REPUBLICANS COMPLAIN ABOUT MOVEON.ORG ACTIVITIES
Republicans complain about MoveOn.org activities
The state's two main political parties sent hundreds of monitors to polling places across Minnesota today in anticipation of a high turnout in the battleground state.
The Republicans raised the first objections, alleging that activists from the liberal group MoveOn.org had tried to operate within 100 feet of more than 20 Twin Cities-area polling places, in violation of state laws against electioneering.
Several of those precincts were in St. Paul, but police spokesman Paul Schnell said officers determined that nobody was doing anything ``illegal or unacceptable.'' He said all the calls had come from citizens, not election judges.
Ed Johnson, the Minnesota director of Moveon.org, said he was unaware of any violations.
``Our volunteers know to follow the law and stay outside the 100-foot requirement,'' he said.
Kent Kaiser, a spokesman for Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, said that not only is it illegal to politick within 100 feet of a polling place entrance, if the voting station is on public property it's illegal to do so within 100 feet of the property.
At Robbinsdale City Hall, GOP observer Doyle Randall, 48, a certified public accountant, wore a bright yellow badge that said ``Poll Challenger'' and wore a cell phone headset.
``I'm here to make sure that who is supposed to vote is voting - we don't want a Chicago-style ... election,'' he said.
But in the first hour or so that the polling station was open, only three voters were turned away. Two of them lived in different precincts and were sent to their proper voting places.
The third was a voter who tried to register at the polling place. She had recently moved and her driver's license showed her old address.
State law allows a utility bill as proof of address in such cases, but after discussing the matter with Randall, the election judges decided her cell phone bill didn't qualify. They told her to come back with an actual utility bill.
Randall eventually received a call sending him to a north Minneapolis precinct where a GOP poll challenger had failed to show up.
Another group at the polling places was Election Protection, a group founded by People for the American Way and other liberal organizations, which registered about 300 monitors in Minnesota and stationed them at polls serving heavy minority populations.
Bill Lofy, a spokesman for Election Protection, said the judges at Robbinsdale City Hall made the wrong call. Both he and Kiffmeyer said cell phone bills are acceptable as proof of address.
But Lofy said he had heard of no serious problems.``So far it seems relatively uneventful,'' he said. Just a week before the election, about 2.98 million Minnesotans were pre-registered to vote - 4.4 percent more than the 2000 election. And many others voting for the first time, such as immigrants, planned to register on Election Day.
Of the more than 50 people waiting at Robbinsdale City Hall for the polls to open, including many minority and first-time voters, the vast majority had pre-registered.
Despite the long line, the early voting generally went smoothly, though Brenda Bous, 43, who was in a wheelchair, said the regular voting booths were too high.
``They definitely should have had more handicapped booths. I ended up using a chair,'' she said.
At the Earle Brown Elementary School in Brooklyn Center, where about 130 people voted per hour through the morning, one woman got to skip to the front because she was in labor, election judge Nancy Carlson said.
``Two minutes labor and she's still in line to vote,'' Carlson said. Once the woman cast her ballot, she was put into a wheelchair and wheeled away, Carlson said.
But Donna Hanes, 68, and her son, Craig Hubbard, had to struggle to register to vote there.
They said they closed on selling their old house Oct. 27 and were staying at a motel until their new home is ready. They said they first went to their old precinct but were told they couldn't vote there because they didn't live there anymore. Earle Brown is the polling place for both their motel and their new home.
``It's my right as an American citizen to vote,'' Hanes said. ``They're telling me now I can't vote, but that's not the American way.''
Hubbard said they were eventually told to get a statement signed by their motel manager and countersigned by someone else attesting that the manager was, in fact, the manager. But he said they weren't guaranteed that this would satisfy the poll judges.
``We're getting this run-around,'' he said.
Kiffmeyer said absentee ballot submissions were about double what they were four years ago.
