GOP Officials Trying To Disqualify Iowa Student Ballots

The Iowa GOP appears to be distancing itself from a Monday effort to challenge thousands of student ballots at Grinnell College.

Spokesman Nathan Treloar told the Huffington Post on Tuesday that while he has "seen reports coming out that its Republican lawyers" objecting to student ballots, he claimed "this could be a local thing" at the county level.

RELATED: Check Out HuffPo's Voting Problems Big News Page

Asked whether the state party has encouraged or endorsed the strategy, in which students who did not register to vote by affixing a PO box to their official university mailing address are being challenged, Treloar said "No, not that I have been made aware of." Treloar then suggested contacting the Republican chair in Poweshiek county, where Grinnell is located.

But if the Iowa Republican Party is not eager to be associated with the challenging the ballots of young voters, they have yet to communicate their displeasure to those who are responsible for the tactic.

Reached by phone, Poweshiek Republican county chair Harry Meek not only claimed responsibility for the strategy, but said he had no idea whether the state party backed his move. "Yeah, it was us," he admitted, sounding somewhat resigned. Asked if he knew how the state party viewed their legal challenge of young voters, Meek said, "I couldn't tell ya."

"We were told that Secretary of State in Iowa had made some concessions for students -- as long as they put down the [university] post office address along with a PO box, that was adequate. So the ones we challenged were those that didn't have a PO box. It's real simple, we're just going by the rules. It says so right on the challenge affidavit."

Alec Schierenbeck, Vice President of the College Democrats of America and a student at Grinnell College, sees it differently. "That is a technicality that they're using to try and disenfranchise students," he said, noting that while only 50 votes have been challenged out of 700 early ballots on campus, the result is mass confusion on campus today. "At the last minute, we've had to rearrange the way we are getting out the vote on campus. I fear some voters were disuaded by the idea they're going to go to polls today, and a lawyer is going to harrangue them and shake a book at them. It spreads a lot of disinformation."

Schierenbeck says that all students who cast challenged ballots have been contacted, and are signing statements in advance of a Thursday hearing on the issue. "Given the [last-minute] context of challenge, and the history of way we've registered, we're optimistic these votes are going to be upheld," he said.

"The is a last-minute tactic by a party that's adrift, and has little left to do but disenfranchise people," Schierenbeck added. "That's why the state party has cut them adrift. They don't want to take responsibility for it, either."

RELATED: Over 1,000 Students Lined Up To Vote At Penn State (VIDEO)

Comments

[notb observer]

Let's take names and make sure that the enormity of this organized effort goes on the record.
While the tactics might be "technically legal", there is no justification for the way these scum are using the law to manipulate the election.
The least we can do is make sure their names are published and that they are scorned, rebuked and turned into pariahs in their own country.
Don't give these people jobs, and deny them everything that they can be denied under the law, and let them become the poor and indigent that they so easily discount from the process.
Maybe then, they will understand the importance of being treated fairly !

[lemonyashes]

Amen to that. We as a national community need to restore our own sense of moral authority along with Obama and the new Congress. Demanding now the voting in this country becomes more humane. Boycott MSM news organizations who do not investigate or report accurately the real news. I suggest the most insidious is CNN as they are the SLY FOX news channel. Their idea of "fair and balanced" is often misleading. At least on MSNBC and FOX they are obvious about their bias so we out CNN by boycotting them. Then we go after Fox and MSNBC. And campign reform, we need to give the GOP a loud and clear message that single issues such as abortion and gun controll and God be taken out of their platform or we continue to vote them out each and every election until they are gone. Also we demand big corporate lobbyists be banned from influencing Government. We could demand that for every corporate dollar given through lobbying a dollar is taken from their profits. Then maybe they'll make their profits on their own.

[jdwoman]

Republicans want to control everything in the country. That includes the vote. If they can't convince you to vote for them they want to ensure that your vote against them won't count. This is all part of Karl Rove's 100 years of Republican control. Thousand year Reich anyone?

[yosemitelu]

Don't think for a minute that Obama wouldn't disqualify voters on "technical­ities." Look what he did in Illinois to disqualify ALL of his opponents so that he ran unopposed. He threw his friend and mentor, Alice Palmer, under the bus as well as the other opponents. In that case, he hired a lawyer to go through every signature to disqualify as many as possible so that the required number wasn't met. Many of those signing the petitions were legitimate voters, but had signed under married names when they were still registered in their maiden names.

