Election Matters: Doyle, Van Hollen fight about Election Day

John Nichols  —  10/31/2008 10:28 am

CALENDAR: The Nov. 4 election is four days from today.

POLL POSITIONING: Off the radar

Bummer. The new National Journal survey of battleground states doesn't even consider Wisconsin. We used to be a battleground, back in the days when Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain were campaigning here.

But no more. Now, it's all: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.

The latest Real Clear Politics poll-of-polls regarding the race in Wisconsin has Obama ahead by 11.8 points.

Here's the latest from current and former battleground states, including Wisconsin, at the Real Clear Politics site.

THE FORMER AG AND THE CURRENT AG: Doyle vs. Van Hollen

Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat who served as Wisconsin's attorney general for more than a decade, is upset with his Republican successor's plan to deploy more than 50 assistant attorneys general and state agents to polling places around the state on Election Day.

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, a McCain campaign co-chair, filed a lawsuit earlier this fall that would have complicated an already busy voting day by requiring new voters to leap through additional hoops to confirm their eligibility. After that initiative was rejected by a Dane County Circuit Court judge last week, Van Hollen announced that he was sending his employees to selected polling places around the state to monitor the vote.

Doyle said the move is "another part of a very obvious Republican strategy that is directed at trying to raise questions about the vote."

The governor, an early backer of Obama's presidential run, argues that the state Department of Justice has no authority to supervise elections.

No fair, squeal Van Hollen's "Election Task Force" coordinators: Kevin Potter and Roy Korte:

Questions have been raised and erroneous statements have been made about the Attorney General's plans to provide election day observers at various locations throughout the state.

The Attorney General and Department of Justice have express authority to enforce the state's election laws, including those laws that govern what happens on election day. In the recent lawsuit the non-partisan Government Accountability Board expressly conceded that the Attorney General and Department of Justice have enforcement authority over the conduct of elections.

In addition to this authority under section 5.07 of the Wisconsin Statutes, the Attorney General and Department of Justice have express authority to assist and advise district attorneys and local law enforcement. One emphasis of this part of our work is to provide resources in areas that are outside the normal operations of these local officials. The fact is that district attorneys and local law enforcement agencies do not deal with election law issues on a daily basis and do not have the same level of expertise as they do in other matters. Locating Department of Justice staff around the state will ensure that we are available to assist local District Attorneys and law enforcement in the event they have questions or request assistance on election related issues.

Our office, together with the Government Accountability Board and local voting officials, have an important role in making sure that elections are conducted fairly and smoothly. The Attorney General takes this role seriously.

On November 4, 2008, Department of Justice representatives will be at various election sites as observers. Election sites are public places and state law expressly permits election observers on site. These observers--including any representatives of the Department of Justice--are subject to specific rules established by the Government Accountability Board. The Department's elections team has been trained in these rules and will comply with them.

The practice of providing election day observers is a tradition started four years ago by former Democratic Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager. The materials used to train the current observers are based in large part on materials prepared by the Lautenschlager administration and the Government Accountability Board.

It is curious that neither Governor Doyle nor the Democratic Party of Wisconsin raised these concerns about the Attorney General's authority to observe at the polling places when former Democratic Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager initiated similar activities four years ago.

Counters Doyle spokesman Lee Sensenbrenner in comments to The Associated Press: Lautenschlager dispatched aides to the polls to watch for voter suppression -- i.e., to make sure people who wanted to cast legitimate ballots could do so.

Van Hollen, suggested Sensenbrenner, is interested in disrupting the voting process -- i.e., to make it harder for people to cast ballots.

"We'd all be interested to know in what exact work they would be engaging in," said Sensenbrenner.

Bottom Line: Van Hollen's credibility is strained, but it's rare for a governor to bang an attorney general this hard. Why is Doyle so confident, and so tough on Van Hollen? The governor is not speaking as a governor. He's speaking as a former attorney general who knows his way around the Department of Justice.

ON A RELATED NOTE: Election Matters had an old link to Van Hollen's controversial CNN appearance, where he acknowledged that GOP operatives may have pressured his office to intervene in the electoral process. Here's a better link.

STUDENTS FOR McCAIN: It ain't easy at the UW

The New York Times profiled campus Republicans around the country this week.

The star: Wisconsin Students for McCain coordinator Katie Nix.

She poses with a cutout of McCain at the campaign's Fitchburg office.

Nix admits, however, that the senator's a tough sell on State Street.

Reports the Times:

Still, many McCain supporters on college campuses say theirs is a lonely existence.