Both Republicans and Democrats pledged to station waves of monitors at the polls. The parties were allowed one monitor inside each polling site, but both also placed lawyers and other volunteers outside to watch and help voters with questions.
While the partisan monitors could question a voter's eligibility, such challenges were expected to be rare, elections officials said. Any challenge had to be based on knowledge that the voter may not be eligible and presented in writing to an election judge who would decide whether to double-check a voter's ID.
Among the election observers in swing states like Minnesota were a handful of members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe - a first for elections held in the United States.
Two OSCE observers, parliamentarians Goran Lennmarker, of Sweden, and Stavros Evagorou, of Cyprus, were at Robbinsdale City Hall when the polls opened.
Lennmarker said they came to see whether any voters were turned away, and to see whether there was any harassment involved in the challenging process.
``We expected calm, proper, correct. It's quiet so far,'' Lennmarker said before leaving to check the Earle Brown polling place in Brooklyn Center.
Asked whether he expected any problems with the implementation of Help America Vote Act, which is being implemented for the first time in nine states, he answered, ``Certainly not in Minnesota.''
As the polls opened at one precinct Golden Valley, about 80 people waited outside in the cold rain, some who had been standing in line for half-an-hour. About half of those waiting held umbrellas in one hand and insulated coffee cups in the other.
Once the polls opened the wait was 30 to 40 minutes to get inside as newcomers kept the lines long. Voters who came in their cars at 7 a.m. had to park a block away as cars lined the streets in all directions.
A volunteer from MoveOn PAC had a card table set up under an umbrella checking off his list of Democratic voters identified during canvassing who had promised to vote. The group is one of many that have been working for weeks to identify like-minded voters and make sure they cast ballots. Follow-up phone calls and offers of transportation were planned to help get the no-show voters out.
The media also operated under different rules set forth in a new state law.
Reporters and photographers had to get a letter of permission from city or county officials before they could enter a polling place, and they could only stay for 15 minutes.
Media expert said the law was one of the most restrictive in the country. County and city officials contacted by The Associated Press freely granted permission but said they would enforce the 15-minute rule. Source: Associated Press, November 2, 2004
The state's two main political parties sent hundreds of monitors to polling places across Minnesota today in anticipation of a high turnout in the battleground state.
The Republicans raised the first objections, alleging that activists from the liberal group MoveOn.org had tried to operate within 100 feet of more than 20 Twin Cities-area polling places, in violation of state laws against electioneering.
Several of those precincts were in St. Paul, but police spokesman Paul Schnell said officers determined that nobody was doing anything ``illegal or unacceptable.'' He said all the calls had come from citizens, not election judges.
Ed Johnson, the Minnesota director of Moveon.org, said he was unaware of any violations.
``Our volunteers know to follow the law and stay outside the 100-foot requirement,'' he said.
Kent Kaiser, a spokesman for Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, said that not only is it illegal to politick within 100 feet of a polling place entrance, if the voting station is on public property it's illegal to do so within 100 feet of the property.
At Robbinsdale City Hall, GOP observer Doyle Randall, 48, a certified public accountant, wore a bright yellow badge that said ``Poll Challenger'' and wore a cell phone headset.
``I'm here to make sure that who is supposed to vote is voting - we don't want a Chicago-style ... election,'' he said.
But in the first hour or so that the polling station was open, only three voters were turned away. Two of them lived in different precincts and were sent to their proper voting places.
The third was a voter who tried to register at the polling place. She had recently moved and her driver's license showed her old address.
State law allows a utility bill as proof of address in such cases, but after discussing the matter with Randall, the election judges decided her cell phone bill didn't qualify. They told her to come back with an actual utility bill.
Randall eventually received a call sending him to a north Minneapolis precinct where a GOP poll challenger had failed to show up.
Another group at the polling places was Election Protection, a group founded by People for the American Way and other liberal organizations, which registered about 300 monitors in Minnesota and stationed them at polls serving heavy minority populations.