[Swooper420]

Disqualifying a candidate for not having enough legitimate signatures on nominating petitions is one thing, and is completely different than disenfranchising voters. Obama did the first, not the last.

[MiyaJ]

Oh, and what did Palin do to her political mentor? The one who never did anything wrong? Oh, that's right -- she called him a Jew knowing that would be enough to get her constituents to turn on him.

[ricitizen]

Alice Palmer, was suppose to run for a congressional seat and promised Obama free rain to the Senate seat. When she lost the primary she and the Chicago Machine in her district came back to Obama asking him to drop out. Obama thought this was wrong. So he challenged her. And then to make sure that they all knew that he wasn't going to be taken for a fool, he went down the list. You see the problem for the democrats is that we really believe in democracy. Unfortunately, the powerful don't play by the rules. So it's a question of lose, keep your promise and never get the power you need to help those least heard or fight fire with fire. Obama learned to play hardball. And he was right!

[layman]

GOP, the truly devious ugly American towards the end !

[PansyRose]

The ACORN situation is about registration fraud, not trying to reject actual legitimate voters. Have not heard about any Black Panthers at polling places but lots of right wingers with signs outside voting areas. All groups can demonstrate outside polls if they follow the rules of the individual state. This is called democracy, which by the way, right wing Republicans do not believe in at all. Just listen to Sarah Palin's hate filled rantings about those who are Pro=American and not Pro-American. McCain's brother calling northern parts of Virginia "Communist" and that Republican congresswoman from Minn. who wants members of Congress investigated to see who is pro-American and who is anti=American!!!!!

[BPCentrisAmerican]

the Republicans elite believe, the more people who vote, the poorer their chances, so voter suppression is the order of the day.

[Crozier]

The voter suppression charge against Republicans is totally valid.
The voter registration fraud charge against Democrats is a canard and a lie.

[Rumplestiltskin]

You mean those guilty verdicts were all incorrect in the past cases?

[fredfep]

Gratonite states:

If not being smart enough was a criteria for voting, McCain would only have the votes of William Kristol, Cindy McCain and perhaps one of the Palins would know how to vote. No, theyw ould be disqualified as well, so tgere are two votes he would get if being smart was the rule in order to vote.

Trying to win on technicalities. If Democrats wanted to, they could do this too, I am sure there are elderly Republicans with vacation homes, subdivided their lands where the numerical address changed, voted absentee writing down their cruise ship address.

It is kind of hilarious to throw anything at Democrats now. You losers, go slink back into your fraidy-cat corners, ok now, we'll tell you when feeding time is.

[Montanan4Obama]

Americans need to wake up and crush any attempt to steal an election. Few things worth dying for, but the integrity of the electoral process is one of them.

[Senzasord]

Being maliciously disenfranchised by the Rebublican party inflicts irreparable harm to those victims. A class action suit numbering in the billions of dollars to be paid to the victims of malicious disenfranchisement would tend to act as a deterrent to future Republican adventurism in the ballot box. Break them financially and they will stop completely.

[ilovemycat]

Pretty pathetic when the GOP ADMITS that they are doing the old Rove tactics once again. I am so glad that we have some decent law abiding attorney's on hand to watch over this crap! This is what Obama has been saying throughout his entire campaign, we need change from the old Washington politics.

Although Karl Rove should be in jail right now, if Obama does happen to win tonight, I think we all who donated and/or supported Obama is some way, will have finally put Karl Rove in his place!

[JT16682]

President Obama better make sure this won't happen again in 2012!

[larmarch5]

Along with a majority congress. Whoop whoop

[loax]

Another crappy attempt by the Republicans to rig the election and deprive people of their right to vote. Voter Supression iswhat Republicans do the very best, the scumbags!

[milo h minderbinder]

Why does the republican party hate democracy?

"Country last!"

[Bluedog12]

Republicans hate Democracy.

[TAIsabel]

I took no chances with my daughter (Senior at Ithaca College). She voted by absentee ballot in NY.
The student vote is very important and this election might very well change the way voting is set up on campus from now on.