Election Day Mishaps Bumming Durham Republicans

DURHAM, NC--It's raining in Durham, which tends to mean bad news for Democrats, but Republicans in this county look to be having a rougher start to Election Day.

The McCain office, which admitted it had been having trouble recruiting volunteers the last few months, had depended on a last-minute surge in volunteers and signs to get out the vote. They also planned to keep a close eye on the Obama campaign, which had purportedly been bringing in impaired people from nursing homes and residential care facilities during early voting and assisting them in checking straight-ticket Democratic.

Yet, this morning the director of the McCain office was in woeful spirits. There were IT issues (the technician, when he arrived, was wearing an "I Voted" sticker); several of the polling places were exercising their right not to have signs or volunteers; and, worst of all, due to miscommunication, the Republican slate of poll-watchers had not been received by the Board of Elections. Without poll watchers, the McCain campaign couldn't contest any ballots.

The oversight was potentially bad not only for democracy--it's obviously better to have representatives from both parties at polling sites--but particularly demoralizing for the McCain campaign in Durham, which hasn't had much of a ground game. The Obama campaign has had so many volunteers that the local headquarters has splintered into twenty staging locations, which are doling out walk lists, street corner signs and granola bars and bananas. The McCain campaign, on the other hand, has been confined to a room for phone banking and a well-organized system for distributing yard signs.

Yet, for all the McCain campaign's glumness, the reality is that a lack of poll watchers will not likely matter. Don Beskind, a lawyer representing the Obama campaign who spends Election Day with the Director of the Board of Elections (in this presidential election or last, the Republicans have not sent their own counterpart), said never in his knowledge has a ballot in Durham been contested. In truth, the county runs a pretty smooth operation: so far this morning, the worst that has happened is a fallen tree, which caused a temporary power outage and a twenty-minute delay in opening one polling location.

More than anything else, the snafu with poll watchers is only the latest episode in the contest-beneath-the-contest, the ongoing competition between the two campaign operations. So far, there have been grumblings about the glut of Obama volunteers at the polling locations and accusations of yard sign stealing on both sides. The McCain campaign has even provided a security guard to stay at headquarters from 1am to 9am, just in case someone tries to damage the property. (The guard, who also helps out answering the phones in the mornings, said she'd never had any issues.)

For their part, voters remain oblivious to the Sturm und Drang of the campaigns' internal operations. A quick scan of polling locations around town shows short lines, a lot of umbrellas, and cheerful voters pleased to be exercising their rights.

UPDATE: It turns out that not having very many poll watchers in Durham may matter more to the Republicans than originally thought. Democratic poll watchers are taking advantage of their insider-status to check the voting rosters against the campaign's targeted list and send text
message updates to the party alerting them to who has not yet voted so canvassers can be dispatched. The Republicans, obviously, now have no such access.

Comments

[gloweybabe]

Too bad - so sad....Now, all thes Republicans know what the rest of the country went through in the last two elections while they all sat on their asses watching this wonderful country go down the tubes under the leadership of GW...... Not a single Republican came forward to CRY foul when this was happening to the Democrats!!!

They were all too busy intimidating voters and tampering with voting equipment.

[old lady]

Trying to shed a tear for GOP in Durham - nothing yet.here in NH have been visited by O volunteers...Mac's crew absent.

[7tsgirl]

I live in California.....I received several emails from the campaign about calling people in the battleground states.....I am here sitting in my condo waiting for a package from UPS so I have been making calls from my phone to states like PA and Montana. You can do it too!!!! FIRED UP!!! READY TO GO!!!!

[JenMI]

Republicans will stop at nothing,,,but we will not be detoured. OBAMA/BIDEN

[jsgaetano]

We are actually rather fortunately that the Republicans have been believing their own lies for so long. It distances them so far from reality, they can't help but fail eventually.

The only sad thing is how much damage they've done to our nation before they were stopped.

[Nick Winstead]

I've been volunteering with one of the Obama staging locations in Durham since around 6 this morning, and I have yet to see a SINGLE McCain/Palin team out canvassing, holding signs by the road, etc. There were a group of us standing at a busy intersection in Durham from 6-8:30 this morning, with signs and everything. The McCain office was literally in the shopping center behind us. I never saw anyone come out of there to do some sort of counter-de­monstratio­n. Their presence in Durham has been underwhelming to say the least.

[oscartucker]

"They also planned to keep a close eye on the Obama campaign, which had purportedly been bringing in impaired people from nursing homes and residential care facilities during early voting and assisting them in checking straight-ticket Democratic". . .

This LIE has been going around for several weeks in NC, and it is just that, a LIE. I live in NC and the local paper carried a story in which some locals were complaining about "bus loads" of people being taken to the polls. The reporter explained that people being bused were from assisted and senior living facilities, and that they had every right to vote. The Board of Elections representative said that if someone could give his or her name and his or her address then that person qualified to vote. So many lies are still going around.

[jsgaetano]

"So many lies are still going around."

It's all they have left. Literally.

[SteveDenver]

One angry Republican probably saw her elderly mom and thought, "What's she doing here?!"

[tinybuddha]

Great report Kelly, but what the heck is Sturm und Drang? Can a brother please get a hyperlink!

[IndyReader]

Sturm und Drang is German for storm and stress, or a situation of great drama.

[SteveDenver]

Another commonly used German term you might want to become familiar with is "schadenfreude" (pronounced shaw-den-froy-duh) :

The gleeful joy you experience when someone else gets his just desserts or has his comeuppance. When McCain is defeated, a wave of schadenfreude will wash over me.

[Pere]

McCain wins, next scene: A bunch of confused people in the white house who don't know how to use the internet. The country wrecked because McCain runs it like he ran his capaign- into the ground, and oblivious to it.

[CharlesJ]

For some reason I do not believe the Democrats will let some rain stop them from voting this year.

[strandwolf]

Obama is 10 times the candidate that Gore and Kerry were. I am voting for McKinney, but like all real deal Americans wish that all concerned are able to vote for the candidate of choice, and have that vote be accurately tallied. On with the show.

[flydoghead]

Are we to believe that McCain would have run the country any different than he has run his campaign ?

Like everything else he has ever done he has crashed it into the ground.

[AlexeiJ]

To help fight anxiety about tonight's outcome, here's some feel-good Obama that you can watch between rounds of phone-banking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf19H_sHMro&fmt=6