became right-wing bigots themselves. In the Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn and elsewhere they would escort elderly observant Jews to the synagogues to protect them from anti-Semitic street punks.

[socialist_n_TN]

47. Yep. An armed milita also provides a check on

fascist thugs and capitalist overreach.

[Rozlee]

19. Let's see FUX "News" run this for over two weeks like the New Black Panther story

and their constant drone about crackah babies and terrorized by black thugs comin' for ya, baby.

[craigmatic]

20. republicans- they start out as assholes young

[SoapBox]

25. SO...this is the type of shit that ALL of us need to fight in 2012 and on...

Whether you are or are not so keen on what President Obama has or has not done so far...

Protecting VOTER RIGHTS should be something that all Dems, Progressives and Liberals should be 100% on board with. Period.

We all need to fight for America, against this breed of Thug Terrorists that have blown up the debt ceiling process.

Wake up folks.

[Raksha]

29. I think we all do agree on that.

Re "Whether you are or are not so keen on what President Obama has or has not done so far...

Protecting VOTER RIGHTS should be something that all Dems, Progressives and Liberals should be 100% on board with. Period."

It's an open secret at this point that Republicans can't win the popular vote in most districts unless they cheat and/or suppress the vote with various dirty tricks and Jim Crow laws. The existence of those Jim Crow laws is itself an admission of that.

We need to protect voter rights and the integrity of the election process, but I'd go even further than that. It would need to be an organized, visible and aggressive defense, like the "militias" Socialist_in_TN talked about upthread. The "troops" wouldn't necessarily have to be armed, although it might be a good idea if some of them were. That would depend on the level of thuggishness of the teabaggers they expected to deal with in that particular area.

[SoapBox]

45. Ditto and agreed!

...I absolutely agree with you.

In support of voter rights for all Americans, I think it is going to need an "aggressive" stance by us.

With all the pranks and pressure that the Thugs have done at polling places, harassing voters, we need to get out and be visible.

[renate]

30. WHY ARE THEY ALWAYS SUCH ASSHOLES?

Sorry. I didn't mean to yell. But why? When a cornerstone of your political game plan is to keep people from voting IN A DEMOCRACY, shouldn't that be a hint that your party is doing something wrong?

[tcaudilllg]

32. Get the names of the students and blacklist them.

[defendandprotect]

33. What do they see when they look in the mirror? How do they stand themselves ... ???

What do you tell yourself about what you're doing at the end of the day

when you have to cheat and lie to support your party's candidates?

What's wrong with these people?

[bengalherder]

42. But they are are the winning team.

I knew some of these fucks in college. Winning the game, or the perception thereof, was all that mattered. I don't think they even realized what the results would be in real life.

This was long before home video games, btw.

[defendandprotect]

64. That seemed to be the same thinking of the Nixon game--players ....

Think they came out of California -- colleges there --

Machivellian --

[on point]

34. The classic face of fascism demonstrated yet again by the repukes!

[Enthusiast]

35. What kind of a nation do these nutters want?

This certainly isn't in line with the spirit of a Democracy.

[jwirr]

36. That is a dirty trick but maybe the vans should not have been used

anyhow. All students pay for university services out of their tuition. They should not be used for political purposes at all. They need to set up rides to the poles using private vehicles like all other communities do.

Having said that: I was running McGovern headquarters in our county and many of my workers were fellow students at the college. I was using the free mail boxes on campus to send messages to them when I need them to come in to work. Someone turned us in and the above reason was why I was asked not to use that method. After that I just called them.

[tcaudilllg]

38. The old GOP "perfect world" device.

Don't fall for it.

[jwirr]

40. Let me put it another way . If the rethugs were asking to use university

property for a political reason like taking voters to the polls would you be in favor? After all the vans belong to you just as much as they do to them.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

66. Taking students to the polls is non-partisan. It's not a hard concept to grasp.

[LanternWaste]

69. Having the Young Republicans club meetings on campus?

"If the rethugs were asking to use university property for a political reason like..."

Having the Young Republicans club meetings on campus? Sounds cool to me... :shrug:

[saras]

46. Voting is politically neutral - it is a social good.

It is as much the school's purpose to encourage voting as it is to encourage the acceptance of science. That, too, is a partisan political position these days. Should we then forbid educators from discussing why and how science works.


You confessed to the same sort of illegal partisan tactics that the Republicans used. You mustn't confuse that with legitimate attempts to allow voters to vote their own values without trying to persuade them how to vote.

[ooglymoogly]

37. Pugrats are thugs

They have stolen every strategic election for the last 30+ years to keep rethugs in power.

