Oh my, they let Doug MacEachern go off on a tear again.
One day before the primary elections ended, on Aug. 25, a young fellow wearing a Citizens for a Better Arizona tee shirt walked into Maricopa County elections headquarters carrying a box. It was filled with hundreds of mail-in ballots, which he merrily delivered to county election workers.
A Republican activist who happened to be there filmed the CBA worker delivering the ballots. His video recently went viral on YouTube. Conservative groups and media picked up the story. For conservatives, it was a true “ah HA!” moment. It was, to them, evidence of “ballot stuffing.” Of fraud.
And, a lot of those conservative media noted the fact that all the “fraud” was being perpetrated by “Mexicans.”
Say what you like about leftist machine politics, but they know how to do damage control.
They leaped in with press releases declaring that Citizens for a Better Arizona is nothing but a “civic engagement group” helping out befuddled voters.
The CBA is a union-backed, Alinsky-ite activist group whose aggressive tactics in past elections have infuriated and embarrassed even other union-backed activist groups. To call the CBA a “civic engagement group” is akin to calling Rush Limbaugh a political-issues analyst. True, but, well, just gross.
Befuddled? Hey, Doug must read this blog since that’s how I’ve described him a time or two! And I’m pretty sure as “gross” as well. Anyway, isn’t it neat how conservatives can screech about – oh wait, “note” – that “Mexicans” are committing voter fraud all over the place sans any actual evidence of said fraud but the real race hucksters are the people pointing out that the conservatives are being racist? Also weird how MacEachern has nothing to say about (likely) Republican voters being instructed to bring ballots to a Doug Ducey rally last week. Yeah, of course that’s different.
Here’s MacEachern having further thoughts on the matter:
No different? Again, a thought experiment:
You are a poll watcher on Election Day. A person wearing an “I am a political radical” tee shirt walks up to a voter who is marking her ballot, and instructs her on who and what to vote for.
What do you do? Once upon a time, League of Women Voters poll watchers would call the cops. Now? They cheer lead for “ballot parties.”
Someone over at the Republic should pull Doug aside and explain the concept of consent to him because that passage above was just embarrassing.
Hypothetical scenarios conjured up in Doug MacEachern’s overheated imagination are not a rational basis upon which to ban ballot collection. Sadly for Angry Grandpa, the GOP-led Legislature had to overturn HB2305, which would have stopped those Mexicans from having their wild ballot parties and whatnot so those (perfectly legal and legitimate) efforts continue apace this election. I was recently told by a person involved in field operations in what are normally low turnout parts of Phoenix that canvassers are bringing a healthy number of ballots from low efficacy Dem voters. Whether it will be enough to turn the tide of some statewide races remains to be seen but it’s clearly got at least some conservatives nervous, hence the frantic, paranoid whining about “ballot harvesting”.
UPDATE!! MacEachern continued his pathetic tirade on Tuesday, with a rebuttal to Citizens for a Better Arizona chairman Chad Snow’s response to his column. It’s time for him to retire, Arizona Republic. He’s an embarrassment.
Mail in ballots signatures have to be checked. He has no problem with the tens of thousands of citizens who were refused registration because they don’t have birth certificate or pass port. This is democrats fault for not arresting those who prevent american citizens from voting. President Obama should declare martial law in texas and send in the military to enforce voting rights of citizens and arrest republicans on supreme court for treason! Whining is doing nothing!
McEachern (he hates it when people misspell his name) lied about the source of the video.
The “activist” AJ LaFaro did NOT film the incident. He obtained the security video from MC elections as a result of a public records request.