Q: Shenanigans or Incompetence? A: Yes.
UPDATE: Those rascally vote-suppressors at the AJC have now gotten in on the act! Check out this “typo” in their Morning Jolt!
Original Post: Georgia Republicans are routinely accused of campaign shenanigans, particularly of trying to depress voter turnout. Any Republican political consultant will tell you though, there’s really no way to do that, and if any of us tried, we’d probably screw it up. A case in point comes today courtesy of Greg Bluestein:
The mailer in question looks like this:
Joseph Brannan, who chairs a part of the GOP nowhere near the special election being held on January 10, has copped to what he says is an honest mistake, and “It is with my sincerest apologies this mailer was distributed with incorrect information.”
Some Democrats aren’t buying the apology, though. Cheryl Phipps, who chairs the Democratic party in Whitfield County, says “Either they are really inept, or they are trying to lead voters astray.”
Several Democrats took similar notice of the snafu on social media, so it needs to be said again. Any halfway decent consultant will tell you that voter suppression tricks don’t work. Most voters are a small but determined subset of the general population. They know when and where to vote -even in special election runoffs- and they act accordingly. Trying to fool some of them into not showing would just alert them to the trick, make one look stupid, and likely increase turnout.
Choosing between inept or deceptive puts Ms. Phipps on the horns of a false dilemma. Even if it was deliberately deceptive, it’s still dumbassery -and there’s no reason it can’t be both.
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Mike Hassinger
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I know Joseph made a simple mistake. Unfortunately, it was a publicized one. He’s owned up to it and corrected it with a new mailer sent out, but the Democrats in Whitfield County are trying to gin up controversy because they know they can’t win the race. I should also mention that Ms. Peppers is apparently ashamed to run as a Democrat this go around since she chose to run as an Independent (although, I’d be willing to bet that she’ll end up caucusing with Senate Democrats).
Whitfield County is a strong conservative, Republican county, and I’m confident that Chuck Payne will win on January 10th, and I encourage voters in the 54th Senate District to vote for Chuck.
It’s sad when members of the opposition have to resort false controversies and feigning outrage because voters don’t want the values they’re peddling.
Vote for the GOP! We don’t know our nether regions from a hole in the ground but we are bigly smart and can run this country.
I vote incompetent. Just from long standing evidence.
Someone embed that… Can we do that around here?
Hey Farva!
I note for the record that we are not being told exactly who received these mailers.
I have no reason to believe this was inadvertent. The political threat is real enough, the consequences of losing the seat are substantial enough, and the character of the Republican Party right now is questionable enough to dismiss a simple “oops, our bad” explanation out of hand.
North Carolina’s Cuba-level coup is an excellent demonstration right now of Republican political character when the stakes are right. Rural north Georgia is no exception, as the shenanigans in Blue Ridge at superior court and the jailing of a journalist there show. Does anyone seriously believe Georgia’s Republican Party will behave differently with its back to the wall?
People should vote for Debby Peppers on principle over this. And I expect many will.
Your sentiments are EXACTLY why nobody does voter suppression. Your paranoia proves my point.
But to be fair, Mike, I’m not sure if your point is convincing. You have embedded assumptions of informed voters and decent consultants, neither one of which I’m willing to go out on a limb for. I also don’t know enough about the residents of the district, and we certainly don’t know if Republicans also received the false mailer. So, to say with wisdom was it smart or ethical? We can all say no to that, but to say that it’s not worth the voters’ time to know the details or investigate or discuss the ethical character choices that may have been made? If the choices were in fact all good, than good will come from the discussion, as discussion usually is a good thing.
BTB, the mailing list was comprised of voters who pulled an early/advanced/absentee Republican-ballot in recent primary elections (i.e.: targeted at possible/likely Republican voters). The error was truly a mistake and a new mailer was sent yesterday to the same list clearly stating the correct election date.
