Voter Deception

One of campaign season's most notorious and enduring tricks has reared its head, Putin-like, in Virginia: Phony flier says Virginians vote on different days. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book, yet somehow people still fall for it. It's closely related to the outstanding-warrants flier scam that we've already seen in the past few weeks, in that its goal is to trick potential Democratic voters into staying home on election day. It seems like these particular scams always show up somewhere in every election cycle. When I was campaigning in Ohio back in 2004, we noticed that somebody was spreading rumors amongst the student population that voter registration would lead to jury duty (which is true in some states, but not in Ohio at that time), and that it was illegal for students to register at their college address (absolutely untrue).

Let's hope people have smartened up a bit over the last four years. I must give Virginia credit, though; last year, the legislature passed a law making it a class-A misdemeanor to purposefully mislead a voter. Such a law specifically combats campaigns like these. A similar bill was introduced nationally last year but so far it hasn't been put to a vote.