Knappster: Voter fraud charges generate denials, threats, new questions

By George Knapp

During the election of 2000, Republican operatives in New Hampshire allegedly pulled off a bit of intrigue worthy of James Bond, or maybe Gordon Liddy. According to the New York Times, they used a high-tech device to jam the phone system of the Democratic Party in order to sabotage the Dems' get-out-the-vote effort. In Florida, as we now know, Republicans used the machinery of the election system itself to block thousands of Democrats from voting. For their hard work, they were awarded the presidency.

Democrats knew that some sneaky stuff was likely in the election of 2004. They vowed to be ready for it. But frankly, I don't think they are as good at defending against subterfuge as the Republicans are at planning it. I also don't think anyone has looked at the big picture of just how much skullduggery is under way around the country, involving both political parties.

Since breaking that little story last week about alleged voter registration fraud here in Nevada, Knappster has been the focus of a lot more attention that any reporter could want. The TV website got more than 300,000 hits in two days. Every national media outlet in the country wanted a piece of the story. And yours truly has received hundreds of phone calls and more than 800 e-mails, many of them from angry Republicans who think there is way too much freedom of the press in this country, which may be something they can get around to fixing during W's second term. (A few of the angry e-mails were written to my bosses to inform them that I have an abiding interest in UFOs, as if this was my deepest, darkest secret and would get me in trouble. Oh, if they only knew.)

Republican honchos have responded as you would expect. They've acted hurt, surprised and outraged. They've expressed zero tolerance for voter fraud, then, in the same breath, charged that the Democrats do it too. And they've threatened to sue anyone who dares to talk about this stuff, reporters included. As one local GOP official put it, this is all a ploy to divert attention away from the "real" issues of the campaign.

Excuse me for saying so, but I can't think of a more important issue than determining whether someone is attempting to steal the election through illegal means. Our right to vote is supposed to be sacrosanct. It's the one thing that the two parties could always agree on, that is, until we got a president who is a "uniter, not a divider." Ever since our country was "united," we can't seem to agree on anything. I'm not so na•ve as to believe that all Republicans are bad and all Democrats are good, or that either party has cornered the market on underhanded tactics. (Some of the "527" groups loosely affiliated with the Democrats aren't exactly paragons of virtue.) That said, I don't see anything within the Democratic camp that comes close to what's allegedly being done by Republicans who are directly paid by the GOP itself.

The numbers don't lie

The Nevada flap began when a young man named Eric Russell told me he personally witnessed the destruction of voter registration forms by his former bosses at Voters Outreach of America, a private registration company that spent more than two months in Nevada, employed up to 300 people, and was financed by the Republican National Committee. According to Russell, VOA informed its employees that it only wanted to collect registrations from Republicans.

No one can say with any certainty just how many registration forms were turned over to VOA. See, almost anyone who requests them can get them. By one guestimate, the company had about 20,000 of the forms, but in reality no one outside of the GOP is really certain. What we do know is that Jeannie Morgan, the manager, was given at least 4,050 forms by the Clark County Election Department. Of those, she returned about 2,400. No one knows what happened to the other 1,600-plus forms since there is no requirement that unusued forms be turned back in.

Of the 2,400 registration forms that were turned in, 1,900 were from Republicans, with 300 or so from Democrats. Now, if this doesn't set off alarm bells, you're not paying attention. On its face, this means that steps had to be taken to make sure that forms filed by Republicans were accepted and those from Democrats were discouraged, trashed or whatever. A process that operated without any sort of overriding slant could be expected to generate somewhere around a 50-50 split, not something so lopsided. Larry Lomax of the Election Department agrees.

It's understandable that the GOP would want to sign up Republicans, since the party is footing the bill for the registration drive. But Nevada law and federal law make it pretty clear that anyone who signs up voters has to be even handed. It is illegal to in any way discourage someone from registering to vote. It's illegal to alter or deface registration forms after they've been filled out. And it is illegal to "fraudulently contrive" to impede or prevent any voter from exercising his or her right to cast a ballot. That would seemingly include pretending to be someone you are not.

