Posted on 10/17/2002 3:39:27 PM PDT by Iowegian
Some top Iowa Republicans are privately panicking over the Democratic voter-turnout operation. The absentee ballots are starting to arrive in courthouses around the state and, as predicted, the Democrats are doing a far better job of lining up absentee ballots.
If this continues, it will be a landslide year for Iowa Democrats. One top party leader said privately his party will spend $3 million in an effort to add 190,000 ballots to the mix on Election Day. They've put out 80,000 absentee-ballot requests and more are on the way. He expects Democrats to produce 130,000 absentee votes by the end of the effort, he said. About 200 people have been working full time to direct hundreds of volunteers and labor-union members who help with the program.
Instead of getting party faithful to vote absentee, these workers are going after registered Democratic and Democratic-leaning independents who only vote in presidential election years. (Just voting the party faithful by absentee doesn't net a party much. Those folks would have voted anyway.) Bringing in marginal voters who ordinarily don't show up for a non-presidential election like this one will add numbers to the Democrats' total on Nov. 5.
Republicans have nothing comparable, according to GOP insiders. They are mailing registered Republicans an absentee-ballot application and are playing a recorded telephone call from President George W. Bush, but that approach won't add many new voters to the electorate. The GOP plans a voter-turnout blitz in the last 72-hours of the campaign.
Republican voter-turnout programs aren't what they used to be. For years, volunteer women formed the backbone of Iowa GOP get-out-the-vote efforts. Today, most women have jobs and don't have as much time to volunteer. Other women no longer feel welcome in a party that has become so anti-abortion. (Just ask some of the long-time Republican women who volunteer at a Planned Parenthood book sale how this works.)
For a time, social conservatives and groups such as the Christian Coalition stepped into the void and helped turn out the Republican vote. But the energy and dedication of that movement has faded some in recent years. Having driven off the moderate women, GOP leaders now can't find replacements and often can't compete with the union shoe leather and paid students who do the street work for the Democrats.
The Iowa GOP could lose a couple members of Congress if any Democratic sweep is large enough. Control of the Legislature could switch from Republican to Democratic. For example, Democrats need to gain only seven seats in the Iowa House and five in the Iowa Senate to take control. In most elections, there are a half-dozen seats in the House and two or three in the Senate that are decided by fewer than 500 votes. The party that wins the largest number of those squeakers takes control, and Democrats are better positioned to win squeakers.
Iowa Republicans have 19 days to find countermeasures.
(Excerpt) Read more at dmregister.com ...
How are they getting people to vote absentee? Are they going to their house and asking if they mailed in their ballot? The article doesn't give a clue on this.
Thanks to our rat friends, we should hold elections on April 15th, and only announce the winners in November after every single name is checked and cross referenced with every other state in both normal votes and absentee votes. Polls should be video taped. Any person who fraudulently votes gets ten to twenty. One more thing.....Isn't voter fraud by absentee ballot the same as mail fraud? Each count is five years. That would be at least a few million years per state.
Ah, the distinguishing characteristic of Top Republicans everywhere.
Yes, I'm guessing they are the same Einsteins who believe that the party's stand against abortion has scared all the good workers away, so they are at a loss at what to do next.
The rules are a little stricter in Illinois than other states. The application lists eleven boxes to be checked. You MUST check one of the eleven to qualify.
The reasons include health reasons, reigious holiday, collge student away from home, and even incarceration awaiting trial. There is no box for military service. Sick.
There is no difference between a 'rat and a communist, except for the haircut. Democrats suck.
Sounds like this covers the Military....:
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