College Republicans teaching Voter Suppression

[Kevin Spidel]

FYI


http://www.collegedems.com/blog/archives/000369.php

CRNC Officer Promotes Voter Suppression
College Republican National Committee Treasurer (and leading candidate for CRNC chair) Paul Gourley, on the record...

One recent Sunday, at Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, a dozen students meet for the second and final day of training in grass-roots youth politics. All are earnest, idealistic and as right wing as you can get. They take careful notes as instructor Paul Gourley teaches them how to rig a campus mock election.

It's nothing illegal -- no ballot stuffing necessary, even at the most liberal colleges. First you find a nonpartisan campus group to sponsor the election, so you can't be accused of cheating. Next, volunteer to organize the thing. College students are lazy, and they'll probably let you. Always keep in mind that a rigged mock election is all about location, location, location.

"Can anyone tell me," asks Gourley, a veteran mock electioneer, "why you don't want the polling place in the cafeteria?"

Stephen, a shy antiabortion activist sitting toward the rear of the class, raises his hand: "Because you want to suppress the vote?"

"Stephen has the right answer!" Gourley exclaims, tossing Stephen his prize, a copy of Robert Bork's "Slouching Toward Gomorrah."

The students, strait-laced kids from good colleges, seem unconvinced. The lesson -- that with sufficient organization, the act of voting becomes less a basic right than a tactical maneuver -- doesn't sit easy with some students at first. Gourley, a charismatic senior from South Dakota and the treasurer of the College Republican National Committee, assures them: "This is not anti-democracy. This is not shady. Just put somewhere where you might have to put a little bit of effort into voting." The rest, Gourley explains, is just a matter of turnout.


http://www.collegedems.com/blog/archives/000369.php
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/25/blackwell/index_np.html

[FreedomAngel82]

1. This is disgusting!

They're teaching these people how to take away someone's right to vote??? Ah neocons in the training. :mad:

[0rganism]

6. Careful -- they're not taking away the *right* to vote

Their pundits will burn us every time if we use that rhetoric. They just make voting as inconvenient as possible so more people will take their own right to vote away.

And therein lies the key to defeating them: organization. Organize voting cadres to bring people to the polls, to monitor those polls, to reinforce the idea in the otherwise-apathetic that participatory democracy requires participants. It's no secret that the republicans loathe such tactics, because they fly in the face of their own intent, and because the only countermeasure they have is direct challenges at the polling place -- which is highly inefficient, time-consuming, and litigious work.

[sam sarrha]

8. where is the link to the graphic chart.?? looks like Bushwater.com's 4 *

[annabanana]

2. These guys are at the bottom of the whole stinkin' mess

Since the early 70's!!

[drm604]

16. I like that graphic. Where's it from?

Do the different colors have a meaning?

[whistle]

3. Hey, that's really useful stuff when going for a first job in politics...

....IN A FASCIST controlled state!

[loudsue]

4. This is America under republican rule.

These people are evil, I'm tellin' ya! And what's WORSE (!), they're evil ON PURPOSE!!

:kick::kick::kick:

[sam sarrha]

5. your must turn them to the Dark Side at a young age....

:evilgrin:

[Alizaryn]

7. Gannon must have fit right in there and looked at as being

a success story. Very, very sad.

[ComerPerro]

9. And here I always figured they won because

They told the biggest and best sounding lies while campaigning on bullshit issues.

[tech3149]

10. Keep this Story circulating

It's important to know how they think and plan.

[smartvoter]

11. kick.

[Endangered Specie]

12. Not a big suprise...

the young ones are the worst ones. Easily brainwashed, naive.

[Greyskye]

13. How can these people sleep at night?

:puke:

[ooglymoogly]

14. great find and a big kick

[ElectroPrincess]

15. Why can't that immoral right-wing nutcase, named Gourley -->

come from NORTH instead of SOUTH Dakota? :shrug:

My older brother living in Sioux Falls informs me that they're embarrassed enough because of Rep "Death Mobile" Jankow(R) to last a lifetime. Now, South Dakota has to tolerate college right-wing republican morons too?

