DIAL 1-800-VOTER FRAUD
Carlson, Tucker
Dial 1-800-Voter Fraud by Tucker Carlson Long Beach, California ROSS PEROT HAS ALWAYS ARGUED that technology can make the political process more democratic, and so more equitable and effective....
...These are people Bob Dole can and should woo...
...The Perot-conceived voting scheme allowed party members to cast ballots at the convention itself, by mail, even by signing on to a special site on the Internet...
...The Reform party had set up two such lines, both of which were advertised heavily at the convention and on television...
...Six days after the voting began, the vote-forRoss Perot line was still accepting any 11 digits a caller cared to enter...
...Instead, Dole can neutralize Perot by discrediting him as a political figure, by pointing out his demagoguery, reminding voters of his creepy behavior...
...Worse, many in Perot’s core constituency— veterans, older voters, middle-class voters— are instinctively conservative in many ways, and unusually hostile to Bill Clinton...
...The reason: There doesn’t need to be...
...Nor will it be on the basis of superior rhetorical skills...
...It wasn’t even necessary to vary the bogus number...
...Recent polling, says Koops, shows a Perot ticket pulling votes from Clinton, not Dole...
...The opportunities for voter fraud were obvious and awesome: A couple of dedicated Perot partisans with speeddial could have won their man the nomination in an afternoon...
...Moreover, although the problems with the tele-voting system were evident immediately, Reform party officials apparently did nothing to fix them...
...They’ve decided to give Perot a pass...
...In fact, as yet, there is no real strategy even for responding to Perot...
...It’s true that Perot plans to run a huge advertising campaign (rumors had him angling to purchase television time even before he won his party’s nomination...
...Perot people aren’t terribly interested in The Issues, not as most politicos understand them—which is to say, as ideas...
...Each PIN was unique and recorded in a computer database, a precaution meant to ensure that only registered voters voted and that nobody voted more than once...
...They argue that as a thirdparty candidate Perot can do nothing but cut into the anti-incumbent vote...
...Have campaign officials thought through a strategy on this...
...And, in his way, Dole is trying to woo them, mostly by making the case that Republicans have already addressed the issues Perot raised in 1992...
...In the hands of a Dole campaign flak hoping to illustrate why Ross Perot is not a legitimate presidential candidate, it could be devastating...
...Does any of this concern the Dole campaign...
...the computer didn’t seem to notice...
...There is no plan, for instance, to try to make sure that only the two major candidates participate in the presidential debates later this year—which would clearly seem to be in Dole’s interest...
...According to Gary Koops, deputy director of communications for Dole ’96, there will be no negative ads against Perot, no concerted campaign to undermine his candidacy...
...It sounds plausible enough—and it is true that some polls have shown Perot hurting Democrats in the fall—but the savvier Dole advisers don’t buy it...
...I did, as I tested the flaws in the system...
...The balloting system was hailed by Perot employees as fraud-proof—and in a party created to make politics cleaner and more responsive to ordinary people, this was not an insignificant point...
...If anything, it might not be such a bad thing if Perot’s support increases from its present single-digit range...
...Common sense and recent history bolster this view...
...One line registered votes for Perot, the other for Lamm...
...That’s the official line anyway...
...Earlier this month, he tested his theory...
...As it turned out, the party’s automated voicevote system was unable to distinguish between a genuine PIN and a randomly selected 11-digit number...
...Anyone who has watched Perot deliver a stump speech recently can testify to the Texan’s ability to mesmerize a crowd...
...Again, this approach is not irrational, but it does constitute a fundamental misreading of the Perot voter...
...Perot deserves it...
...But don’t expect to hear it anytime soon, at least not from the Dole spinners...
...The Republican party is the Reform party,” Dole says in speeches...
...As it stands, the Dole campaign does not appear ready to take Perot seriously, much less engage him aggressively...
...Maybe they should put it on the agenda...
...This meant that callers—registered members of the Reform party or not—were able to vote for the same candidate as many times as they liked...
...As commentary on the ethical sloppiness of the Reform party, the story is revealing...
...Most, however, voted the same way they order commemorative Norman Rockwell plates from the Franklin Mint: by calling an 800 number...
...Doubtless many did...
...And he should...
...If Dole is to wrest support from Perot, it will not be by stealing his platform...
...At Reform party gatherings, it is not talk of deficit reduction that draws the strongest reaction, but attacks on inside-the-Beltway hacks who seem to be running the world...
...Still, no amount of money can buy the legitimacy, not to mention the tens of millions of television viewers, a place in the debates would give him...
...Something happened on the way to a legitimate election...
...Instead, they’re animated by what are close to ordinary class resentments: of politicians, of lobbyists, of the media, of anyone who wields power in mystifying and apparently malignant ways...
...We haven’t even had a meeting on the debates,” says Gary Koops, in the tone one reserves for those who ask ridiculous questions...
...Party members were told to dial one of the numbers, punch in an 11-digit personal identity code supplied by the Reform party, and wait for the attractive female voice to declare, “Your vote has been counted...
...Following the August 11 Reform party convention here, members had a week to choose either Perot or Dick Lamm as their presidential nominee...
...At the Long Beach convention, Reform party officials went so far as to haul an executive from the accounting firm of Ernst & Young on stage to assure that a crack team of “information data security specialists” from his company would be overseeing the process, guaranteeing its integrity...
Vol. 1 • August 1996 • No. 48