Whether anyone believes Eric Russell about the trashing of registration forms, some sort of gamesmanship had to be used to come back with a 1,900-to-300 ratio of registered voters. Internal documents from Voters Outreach show that the company instructed its employees to pretend they were pollsters and not let on that they were registering voters. Jeannie Morgan admitted in an interview with this reporter that the tactic was used. The same tactic was employed elsewhere too. In Oregon, where VOA also operated, an employee was caught on tape declining to accept registrations from anyone but Republicans because, he claimed, he would not be paid otherwise, or at least would not be paid as much. He also hinted that he might trash forms from Democrats.

I realize that Eric Russell's allegations have been dismissed by some because he is considered a "disgruntled" former employee. But just because someone is digruntled doesn't mean they are lying. Any journalist in this country would be sorely challenged if we had to exclude all story tips we get from disgruntled people. People with chips on their shoulders usually end up spilling the best stories any of us get. They are people who are ticked off for some reason and want to tell the world about it. Russell is disgruntled because he wasn't paid what he thought he deserved. If he had been paid, we may have never heard about any of this. At this point, we don't know whether he will be shown to be truthful or not, but we should find out soon enough.

More importantly, he isn't the only witness, not by a long shot. Both Russell and his girlfriend, Ashlee Tims, reported seeing the same stuff at Voters Outreach. More importantly, both were prepared to testify in court, under oath, to the facts as they knew them. They also told their story this week to FBI agents. It's a crime to lie to the FBI, by the way.

There is also the statement of Patricia Parker, who says she was hired by the Nevada Republican Party to sign up voters. She says she was instructed to "dispose of" any forms filled out by Democrats. The GOP says Parker can't be believed because she has since registered as a Democrat herself. (Eric Russell, by the way, is a registered Republican.)

The Review-Journal interviewed its own source, Tyrone Mrasak, a former VOA employee who says he was ordered to sign up only Republicans and that he did so by offering cigarettes to homeless people he encountered at a local shelter. Two Logandale women who spoke to Knappster say they were at VOA headquarters and were bothered when they saw the registration forms separated into piles, one pile of Republican forms that was placed in a box on a table, while all other forms were tossed into a box on the floor.

The day after my first TV report on this aired, Jeannie Morgan issued a sworn statement in which she denied trashing any forms and further that she had no knowledge of any forms being destroyed. The following day, she told me in an interview that Eric Russell had torn up the forms himself. So which is it? And more importantly, why didn't anyone inform election officials that forms had been destroyed? It's a crime, after all. VOA called the cops on Russell, but no one bothered to mention anything to election folks about the trashed forms. Why not?

Like I said, there is plenty of skullduggery ongoing among both parties, but I have yet to see something like this that is directly tied to the Demcoratic Party itself. If someone came to me with proof and testimony about Democrats destroying registration forms, I would pursue the story. It hasn't happened yet.

Names and faces

Actress Alyssa Milano knocked on my door the other afternoon while campaigning with Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani. For once, I had pants on. Even so, she wasn't about to step foot inside. ... Las Vegas microbiologist Dr. Colm Kelleher has just embarked on a nationwide book tour to promote what could be a blockbuster effort called Brain Trust. It's based on his study of mad cow disease and how we all might not be getting the complete story. I predict a lot of people will stop eating meat altogether after they read this book. It's available now on Amazon.com and we will have a more complete look at it when he gets back to town in a few weeks. ... The Animal Foundation is staging a benefit Oct. 23 at Bikinis in the Rio. It's a Rock and Roll Fundraiser featuring a special guest band made up of animal lovers. Guitarist Mark Chatfield, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year for his work with Bob Seger's Silver Bullet Band, will display his takents, along with vocalist Christy Molasky, band leader Dave King, well-known local musicians Mike Powers and Vinny Castaldo, and a few musically inclined local veterinarians. My pal Mark Fierro, who purchases an average of one guitar a week but whom I've never seen actually play a tune, is scheduled to do some picking and grinning as well. Call the Animal Foundation for more info.