If your read the comments further down the page from Mr. Brannan you will see that his stated target of the mailers was people who pulled an “early/advanced/absentee Republican-ballot in recent primary elections”. This could be easily disproven if any of the “Democrats” who received the erroneous mailer have in fact not crossed over in any recent primaries which given the location I sincerely doubt. I rarely accept political statements at face value but this one is simple human error and one of less than mole hill status at that.
reading the below, though, answers all my questions. intent sure is a hard thing to get at, but getting to the intent is the point of much worthy investigation.
Special elections are strange animals, but northwest Georgia is very conservative…in fact, I suspect that’s why Debby Peppers chose to run as an Independent rather than as a Democrat (although, I’m sure she’ll choose to caucus with the Democrats).
It was an honest mistake that was made, owned, and corrected by Joseph. The fact of the matter is that Democrats are desperately trying to win a seat where the odds of them winning are unlikely.
Being the Ms. Phipps mentioned here, I’d like to make a few comments. For the record, I am the Treasurer of the Whitfield County Democratic Party, not the chair. First, I want to say that the AJC called me before Mr. Brannon posted his apology to the WCDP social media site. The controversy was created by the mailer, not by the WCDP.
As to the question of who got these mailers, we had reports from all over the county and my household also received one of these mailers.
The mailer came from outside our district, with no information about the candidates or parties, with the exception of the return address. Those characteristics, along with the rather glaring incorrect date, left us doubting this was a inadvertent error.
If the GOP is so sure of winning this election, why send this mailer at all? In fact, Ms. Peppers is well known in our district, having served and volunteered on several boards and being a small business owner. She has support from across the entire community, including local Republicans.
Whether one believes voter suppression can be achieved through misinformation is not the point. The point is that misinformation should be called out and made right.
Whether or not voter suppression can be achieved AT ALL was kind of the point of this post, and I’m sure you’ve alerted the AJC about their own participation in this conspiracy, right?
Are you referring to the mistake in the Morning Jolt? If they call me, I will be sure to ask them about that.
Ms. Phipps – thank you for acknowledging my apology – which I reiterate here. The mailing list was comprised of voters who pulled an early/advanced/absentee Republican-ballot in recent primary elections. The mailer with the corrected date was sent today as stated and should arrive later this week.
“If the GOP is so sure of winning this election, why send this mailer at all?”
because as has been mentioned ad nauseam, special elections are strange events…they are how taylor bennett ends up in the house, or janice van ness scores a senate seat…you can run unopposed or like you are behind ten points…it’s foolish to do anything else…
Simple question. Were the mailers sent to all of the registered voters, all households, or just Democrats?
Probably not a simple answer, though. All households, or even all registered voters would be far too expensive to mail. Most likely it was a list composed of the voters most likely to turn out in a special election runoff -dedicated voters who vote in nearly every election. Specials are non-partisan, so the data file probably would have been a mix of mostly GOP with a few Democrats.
(I should note that I have ZERO facts about that being true -it’s just my best guess. I also have no affiliation with any of the parties or campaigns involved.)
Will, the list was comprised of voters who pulled an early/advanced/absentee Republican-ballot in recent primary elections. The new mailer, clearly denoting the correct date, was sent today and should arrive in mailboxes later this week.
Thanks for the replies. So if this is the case we now know two things. There was no nefarious purpose lurking behind the erroneous date as there would be no purpose in misleading the faithful. Also we now know that at least some Democrats in this district crossed over likely to vote for Trump as most thought he would be the softest touch for Hillary.
If dumb enough to be tricked by a mistake on a political mailer, you should probably stay home on election day, no matter which day. Is this really still a thing? Are people actually fooled or just another reason to satisfy an urge to be victimized?
Are there any actual issues being discussed up there?
This isn’t the first time it’s happened: http://www.politico.com/story/2011/08/wis-election-date-flap-a-mistake-060515
Hassinger has his finger on this one, woke a few conspiracists up, but stirring the pot of cold voters isn’t going to add much to the turnout.