They can't win playing fair,
so they lie and cheat.
On board, 300 mostly poor African Americans from Philadelphia ate doughnuts, sipped coffee and prepared to spend the day at the Maryland polls. After an early morning greeting from Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s wife, Kendel, they would fan out in white vans across Prince George's County and inner-city Baltimore, armed with thousands of fliers that appeared to be designed to trick black Democrats into voting for the two Republican candidates.
The glossy fliers bore photos of black Democratic leaders on the front. Under the headline "Democratic Sample Ballot" were boxes checked in red for Ehrlich and Senate candidate Michael S. Steele, who were not identified as Republicans. Their names were followed by a long list of local Democratic candidates.
Nearly a week later, a fuller picture has emerged about how the plan to capture blacks' votes unfolded -- details that suggest the fliers, and the people paid to distribute them, were not part of a hurry-up effort but a calculated strategy.
And why do they do this? Because it's how they've won past elections.
It also was not the first time Ehrlich and Steele had used fliers that some considered deceptive. U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D) still recalls arriving at a polling place in his Baltimore district during the 2002 governor's race and being handed a glossy flier.
"They handed me this big, beautiful piece of literature. It was better than any of the literature I have ever produced," Cummings recalled. "I said, 'Boy this is a wonderful photo.' There's my pastor, and [then-Housing and Urban Development Secretary] Mel Martinez, and [former Baltimore delegate] Tony Fulton and myself. Then I saw Ehrlich in the picture, and I saw the words and I said, 'Uh oh.' "
The words read, "Democrats for Ehrlich." Cummings was livid. He had been one of the most vocal supporters of Ehrlich's opponent, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D). He immediately went on talk radio to denounce it, recorded a message to voters and went on television.
But the incident was largely ignored, washed away by the bigger news that day: Ehrlich had won the election.
These sorts of deceptions need to be criminal offenses, with criminal penalties. Not fines -- those are simply added on to the cost of doing politics. But prison terms. Make these people pay for their lies and deceptions.
Update: More:
YUSUF EL-BEDAWI is no fool. He knows politicians can play dirty.
He's just livid at being tricked into playing dirty with them on Election Day. All because he's homeless - and therefore, apparently, considered too unprincipled to give a damn about the integrity of the voting process [...]
At first, the time passed pleasantly until some of the voters took a closer look at the flier that El-Bedawi was passing out, and went ballistic. It was labeled "Ehrlich-Steele Democrats" and "Official Voter Guide," and its sample ballot pushed Ehrlich and Steele, who are not identified as being Republican [...]
"I am so angry and upset, I don't know what to do," said El-Bedawi, who's particularly shattered that he and at least 200 other Philadelphians didn't get home from Maryland in time to vote here.
"These people think we're too stupid to understand the magnitude of what we did."
