DNC Confirms Preemptive Whining Plan
The Democratic National Committee responds to Drudge Report’s charge that they are planning to allege voter intimidation even if none exists—and they end up confirming the charge. This one comes complete with an obvious typo in the title: Cabrera On Drudge Report: GOP Offers Up Red Herring to Cover Up Sameful Record of Voter Intimidation.
II. HOW TO ORGANIZE TO PREVENT AND COMBAT VOTER INTIMIDATION
The best way to combat minority voter intimidation tactics is to prevent them from occurring in the first place and prepare in advance to deal with them should they take place on election day.
1. If there are any signs of present or expected intimidation activity, in advance of election day, launch a press program that might include the following elements:
* Prepare and distribute to the press (or have available at a press conference, see below) materials giving the background and history of GOP minority voter intimidation, with emphasis on past activity in your state or district.
* Devise separate press strategies for mainstream and specialty press:
i. Mainstream press: Consider a press conference
— Featuring a prominent mainstream spokesperson (priest, civic leader, business leader)
— Including a group of established community leaders behind that spokesperson, but with only one person giving a statement
— Emphasizing a message of outrage, but designed to appeal to the broader community: “We thought this community was better than that”, “We thought those days were behind us”, “Nothing is more despicable than trying to deprive any American of the precious right to vote, the foundation of our democracy for which so many have sacrificed.”
— Impugning the source of divisiveness — the GOP, the opposing candidate, whoever can credibly be said to be behind it
— Include call to actionii. Specialty press
— Use minority intimidation as an organizing tool: in a press conference and/or press materials, community leadership should call on the community to rise up against the efforts to disenfranchise them by turning out in record numbers and challenging any effort at intimidation
— Link this fight to the historical fights to enfranchise minorities, going back to the civil rights struggle.2. If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a “pre-emptive strike” (particularly well-suited to states in which there techniques have been tried in the past).