[QUOTE=W.Va. Code 3-1-37]
a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, no person, other than the election officers and voters going to the election room to vote and returning therefrom, may be or remain within three hundred feet of the outside entrance to the building housing the polling place while the polls are open. This subsection does not apply to persons who reside or conduct business within such distance of the entrance to the building housing the polling place, while in the discharge of their legitimate business, or to persons whose business requires them to pass and repass within three hundred feet of such entrance.
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Hell, you can’t even BE within 300 feet even if not electioneering.
It doesn’t say he was intimidating people, or even talking to them-just that they spotted him near a polling sight. If it wasn’t for Fox’s “Scary Black Man Watch” whatever would we do?
Are you joking? Saddam Hussein had less flattering murals of him in polling places. Here, every polling place has a representative from each party. Unless the Republican representative was blind, how did he miss that? Oh wait, they refused to let the Republican officials in.
My point for posting the link was to simply show that these shenanigans go on in every election by each party. The OPs link of GOP operatives asking for ID is along the same lines. However, unlike what the GOP did, this is a clear violation of PA election law.
Whats pathetic is that it won’t do any good in Pennsylvania. Obama is going to win by a reasonably comfortable margin in PA. This would make more sense in Colorado or Virginia.
At my polling place, there were three perfectly nice, totally normal looking and friendly people standing outside with shirts for some local candidate or other, greeting everyone and saying “thanks for coming to vote!”
I felt intimidated.
Sure, I’m overly-sensitive and too nervous around strangers. Absolutely. But so are a whole lot of other Americans.
The very act of standing near the entrance making a point to speak to everyone is already a piece of body/placement language which asserts authority over the entrance. It will be enough to discourage at least a few people from going in–friendly smiles or no. (I actually find overly broad friendly smiles to be fairly creepy and discouraging myself. Again, I’m surely in the minority there but that it is a minority is irrelevant. There are surely zero people that find the complete absence of people staking out an entrance to be a factor that discourages them from going through that entrance.) If the friendly person staking out the entrance is asking for I.D.s–an act which clearly signals authority over who goes in and who doesn’t–then even more people will be discouraged. And sure–they “shouldn’t” be discouraged and “should” insist on their rights but the fact is there are some who won’t, and it is unfair for these more timid types to be disenfranchised on account of their timidity.
I’m not even convinced they intended to intimidate, but
The legal problem is that you come across as being an official no matter what when you are near an election place. And of course an obvious joke doesn’t count. Do you think these guys were doing this for a joke?
If you really do try to convince Democrats that voting is on a different day, then you sure as heck do break the law. And if you really do ask people for ID before they enter a polling station, you imply you are an official, and that ID is required, which is also against the law.
Weirdly enough, Ohio does require ID, although it counts a bill as ID, which seems stupid. An ID without a picture is useless. They also allow the last four digits of your social security number–but only for a provisional ballot.
So the poll worker can’t exercise her freedom of speech and tell a voter what to mark off?. What’s next? stopping people from asking to see ID right outside the polling station?..
The election’s over, but I felt the need to comment on this. If a friendly greeting and a “thank you for voting” is intimidation in your mind, what is left of free speech? Anything?
Disenfranchisement is a loaded word. Because someone chooses not to vote because of an irrational or incorrect perception, that is not disenfranchisement.