WITH THE presidential election out of the way, charges of "voter intimidation" will lie low for another four years for most Americans. But for some of us who were intimidated last Tuesday, that term will have a lasting impression for years to come. For those of us who were driven out of town for exercising our right to monitor the election, voting intimidation took on a new and personal meaning. It was an experience that was quite at odds with what the media depicted.
I went to Philadelphia last week as part of the "Lawyers for Bush" campaign. We went to the "battleground state" of Pennsylvania and were caught in a battle of physical force. We had heard about the political "ground war," but instead found ourselves in the middle of an outright war.
At the end of the day, I was cornered in a parking lot by roughly 10 large men, whom the police later identified as "union goons." After trying to tip over the minivan I was sharing with another attorney, punching it relentlessly, breaking parts off and failing to drag us out, they chased us in and out of the dense urban traffic in their high-powered SUVs. Only after a frantic 911 call and a police roadblock were our assailants apprehended. Even then, a growing mob surrounded us and we had to be secreted out of town to safety by a police escort. Our experience was not unique; several other "Lawyers for Bush" teams in Philadelphia reported similar violence.
While I could not tell for sure whom the "union goons" were working for, the police revealed their SUVs were rental vehicles, which were used primarily by the parties that day for transporting voters and election monitors. Suspiciously enough, our attackers were also aided by the prompt appearance of a slick-looking lawyer from the state Democratic Party. Who intimidated whom? You decide.
One thing is for sure: Neither I nor any of my colleagues intimidated Philadelphia voters. The very thought of physically unimpressive law students and middle-aged lawyers threatening residents in rough neighborhoods is absurd. Instead, we were there to monitor the election, along with our counterparts from the Democratic Party and groups dressed in ominous black shirts like MoveOn.org and "Voter Protection."
"Civil rights groups" that alleged Republicans intimidated voters blatantly twisted the facts for political gain. It is incredibly naïve to believe that those who would resort to force would not also resort to fraud. Our job was to prevent fraud.
Contrary to what most of us are used to, many voters in inner-city Philly vote in bars, private homes, funeral homes, and places officially listed as "vacant lots." The same patchwork of state election laws that gave us the "hanging chads" in Florida allow Philadelphia voters to cast ballots in "crack houses," as one attorney described her post.
Not only do such polling places, closed from public view, foster fraud, but they abound far out of proportion to the population. Every three to four blocks there is a voting site, each of which saw 100 to 200 voters last Tuesday. Republican efforts to move the voting booths to more wholesome places nearby were met by cries of "disenfranchisement." Meanwhile, suburban voters lined up at the polls by the thousands and waited for hours. Who disenfranchised whom?
To prevent fraud, the Republican Party recruited poll watchers, almost all from the local communities, to stand outside to see if they could spot anyone who was ineligible (i.e. not registered there or claiming to be someone who was dead) trying to vote multiple times. Rabidly partisan Democratic local election officials fixing the machines were another worry.
Most of our poll watchers in the heavily Democratic districts were not even Republicans. A few single teenage mothers were merely looking for a decent day's pay. None were intimidating, a few were chased off or blocked from doing their jobs and many didn't even show up. The job of the lawyers and law students was to check on our poll watchers. When necessary, we obtained court orders to stop election officials from unlawfully ejecting them.
While Democrats portrayed our ballot protection efforts as suppressing and intimidating minority voters, the real violence was directed against us -- the election monitors. In fact, for the most part, we got along fine in the black neighborhoods until an all-white mob tried to beat us up.
The 2004 election may now be in the history books, but there are still many chapters to be written. To start with, let's set the record straight on who intimidated whom.
Eric Wang's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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