Interest Groups Spend $350 Million to Prod Voters

Interest Groups Spend $350 Million to Prod Voters

Chuck Noe, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2004

Pro-Bush organizations are finally trying to catch up to Sen. John Kerry’s multimillion-dollar 527 groups as both sides wage an unprecedented battle to get out the vote.

The efforts, costing at least $350 million, “are part of the most expensive voter-drive ground war in history,” the New York Times reported today. The strategy, in addition to the national parties and partisan 527s, includes business interests, increasingly violent goons dispatched by Big Labor, and left-wing self-described “civic organizations,” which call themselves nonpartisan but have unmistakable agendas.

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The 11th-hour push includes the legal, the dubious and the criminal. Highlights:

Thanks to the presence of sue-happy trial lawyer John Edwards on the Democrat ticket, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has broken with its tradition of staying out of the presidential race. Although “nonpartisan” tax-exempt groups cannot promote a candidate, they can and do emphasize issues and troll for voters likely to favor their candidate.

Displeased with President Bush on some issues, the National Rifle Association was slow in endorsing him, but last week it promised to spend millions of dollars to help him defeat Kerry.

In Iraq, “a Republican lobbyist is trying to help about 100,000 employees of American contractors in the Persian Gulf vote in time to be counted,” the Times noted.

National Voice, a new coalition of left-wing “charities,” is taking $80 million that could have been used for charity work and instead blowing it on “motivating voters who are more likely to help Kerry,” the Times reported. Even though self-described “Catholic” Kerry violates many of the church’s tenets, Dominican nun Adrian Hofstetter is exploiting National Voice's Internet program to shill for votes.

A leftist coalition calling itself America Votes, heavily funded by Bush-hating multibillionaire George Soros, is being investigated by state and federal officials for widespread vote fraud, the Washington Times reported today.

Democrats in particular are exploiting a fraud-friendly practice that some states allow: gathering absentee ballots from citizens … as well as non-citizens and even fictional characters.

In Ohio alone, thousands of forms are bouncing back to the state because they were mailed to newly registered "voters" who don't exist, the Cincinnati Enquirer revealed today.

The state Republican Party plans an ad campaign urging residents to blow the whistle on fraud being perpetrated by "independent" pro-Democrat groups.

"By most accounts, their work can only be considered sloppy, haphazard and, in some cases, downright illegal," said Robert Bennett, chairman of the state GOP.

The most infamous case so far: The pro-Democrat NAACP worker who admitted using crack cocaine to pay an Ohio man who turned in 124 fake voter registration forms, including the names of Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Janet Jackson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Michael Jordan and George Foreman.

After a nationwide string of attacks on Republican headquarters, break-ins and physical assaults, which included a GOP aide suffering a broken arm in Orlando, Fla., Bush's campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, wrote to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney urging him to stop the reign of terror.

"I hope you will put an end to protest activities that have led to injuries, property damage, vandalism and voter intimidation," Racicot wrote. "We will hold you and your organization accountable for the actions of your members ...."

Assaults and other crimes are likely to worsen in the next two weeks, however, especially now that several Democrat judges have issued rulings that promote massive vote fraud.

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