Where they can they run pugrats as Democrats to give the Democrats the illusion of control, giving a bipartisan seal on their evil.

[KittysRfuzzy]

39. Republicans have no integrity

Republicans cheat and there is very little effort to stop them

[Doctor_J]

41. And yet there are many who claim

we "got what we deserved", and who think we're going to get this country back without lots of violence.

Wake the fuck up, people.

[perdita9]

43. why does the GOP hate democracy?

[Ken Burch]

50. Because, as Mitch McConnell said, they "tried elections".

:eyes:

[patrice]

48. They rig everything they do. nt

[JDPriestly]

49. 206 students registered to vote.

University of Maine
Orono, ME

4-year, Public
2,100 Freshman Class
$22,108 (in-state), $37,138 (out-of-state)
12,114 Total Students

18% of students are out-of-state

http://www.campusdiscovery.com/colleges/profile/university-of-maine-campus#school-explorer

(Note there may be 210 out-of-state students in the freshman class alone so the fact that 206 students voted who, we assume, came from out-of-state when they first came to the university is not surprising.)

****

The University of Maine is one of the nation’s major public institutions of higher education, but built on a human scale. Its five undergraduate colleges together enroll about 9,000 students, and its graduate school enrolls about 2,300 students seeking masters or doctoral degrees.

http://gradcatalog.umaine.edu/content.php?catoid=24&navoid=345

****

(210 of the graduate students could easily have been classed as out-of-state upon admission at the university but have no other residency for voting purposes.)

Are there special residency requirements for students, military personnel, incarcerated persons, and citizens living outside the United States?

****

Students:

Students have the right to register in the municipality where they attend school, if they have established residency there. Students must meet the same residency requirements as all other potential voters, but may not be asked to meet any additional requirements.

Students who are not residents of the municipality in which they attend school cannot register in that municipality. Students must determine where they have established residency and register to vote there. If residency is determined to be in another municipality or state, absentee voting is possible and encouraged.

The following items should be kept in mind when determining residency for a college student:

A person does not gain or lose a residence solely because of the person's presence or absence while a student in any institution of learning. This may not be construed to prevent a student at any institution of learning from qualifying as a voter in the municipality where the student resides while attending that institution
When registering students, the registrar must make the determination of residency as he or she would for any potential voter.
A student may have only one residence at any one time.
If a student has established residency in another municipality or State for any reason, and if the circumstances have not changed, the other jurisdiction may be the legal residence where the student should be registered to vote.

http://maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/resident.htm

****

A student applying for admission to a degree program is classified as eligible, or not eligible, for in-state tuition at the time of acceptance to the University. A non-matriculated (non-degree) student is classified as eligible, or not eligible, for in-state tuition at the time of registration. The decision, made by the Chief Financial Officer, or other officials designated by the campus, shall be made based on information and documentation furnished by the student and other information available to the University. No student is eligible for in-state tuition classification until he or she has become domiciled in Maine, in accordance with University guidelines, before such registration. If the student is enrolled full-time in an academic program, as defined by the University, it will be presumed that the student is in Maine for educational purposes, and that the student is not in Maine to establish a domicile. A residence established for the purpose of attending a UMS campus shall not by itself constitute domicile. The burden will be on the student to prove that he or she has established a Maine domicile for other than educational purposes. An individual who has lived in the State of Maine, for other than educational purposes, one year prior to registration or application to a campus is considered an in-state student.

. . . .

A student, spouse, or domestic partner of a student, who currently has continuous, permanent full-time employment in Maine before the student decides to apply for degree status at the University will be considered in-state for tuition purposes. A student who is dependent on his/her parent(s) and/or legally appointed guardian (or to whom custody has been granted by court order) is considered to have a domicile with the parent(s) for tuition purposes.

. . . .

A student who attended an out-of-state educational institution at in-state tuition rates in the immediately preceding semester, shall be presumed to be in Maine for educational purposes and not to establish a domicile. Again, the burden will be on the individual to prove that he or she has established a Maine domicile for other than educational purposes.

http://www.umaine.edu/graduate/prospectivestudents/residencyrules

Here are Maine's rules for determining residency for tax purposes.

****

http://www.maine.gov/revenue/incomeestate/guidance/res_pamphlet.pdf

****

It might be worth investigating whether the university and the voting registration office differ in determining whether a person is a resident for their purposes.

