MINORITY VOTER DECEPTION

THIS FLYER IS SHOWING UP ON DOORS OF MINORITY VOTERS TODAY AROUND FAIRFAX.

Obviously today is NOT election day.

DEVELOPING...

UPDATE:  WOAH WOAH WOAH!!!!  I'm hearing there is a DIFFERENT flyer going out into white neighborhoods- which seems to prove this was intentional.  Trying to get a copy of that now.

UPDATE #2-  Here is the other flyer going out.  Notice it does not have the incorrect info on voting day on it.  WOW.  Jeannemarie's campaign owes us an immediate explanation on why two different flyers are going out.  Do they have two lists or is this targeted by precinct???

Meanwhile, it seems the General Assembly made this a Class One Misdemeanor this year.

UPDATE #3-  THIS ISN'T THE FIRST TIME JEANNEMARIE HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF TARGETING AFRICAN AMERICANS. SEE THIS 1997 WAPO ARTICLE WHERE SHE DARKENED THE FACE OF HER AFRICAN AMERICAN OPPONENT AND THEN JUSTIFIED IT BY SAYING IT WAS "AN HONEST PICTURE".

Comments

[Not Carl Bernstein]

Do you mean voter Disenfranchisement not intimidation.

[Darrell]

What's so intimidating about that flyer? Looks like just your average doorhanger urging people to vote for that evil woman.

[Not Larry Sabato]

Um, it's not election day.

If you are actually going to try this old scam, you tell the voter that election day has moved to a date AFTER the election, not before which simply gives the pissed off person a chance to vote for your opponent the follow week.

[JeannieMarie's "Box"]

It is legandary around Richmond, but I never thought she would put a picture of it on her flyer. And it's so big...

[Sam]

Yeah, Ben... be careful about words... This isn't intimidation, this is deception. Dispicable, yes, but people will be more outraged and take you more seriously if you call it what it is instead of sound like you're trying to exaggerate.

That being said... What a stupid (see anon 3:12's comment for why I say stupid) bitch....

[Not Larry Sabato]

Fine, I will change from intimidation to deception (I didn't realize there was a big difference).

Actually this is really called plausible deniability.... all the JMDD staff have to say is it was an honest mistake... they picked up the wrong door hangers... they grabbed the ones for next week instead of the one for this weekend.... now the targeting and the fact that to grab the Tuesday November 6th hangers has got to be difficult to actually screw up if you can read English at all.... as I said plausible deniability, something Tom is really good at.....

[Not Chris Jones]

3:14pm, the picture just makes it look that big. It's not really that big. Right Morgan?

You can vote today - fill out a absentee ballot and put it in the mail.

[Tatum]

It is completely credible that they're just this incompetent. These are the same people that brought us the war in Iraq and the Medicare Prescription Drug program.

[Pete in Williamsburg]

It does sound like a clever scam. Scatter a few of these today. But on election day, "mistakenly" hang a few that say vote next week.

I wonder if we'll find that the JMD hangers that say "vote next week" have the "Nov 6" date in tiny print and is hard to find on the hanger.

[Anonymous Is A Woman]

Actually, anybody can go to a government center, or a local branch of it, and cast an absentee ballot if they know they will not be available to vote on election day. That includes if their commute would make it impossible for them to get home in time to vote.

To do this, you would have to affirm that you leave before six in the morning and get home after seven at night

Given the commutes and long workdays in NoVa, that is totally believable.

Having said that, attempting to suppress the vote, especially among minorities, by giving out false election day information, is an old trick.

Usually, though, campaign flyers will list the wrong date as a day after the real election. It's a desperate stunt though.

[TC]

I think the dynamic duo of Tom and JMDD are trying to do all they can to throw the election so when he doesn't run next year they can just go off into the sunset together.

[After]

Interesting Picture - Who's the candidate?

The mans in the chair..... Plus what is with the Blue - alittle afraid oftheir own colors?

[UVA08]

"Having said that, attempting to suppress the vote, especially among minorities, by giving out false election day information, is an old trick."

