Election Strategy Principles for GOP Campaign Workers
1. Controlling and Reducing the African American vote is our most important goal. African Americans vote 80% Democratic, so for every 10 African American votes we prevent in a precinct, we net our party a six vote advantage.
2. Democratic voting strength is centered in the big cities. Any tactics that can be employed that will make voting more difficult for city dwellers will improve the success of our GOP candidates.
3. There are more Democrats than Republicans, but Republicans are more likely to go to the polls, even with obstacles in their way. Once efforts regarding items #1 and #2 are fully engaged and explored, remember that reducing the overall turnout will also help our candidates.
Initial strategy depends on whether felons are automatically reinfranchised in your state upon their release from custody or parole. If they are automatically reinfranchised, your first goal should be to push for a law that requires that released felons petition to get their voting rights restored. Assuming this has been accomplished; hire a consulting firm with a Republican CEO, preferably one who has donated large sums to the party. Specify that they should develop the list of names of felons to be purged from the voting rolls using the loosest possible standards. If possible, find out the most common surnames of African Americans in your state and have logic built into the process that errs in favor of a close match of a felon with a voter with a common African American surname. For more details on how this policy can be executed with particular effectiveness, see this link regarding Katherine Harris' 2000 election purge http://www.ericblumrich.com/gta.html .
African Americans are also more likely to have a strained relationship with the local police. Studies have shown that a large police presence can serve to dissuade some African American voters from participating in an election. Also, planting rumors that people who have outstanding fines or parking tickets will be arrested if they attempt to vote has a big impact on the African American community http://www.ac4vr.com/reports/072005/republicanincidents.html
Regarding Principle #2 - Suppressing the Vote in Big Cities
It is important that the strictest requirements be placed on those voters who live in cities who attempt to register to vote. There are a myriad of again, legal but unethical excuses that can be used to reject the attempt by a voter to register to vote, or to purge them from the rolls. A shining example of this is Kenneth Blackwell's efforts regarding voter registration in Ohio's metropolitan areas described here http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1832 .
There is no reason why it should be made easy or convenient for mostly Democratic city dwellers to vote. Determine the optimum amount of voting machines to buy that would allow voters to move quickly through polling places and divide that number by at least five or ten. As Blackwell showed again in Cleveland, this is an effective method to reduce the vote in cities. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/a41275-2004dec6.html as this article showed, it also played into Principle 1 territory regarding suppressing the African American vote.
Regarding Principle #3 - Reducing the total number of ballots cast and votes counted
GOP Election officials should use their imaginations here. Some suggestions to consider:
Blackwell in 2004 2-3 months before election day enacted a requirement that voters only be allowed to vote by provisional ballot if they find their way to the correct polling place and the correct table within the correct polling place.
Katherine Harris denying a manual recount of Florida's ballots even though manual recounts are the standard virtually everywhere in the US and abroad.
Blackwell in 2004 2-3 months before election day enacted a requirement that voters must register to vote on specific size and weight index cards.
There is no reason why the GOP cannot retain control of the Congress in 2006 and the Presidency in 2008 despite widespread dissatisfaction with our policies. A steadfast adherence to the above principles and procedures while staying within the law is all that we need to make the difference. If you have not already started to develop strategies to implement these plans, please do so now. It is important for us to be able to count on these additional factors in our measurements. This way, if it seems these tactics will, in fact, not be enough to win important races; we can determine if methods that are more stringent will be necessary. All computers are vulnerable to being hacked, after all!