The spouse of a full-time student, for example may be working full-time and pay Maine taxes and be considered a full-time resident of Maine. The students spouse my consider himself a full-time resident for purposes of the payment of the spouse's taxes but not be viewed by the university as a Maine resident. This would be especially true of the typical graduate student who lives in Maine full-time, has his private property in Maine all year round and maybe has enrolled a child in a public school in Maine. He may have initially moved to Maine to attend the university.

Then there are students who are classified as out-of-state by the university because they did not satisfy the university's in-state tuition requirements when they first started there but keep all their private property in Maine and do not have residency in any other state.

The big question is whether the students vote only in Maine or also vote elsewhere. Voting twice is prohibited everywhere? I would doubt this. Voting once takes a certain amount of effort and planning.

Another question: What does the fact that 206 students are registered to vote have to do with on the day they ending registration on election day? How many of those who voted registered on election day? And then how long had they been residing in Maine?

And finally, how many non-students registered to vote on election day?

I don't see what students voting really has to do with registering on election day. The students could have registered the day before election day or even a week beforeAnd if you have ever registered people to vote, they usually have to state that they are residents and they sign the form under penalty of perjury. A person could be mistaken about their residency, but it is unlikely that voting in the state of Maine would be so important to a student that they would lie about their residency.

Why do I post this? To point out that the Republican governor's commission is going to have to do a lot of research. I doubt that he will find volunteers to do this.

Again, trying to make sure things are absolutely spotlessly "fair" could end up costing taxpayers more than the results of the investigation are worth.

Meanwhile the bankers that caused our economic recession are enjoying their pots of gold as are the torturers and those who approved the torture.

What a waste of time and money.

[sakabatou]

51. That's illegal.

[sulphurdunn]

52. If the Young Rethugs

knew in advance that the buses would be used to transport people to the polls (admitted), and they acquired them with the intent of denying voters transportation to the polls (admitted), then it sounds like they committed a willful act of voter suppression. I believe the legality of this act should be investigated.

[onpatrol98]

56. I agree...

This is against the law, isn't it? Does the school have a Young Democrats organization?

[Peanutcat]

54. Wait, what?!

So the Republicans in college weren't able to vote either?

[onpatrol98]

67. So, that turned out to be a dumb move on many levels

Or they assumed only democrats would need a ride to the polls.

[elocs]

55. Democrats are not going to win if they insist on playing by nice Marquis of Queensbury rules

while the Republicans are using street fighting tactics--gaming, using dirty tactics, bending the rules and breaking them until they get caught.

We need to be smarter than they are, to anticipate their moves and to and head them off or to counter them with better moves and tactics. We can stay within the law and to use it when we need, but we cannot be constantly whining and crying about how those big, bad, nasty Republicans do not play fair.

We need to use the Chicago Way; it's the only thing Republicans might respect:

http://youtu.be/2ScvAJG51V4

[Historic NY]

58. Some body should be suing them & filing a complaint for their admissions of obstruction.

[Stevenmarc]

59. Gee they don't have tow trucks in Maine

Tow the fuckers

You can bet if a van was blocking a walmart entrance that van would be on a hook in 30 seconds

[bluedigger]

60. I used to play basketball with Charlie.

I could always count on Charlie taking a shot to my kidneys when I went for the ball.

[Botany]

62. Charlie Webster

http://www.hancockgop.org/images/July%2015,%202011/Doris%20and%20Charlie%20Webster.jpg

We are the majority and their wins are by suppressing the vote, election rigging, or lies or some combination
of those factors ..... but they wrap themselves in the flag, speak of faith and family, and patriotism.

just like the "debt ceiling" debate, impeaching Bill Clinton, and freedom fries it is all an act.

[Drew Richards]

63. Wouldnt this fall under some sort of bad conduct rules in most universities?

[WVRICK13]

65. Typical Republicans

Learned from their parents to get ahead by cheating.

[NoodleyAppendage]

68. Republican = Sociopath. I'm becoming convinced they should be treated for a disorder.

Sociopathy best encapsulates the conservative/Republican worldview and response to those around them. They often profess to denying evolution, but will respond socially with a "survival of the fittest" mentality. They view the world as hostile, brutish and unforgiving. Some of this may be true, but their response to the viccissitudes of life is to "screw others and get theirs" as a means for survival. Ultimately, as history has shown, their weltanschauung leads to social chaos and a self fulfilling prophesy that reinforces their view (e.g., hostile world).

I believe conservatism should be treated/viewed as a disorder. Brain studies have shown that their prefrontal and temporal cortices, particularly medial frontal and amygdalae, do not operate the same as liberals/progressives. Theirs is a brain functioning geered towards pre-industrial society and not conducive to harmonious social cohesion.

J