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This video, which I originally posted Monday, now seems to be drawing national attention. From the Boston Globe:
… In a statement late Sunday, County Clerk Williams denied any connection between his office and the woman in the video. On Monday, the clerk’s office and the El Paso County GOP told the Globe that the woman worked for the Republican National Committee’s local victory office. However, a spokesman for the RNC Monday evening denied that the woman worked for the local victory office.
Williams is a former chairman of the El Paso County Republican Party, and the Romney campaign announced his endorsement in February. Williams is an advocate of a state voter identification law that would require proof of citizenship for registration and photo IDs at the polls. Such measures in other states have been challenged in court as discriminatory toward minorities, who tend to vote Democratic….
It is legal for party workers to target supporters of a particular candidate during voter registration drives, but they cannot deny forms to people who back another candidate.
The current chairman of the El Paso County Republican Party, Eli Bremer, said in an interview that the woman in the video is 20-years-old and was in her first day on the job as a victory office staff member. Bremer said the local GOP works closely with the RNC victory office and that “one thing they hammer into you during training is that every paper you collect must be turned in to the clerk’s office.”
Bremer said he talked at length with the woman, whose name has not been released, and said she was merely flustered by the shopper’s questions and misidentified her employer. He insisted there was no collaboration on the voter registration drive between the victory office and Williams or the clerk’s office….
The shopper, who said she is the Democratic chair of a county precinct, described the video as the result of a serendipitous encounter. She said that on her way into the grocery story, she initially praised the young woman for registering voters but was alarmed when the young woman replied that she was registering only “some” voters.
The shopper said she decided to confront the young woman on her way out of the store, filming their conversation while at first pretending to talk on her cell phone. She said her angry reaction was “not my finest moment” and said she did write down the license plate number of the vehicle driven by the young woman.
The shopper said the timing of the video’s posting — more than a month after it was filmed — was not politically strategic, as Bremer charged. She said she went out of town for a few weeks and needed help editing out the young woman’s name, which she did not want to make public. She said her purpose was to illuminate the practice of selective registration.
Christy Le Lait, executive director of the El Paso County Democratic Party, echoed the shopper’s stated mission, saying “we should be registering everyone to vote, regardless of party.”
So, there seems to be one thing upon which all parties agree: We should be registering everyone to vote. And, given the forest of totally legal figleaves waved about by the responsible parties on the Republican side, it is to be hoped that all good Democrats in Colorado are not only working to register voters who may not meet the GOP’s exacting standards, but are prepared to get those voters to the polls… and to keep a sharp eye on the ballot-counting, as well.
Per Mr. Williams, Citizens with Colorado ID cards can also register to vote at GoVoteColorado.com, and the deadline is Tuesday, October 9.
Groucho48
ACORN!!!!
Oh, wait…
Sphex
She is so young. How did her mind get so poisoned, so fast?
Alison
@Sphex: She’s either done way too many or way too few drugs…
Joseph Nobles
Hey, OT in the It’s Always Projection department, someone found an old NYTimes article where Scott Brown had claimed his great-grandfather was Arthur Prentice Rugg, a 19th century MA Supreme Court judge.
bmgmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/NYTRugg.pdf
He wadn’t.
bmgmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/NYT-Rugg-correction-001.pdf
Jewish Steel
I’m still scratching my head over the ‘Stench’ post below. Is it for real? Doesn’t seem possible. So I head over to Politico and do something I’ve never done before: take a look at their comment section.
Blimey.
TheMightyTrowel
Paul Ryan. Game Changer 2.o
R-Jud
@Jewish Steel:
I did that in 2008 and have never gone back to Politico since.
Jewish Steel
@R-Jud: That was a something right there. Boy howdy.
MattR
@Jewish Steel:
I’m afraid you’re gonna have to go ahead and burn your computer because there’s just no way to get that stench off.
Geoduck
What I read was.. actually pretty tame by Internet standards..
PeakVT
@Jewish Steel: Comment sections at pretty much every commercial media outlet (except a few liberal ones) range from stupid to outright appalling. It’s painful to know that those people live in the same country as I do.
Jewish Steel
I’ve been warned about Politico. There are some idiots who must always learn the hard way. Like me.
Alison
Cleanse your brain of Politico grime with some happy poll news:
nytimes.com/2012/09/26/us/politics/polls-show-obama-widening-lead-in-ohio-and-florida.html?pagewante…
The New York Times, in collaboration with Quinnipiac University and CBS News, is tracking the presidential race with recurring polls in six states. In Ohio — which no Republican has won the presidency without — Mr. Obama is leading Mr. Romney 53 percent to 43 percent in the poll. In Florida, the president leads Mr. Romney 53 to 44 percent in the poll.