This is all a bit too much for such a beautiful state with mostly "good people." :(

[Pacifist Patriot]

18. Don't worry. Florida will do something to move this off the radar sooner

rather than later. ;)

[Pacifist Patriot]

17. Gourley needs a good hearty bitch slap.

"This is not anti-democracy. This is not shady. Just put somewhere where you might have to put a little bit of effort into voting."

And to think he probably sleeps very well at night. *shudder*

[sellitman]

19. Bastards! Kicked and nominated.

:dem:

[salin]

20. "It's not anti-democracy..." er.... speechless

guess they don't buy bush's argument is about makng Iraqis free to vote, since they don't think voting is a right, or is important in a democracy.

[tjwash]

21. Shit. This guy has no CLUE how to rig an election.

Until you study the tactics of some real experts in election fraud, like the The Tammany Society of New York City from the early days of our history, you don't know what the hell you are talking about. These are strictly minor league baby tactics they are using.

Tammany hall would stuff ballot boxes the old fashioned way-through voter intimidation, violence, and other underhanded tactics. An example from the hall, is their designated ballot box stuffers would grow beards months before the elections, vote shave the beard and leave the mustache, vote, shave the mustache, and vote a third time.

Sounds like the professor is too stupid to even teach the class properly. No wonder he's a republican.

[smoogatz]

22. Draft College Republicans! n/t

[AirAmFan]

23. This 'Institute' has spawned Rove, Reed, Norquist, and all the

other ultra-right masterminds who've taken over the Federal government and many state governments. It's been around for 26 years, and its founder-leader Morton Blackwell claims to have trained over 40,000! "conservatives" (see http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/01ABOUTUS/01History.htm ).

It's a $6-million-a-year tax-exempt operation just outside DC (see http://www.guidestar.org/controller/searchResults.gs?action_gsReport=1&npoId=140211 ).

The most-publicized recent surfacing of Blackwell himself was at the RNC in NY last year. He was the inventor of Kerry-baiting "Purple Heart Bandaids" and was caught on camera passing them out to delegates.

I think this organization is one of the secrets of the far right's stunning success over the past generation. It draws on thousands of young college students to recruit fresh horses and to supply ever-new fratboy-mentality pranks and stunts to wow the aging faithful continually.

[Wilms]

24. kick n/t

[Cell Whitman]

25. the College Republicans have pumped out some real Un-American slime

Terry Dolan and Rove - Dolan took a half million from Moon. Dolan is considered the father of the "attack ad" which were never part of our politics before - at least not like today. Today the attack ad is like "cult mind control 101" ... Like the Swift Boat folks - the truth be damned - tell them anything and get them to believe it...protect the cult by tearing the other guy down...try to bring them down to your level so people will say "they all do it"..

protect the cult at all costs - truth be dambed..

From Mr. Parry:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/moon3.html

At times, Moon's penetration of conservative ranks has raised red flags among Republicans. In 1983, the GOP's moderate Ripon Society charged that the New Right had entered "an alliance of expediency" with Moon's church. Ripon's chairman, Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, released a study which alleged that the College Republican National Committee "solicited and received" money from Moon's Unification Church in 1981. The study also accused Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media of benefitting from low-cost or volunteer workers supplied by Moon.

Leach said the Unification Church has "infiltrated the New Right and the party it (the New Right) wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the media as well." Leach's news conference was broken up when then-college GOP leader Grover Norquist accused Leach of lying. (Norquist is now head of Americans for Tax Reform)

For its part, The Washington Times dismissed Leach's charges as "flummeries" and mocked the Ripon Society as a "discredited and insignificant left-wing offshoot of the Republican Party." (WP, Jan. 6, 1983)
_____________



http://cellwhitman.blogspot.com/

[Stirk]

26. I don't understand.

In 2005, how can anyone be a college student *and* Republican at the same time? I thought the military was missing it's recruitment goals.