Dear Texans for TruthMember,
CAST A SPOTLIGHT ON VOTER INTIMIDATION
No right is more central to a functioning democracy than the right to vote. Yet in this critical election newspapers are reporting daily on anti-democratic efforts to suppress the vote. This must be stopped.
Working together we can do it. We are issuing a nation-wide call for volunteer poll watchers armed with video cameras to document voter intimidation efforts at polling places.
To support our efforts please contribute here:
http://texansfortruth.org/contribute.htmlTexans for Truth is setting up a web site,
http://www.VideoVoteVigil.org, where citizens can post digital copies of their videos. We've prepared ahead of time to provide sufficient bandwidth and server space to make it easy for volunteers to post their digitized videos. This site will be completed in the next few days.
This year, when thugs raise their fists and phony felons lists to frighten voters from the polls, they will be caught on camera and frozen in their tracks.
We're looking for volunteers to film voter intimidation efforts wherever they take place: highway road blocks, polling places, work sites, or neighborhoods.
Attempted voter suppression will be exposed IMMEDIATELY – before they can steal votes from our democracy. Working together, we can let would-be intimidators know they cannot hide from the eyes of the world. We must succeed in diminishing these voter intimidation efforts and providing critical support to Americans trying to cast ballots in the 2004 election.
This year's effort has been well-documented by bloggers and the mainstream press. Just Saturday, October 23, the New York Times described planned efforts in Ohio to hire thugs to intimidate voters.
Daily Kos has a clearinghouse of information on voter intimidation and TalkingPointsMemo has reported extensively on abuses here and here as have many others.
Throughout the nation, in election after election, Republicans rely upon voter intimidation and suppression strategies. As GOPer Webster Todd once said after helping elect his sister, Christine Todd Whitman, as governor of New Jersey, "That's where a lot of our effort went and a lot of our planning, getting out the vote on one side and voter sup--and keeping the vote light in other areas." Todd caught himself before finishing the word "suppression."
In my 2004 book, The Politics of Deceit: Saving Freedom and Democracy from Extinction, I make the case that the voter suppression effort is the most under-reported political scandal of our time. Now, because of your support, we are able to do something about it.
Bullies like to work in the dark. They like to hide. But with the help of tens of thousands of volunteers, we can shine a light on these thugs. Join us in this historic effort.
The thugs cannot escape a million righteous eyes.
thank you,
Glenn Smith
Texans for Truth