Another Case for the Deceptive Practices Bill
by Jonah Goldman
On New Year’s Day the New York Times’ Adam Cohen had an excellent piece providing further momentum for the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act.
The column centered on the exploits of Allen Raymond, a Republican Party operative who went to jail for jamming Democratic Get Out the Vote phone banks in New Hampshire in 2002 and who has recently written a book about his experiences.
Cohen noted:
It was a world in which, he claims, dirty tricks were the norm. When Mr. Raymond opened a political telemarketing firm, he was hired by a Republican challenging a New Jersey Democratic congressman. Mr. Raymond’s company - in a plan he says he hatched with the challenger’s advisers - called liberal Democrats and urged them to vote for the Green Party candidate.
Those same advisers, he says, gave Mr. Raymond another assignment: to call white households asking them to vote for the Democrat, using the voice of, as he puts it, a "ghetto black guy." He also called union households, using voices with thick Spanish accents.
The column goes on to point that Mr. Raymond is far from alone:
Of course, this tradition of dirty trickery goes back decades. Donald Segretti, an operative with President Richard Nixon’s re-election committee went to jail for distributing devious, and illegal, campaign literature. Today there are many others plying the trade - for both parties.
In 2006, Republicans in upstate New York accused Democrats of calling voters at the last minute and directing them to incorrect polling places. At the same time, Democrats in several Congressional districts charged that Republicans unleashed robo-calls - calls that repeated over and over, enraging the recipients - that were made to sound as if they were coming from the Democratic candidate.
The National Campaign for Fair Elections could not agree more with the Cohen’s conclusion:
It is remarkable how little Congress has done to stop all this. A good bill that addresses some of the problems - the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, sponsored by Barack Obama, Charles Schumer and others - has been limping along, though there is hope it could come to a Senate vote this month. Mr. Raymond is the rare case of a political operative who actually did jail time for dirty tricks. Congress needs to toughen the laws protecting elections, and make clear that anyone interfering with democracy will pay a stiff price.
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