Sad, but true. I am not commenting on this case in particular because I haven't read the whole story, but I just feel like it's complete BS that we still have to deal with this kind of targeting. Weren't decades of voter suppression enough for these people?

Speaking of which, what ever happened to the people behind the robo calls from last year's election? Remember the stories about minorities in Hampton Roads getting phone calls telling them their voting precinct had been moved? I remember one woman in particular who received such a phone call and traveled from Newport News or Hampton to Norfolk to vote only to find that she had been lied to. She then got back into her car and headed back across the bridge/tunnel to vote. People will continue to do this so long as there is no punishment. Why do we have a Department of Justice if they aren't going to pursue justice?

[Not John S. Mosby]

Moves like this leave little doubt that Tom will not run for re-election next year. This is very low class stuff and if it was down South nobody would remember it. Lucky for us that Fairfax has people who in general are a bit smarter than average and I doubt if stupid deceptions like this do anything more than piss off the people who are actually going to vote.

Double D is going down in flames and her hubby seems all to happy to sit in the backseat and let her auger in.

Still, they will be a very well-paid lobbying duo.

[Joel Rutstein]

With all the national Dem money and involvement being poured into Chap's campaign, I have to believe he's perfectly positioned to figure out whether there's any truth at all to the allegation that Jeannemarie's campaign is peddling false information to likely Dem voters.

We'll have to see if she's more savvy in responding to this than she was in responding to what Chap calls "the mailer from Hell."

If not, it's astonishing to consider what Jeannemarie's done to augment Dem turnout without doing a thing to motivate her voters in the last few days, with election day a little more than one week away.

1) She published Chap's home address, home phone number, and the names of his small children.

2) She refused to apologize or even explain.

3) She accused Chap of putting his own children "in play" by his publishing a family photo with his kids' names.

4) She accused Chap, with absolutely no evidence, of raising the issue of her daughter's criminal conviction and of putting on youtube her old campaign video depicting her first husband and the voice of her second husband.

Are we really going to add another item to this sordid list?

With the power of incumbency, her husband pulling out all the stops to help her, her big money advantage, and the bias toward her by the only major newspaper in the area, it may take more than three strikes to call Jeannemarie out, but we're approaching five.

[Sam]

I do have to say, from a man I even once believed was a political genius, and I woman I privately told a friend of mine is "an unstoppable machine" the pure stupidity in JMDD's campaign of late is astonishing to me... Maybe they really do both want to just retire and to go out with a bang...

[Save Fairfax County]

Did it occur to anyone that perhaps Jeannemarie's campaign had these "VOTE TODAY" door hangers printed for Election Day to be dropped during the night of Nov. 5-6 and throughout the day on Nov. 6. They are probably in a sealed box and one of her campaign staff member told volunteers to get out the door hangers. The volunteer(s) may not have known the difference and took the wrong door hangers. Hence, the one you posted in some neighborhoods and the correct one going out in other neighborhoods. While not smart, this is not earth shattering news. Give me a break.

[Johnny Longtorso]

So this is what, Mistake #417 for the JMDD campaign?

Earth to those of you who are so partisan that you choose not to look at any facts before you form an opinion.

THE FLYER HAS THE CORRECT DATE OF ELECTION DAY ON IT..

some of you folks are waaayyy too rabid..

[Too Conservative]

Ben-

This story is ridiculous.

and I ask you to take off the comment from "TC" which is clearly a deception,misleading, and not me.

[LM]

Commenter at 6:05, the doorhanger that NLS shows with "Vote today" on it does not show the date. Have you seen the flip side of a real one?

[ConsertvativeFlagFan]

Ben, cut the shit. The flier said polls are open 6 am to 7 pm. It doesn't say tomorrow, or a day. Any person who plans to vote ought to know when the election is. Stop blowing things out of proportion; you look foolish and petty.

Everyone here knows you work for Chap.

There's nothing FALSE about Devolites flier, Mr. Hyperbole.

Makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to knowingly communicate false information to a registered voter about the date, time, and place of the election or the voter's precinct, polling place, or voter registration status in order to impede his voting.