Bill Lofy, a spokesman for Election Protection, said the judges at Robbinsdale City Hall made the wrong call. Both he and Kiffmeyer said cell phone bills are acceptable as proof of address.
But Lofy said he had heard of no serious problems.``So far it seems relatively uneventful,'' he said. Just a week before the election, about 2.98 million Minnesotans were pre-registered to vote - 4.4 percent more than the 2000 election. And many others voting for the first time, such as immigrants, planned to register on Election Day.
Of the more than 50 people waiting at Robbinsdale City Hall for the polls to open, including many minority and first-time voters, the vast majority had pre-registered.
Despite the long line, the early voting generally went smoothly, though Brenda Bous, 43, who was in a wheelchair, said the regular voting booths were too high.
``They definitely should have had more handicapped booths. I ended up using a chair,'' she said.
At the Earle Brown Elementary School in Brooklyn Center, where about 130 people voted per hour through the morning, one woman got to skip to the front because she was in labor, election judge Nancy Carlson said.
``Two minutes labor and she's still in line to vote,'' Carlson said. Once the woman cast her ballot, she was put into a wheelchair and wheeled away, Carlson said.
But Donna Hanes, 68, and her son, Craig Hubbard, had to struggle to register to vote there.
They said they closed on selling their old house Oct. 27 and were staying at a motel until their new home is ready. They said they first went to their old precinct but were told they couldn't vote there because they didn't live there anymore. Earle Brown is the polling place for both their motel and their new home.
``It's my right as an American citizen to vote,'' Hanes said. ``They're telling me now I can't vote, but that's not the American way.''
Hubbard said they were eventually told to get a statement signed by their motel manager and countersigned by someone else attesting that the manager was, in fact, the manager. But he said they weren't guaranteed that this would satisfy the poll judges.
``We're getting this run-around,'' he said.
Kiffmeyer said absentee ballot submissions were about double what they were four years ago.
Both Republicans and Democrats pledged to station waves of monitors at the polls. The parties were allowed one monitor inside each polling site, but both also placed lawyers and other volunteers outside to watch and help voters with questions.
While the partisan monitors could question a voter's eligibility, such challenges were expected to be rare, elections officials said. Any challenge had to be based on knowledge that the voter may not be eligible and presented in writing to an election judge who would decide whether to double-check a voter's ID.
Among the election observers in swing states like Minnesota were a handful of members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe - a first for elections held in the United States.
Two OSCE observers, parliamentarians Goran Lennmarker, of Sweden, and Stavros Evagorou, of Cyprus, were at Robbinsdale City Hall when the polls opened.
Lennmarker said they came to see whether any voters were turned away, and to see whether there was any harassment involved in the challenging process.
``We expected calm, proper, correct. It's quiet so far,'' Lennmarker said before leaving to check the Earle Brown polling place in Brooklyn Center.
Asked whether he expected any problems with the implementation of Help America Vote Act, which is being implemented for the first time in nine states, he answered, ``Certainly not in Minnesota.''
As the polls opened at one precinct Golden Valley, about 80 people waited outside in the cold rain, some who had been standing in line for half-an-hour. About half of those waiting held umbrellas in one hand and insulated coffee cups in the other.
Once the polls opened the wait was 30 to 40 minutes to get inside as newcomers kept the lines long. Voters who came in their cars at 7 a.m. had to park a block away as cars lined the streets in all directions.
A volunteer from MoveOn PAC had a card table set up under an umbrella checking off his list of Democratic voters identified during canvassing who had promised to vote. The group is one of many that have been working for weeks to identify like-minded voters and make sure they cast ballots. Follow-up phone calls and offers of transportation were planned to help get the no-show voters out.
The media also operated under different rules set forth in a new state law.
Reporters and photographers had to get a letter of permission from city or county officials before they could enter a polling place, and they could only stay for 15 minutes.
Media expert said the law was one of the most restrictive in the country. County and city officials contacted by The Associated Press freely granted permission but said they would enforce the 15-minute rule. Source: Associated Press, November 2, 2004
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