"When I walk down the street carrying my campaign materials, people yell at me," said Katie Nix, 22, the statewide co-chairwoman of Students for McCain who is a senior majoring in molecular biology and French at the University of Wisconsin. "I just keep hearing, 'Obama! Obama!' "

TABLING: Obama, Nader, but where's McCain?

Election Matters loves "tabling," the old-fashioned practice of setting up a table on the street and handing out literature, pins, bumper stickers and posters for a candidate. This is how politics was practiced in the days before 30-second spots. This week, we've seen Obama backers out in force in the 1200 block of Williamson Street. Passing cars were honking constantly in an isthmus neighborhood that may well see the Democrat's vote on Tuesday move into the 90-percent range.

On the UW-Madison campus, behind the State Historical Society, we saw backers on Independent Ralph Nader distributing lots of literature and displaying their "Let Ralph Debate" signs. It may be a little late now, but Ralph should have been in the debates.

And what of the Republican campaign? Election Matters is keeping its eyes open for GOP tablers. Spotted in downtown Madison: an SUV with a "Democrats for McCain" sticker.

NADER AND THE MEDIA: "What's Your Journalistic Criteria?"

This writer has penned a number of articles during the course of the long 2008 campaign on the independent presidential candidacy of Ralph Nader, as have several of my colleagues. Amy Goodman has aired several thoughtful interviews on "Democracy Now!" with the consumer advocate, and Nader has gotten his share of coverage from fine community radio stations around the country.

But, for the most part, Nader's campaign -- with its better organization than his 2000 and 2004 runs and with its worthy messages about the role of government, regulation of corporations, foreign policy and, above all, democracy -- has been ignored by the print, broadcast, cable and even digital media.

In part, this is because the race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain has been so intense -- an "event" more than a typical campaign -- that there has been little room for discussion of any other candidates, not just for the presidency but for contested House and Senate seats.

To a greater extent than at any time in history, media coverage of the 2008 election season has focused on the presidential race -- and the it has been a narrow focus at that, rarely looking past the two major-party candidates and their running mates.

So it is that, at the close of what has arguably been the most exciting presidential contest in modern American history, broadcast commentators struggle each night to find something, anything new to say about a campaign that they are continue to cover more as "American Idol" than a competition for (immense) power.

Nader outlined the crisis in an open letter to the major media outlets of the United States, which the candidate released Thursday.

It is worthy of consideration, not merely by those Americans who might choose to support his candidacy but by everyone who recognizes that a dumbed-down media dumbs down democracy.

Dear Members of the 4th Estate:

Having spoken to numerous reporters and some editors with the national media (as distinguished from the local media) about the blackout or near blackout of the Nader/Gonzalez presidential campaign, striving to challenge the two party, exclusionary duopoly, (debates, ballot obstacles, etc.) I must ask a general question:

What journalistic criteria have you been employing in this presidential year that guides your pronounced non-coverage of the number three campaign that advances majoritarian agendas based on long experience, involvement, and accomplishment. These agendas are either opposed or ignored by McCain and Obama (see www.votenader.org) and are often rooted in the very investigative reports by your reporters?

It is puzzling how editors and publishers who oversee these prize winning stories seem to lose interest in covering Americans who are trying to do something with that information for a better country.

We asked one top editor of a major daily why his paper was not covering us at all and he said, "Because you can't win." Besides being a catch-22 that he quickly acknowledged, that is not a supportable newsworthy judgment. News Media have covered many stories outside the electoral arena of people "who can't win" and such coverage extends to both the import of the struggles and the reasons why "winning is not possible" given the stacked deck against them.

There has been a witting or unwitting political bigotry against third parties and independent candidates, as there was years ago against minority voters. Against the status of such candidates obstructed through ballot access laws by the two parties that dislike competition they present other rigged ways to secure their domination over the electoral landscape, including gerrymandering each other in the majority of Congressional Districts, for example.

This is meant to be a short letter. Journalism scholars, reporters, and other post-election writers of books and articles will be chronicle, no doubt, the quantity and quality of media coverage (see the previous analysis by such scholars as Stephen Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter).

For now, please verify for yourselves your own non-coverage or coverage and inform us what your journalistic criteria standards or policies led you to this definition of your readers, listeners, and viewers rights to know.

Thank you for responding, even though there is obviously no obligation to do so.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

CHANNELING OBAMA: Guess Who?

"We have it within our reach to bridge the gap between the great nation we are and the even greater nation we can become. Together, we will build a better future for all of us."

Barack Obama?

Nope, Congressman Steve Kagen, D-Appleton, who is sounding a lot like his party's presidential nominee these days.

John Nichols  —  10/31/2008 10:28 am