The surveys, which had margins of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for each candidate, also included a Pennsylvania poll, where Mr. Obama is leading Mr. Romney by 12 percentage points.
TheMightyTrowel
OT: for the 12 year old in all of you… just downloaded the most recent maddow podcast and she had a great slip of the tongue. No clips because I’m incapable of coping with digital video, so you’ll just have to trust me.
While trying to say ‘in order to vote you just have to read a slim volume’ she ended up saying ‘in order to vote you just have to rim….’ at which point she caught herself and rephrased.
Still made me laugh like a pre-teen.
Arclite
Actually, this story raises an important point for me. Voter cards are going out this week, and I’m moving. So, by next week I’ll have a new address. I’m only moving a block away and am still in the same precinct, so do I need to update my voter registration address before Nov. 6?
Arclite
@PeakVT:
Maybe those commenters are from the south. This Sully graph shows that while most working-class white voters are pretty much evenly split betw Obama and Romney, in the south they break for Romney 4 to 1. It’s shocking, and it really is a different country from everyone else.
MikeJ
@Arclite: What state are you in?
Arclite
@MikeJ:
Hawaii.
MikeJ
@Arclite: The deadline for registration is Oct 8. It might be different for just a change of address, but I’d assume worst case scenario and use the same deadline as new voter registration.
You can register by mail or at the city or county clerk’s office. Or better yet, if you’ll be updating your driver’s license it’s part of the form you need to fill out for the DMV. You can do both simultaneously.
Narcissus
@TheMightyTrowel: Rim a small volume of what? Did the volume buy me dinner?
Schlemizel
@Alison:
Too few – it too many she would be a libertarian.
Anyone surprised the girl lied about who she worked for? Or that the RNC would disavow any knowledge of her?
gnomedad
@Schlemizel:
Wait, working for the county makes it worse, doesn’t it? She seemed to have no clue that anyone would not be cool with what she was doing. We’re all Republicans around here, aren’t we?
rikyrah
I love the woman confronting this lying heifer
gene108
The video seems to be a poorly trained 20 year old probably given a stack of registration cards and told to hang out at the supermarket. She didn’t seem to expect to do much more than just hand out registration cards.
Also, too if I was 20 years younger I’d become a Republican just to have a shot at dating her :-)
CindyH
@Arclite: YES!
StringOnAStick
Huh. 2 months ago I encountered a middle aged guy at my local Colorado post office doing the same schtick; asking first “are you registered to vote” and then, “if the election were held tomorrow, who would you vote for for president, Romney or Obama? “Since I answered “yes” and “Obama” to those questions, he said thank you and I continued on my way into the post office.
I was on foot that day for a long walk, and in the meantime the threatening thunderstorm got real about it, so I was stuck in the post office vestibule with this guy while he asked everyone these questions. I finally asked him who he was working for and he said “the Romney campaign”, but he also added that he cared more that people were registered and that they voted than he did about who they voted for.
He seemed like a decent guy, and since the thunderstorm got so bad that there was no way I could safely walk home, he offered me a ride home when he ended his shift. He could barely get his left leg inside his car – old injury, but no insurance to get it fixed – and he was quite nice and gave me a ride home, as promised. I guess he couldn’t link Obamacare to his bum knee.
As far as this little chippy goes: typical dumb as a post young rethug from the rethugiest part of Colorado. I’m going to thank her for her help in this election by heading out this weekend to do some canvasing for Pres. Obama.
Another Halocene Human
@Joseph Nobles: FPer needs to pick this up. Wow.
elftx
I just have a hard time faulting this kid..and that is how I view her. She seemed really gung-ho about participating in the “process”.
But the look on her face when that woman got a little shrill with her told me she had no clue she was doing something wrong. Why she had no clue could possibly be her fault or or or the people that hired her.
The look of embarrassment and of being accused of wrong doing without understanding why is what got to me about her.
So how will she now view the participatory process of this Republic? And I am going to bet she was totally humiliated.
Rather pathetic of them to successfully teach her discrimination in a sly way.
KS in MA
@elftx: “But the look on her face when that woman got a little shrill with her told me she had no clue she was doing something wrong.”
Meh. People who have no clue they’re doing something wrong aren’t usually so quick to put their hand up to block the camera.
cincyanon
I live in Ohio and received an absentee ballot in the mail last week. Today I got a robocall from the RNC mentioning the absentee ballot they’d sent and then promoting Romney/Ryan. I’ve never been a registered republican and never put my name or number on any GOP candidate’s list. I’m assuming, it’s legal unless you refuse to submit the registrations and ballots to the Board of Elections.