This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on the Nevada Caucuses.
1.0 I know Dirty… and I know Elections
The big news of the day is Donald Trump’s runaway victory in the Nevada Republican caucuses. Along with it, “reports” that the process was tainted, crooked, a Trump flimflam. The “sources” for these reports are almost all people griping on social media.
The Republican caucuses that I observed were either clean or they hired Penn & Teller to handle the shenanigans – because I didn’t see a damn thing happen. Maybe it was a little disorganized, but certainly nothing that suggested a dirty election.
I know a dirty election when I see one. In 2004, I was an election observer in Florida, and I saw things that you probably wouldn’t believe happened, even if I had video.
Crowds of black voters came in to vote, noting that “volunteers” had come to their neighborhoods to “help” them register to vote. After taking their registration information, these “volunteers” seemed to “forget” to send in the forms. Oopsie!
Ok, perhaps it was just an honest mistake that dozens of people came in with the same story, that a “nice volunteer” came to their house to “help them register,” and then their registration forms magically didn’t ever get submitted. The black voters, believing they were registered, would not discover the truth until election day – when it was too late to rectify the injustice. “Y’all come back in four years now,” the poll workers said with cheshire smiles and voices as sugary as sweet tea. Some might come back….but, the damage was done for that election.
And in other situations, I recall more than a few voters being told that they weren’t registered to vote, even though they personally turned in their voter registration forms on time. When I showed up by his side, all of a sudden, his name would appear.
After I apparently helped too many of them get ballots, a Republican election observer made a call, and ten minutes after the call, a white van screeched to a halt in front of the polling center, and five stocky, buzz-cut white men (one shaved bald) in red shirts barged into the polling station and demanded that I be removed from the polling place. Finally, the gang of five thugs found a corrupt deputy who ejected me from the place under threat of arrest. I was more than happy to go to jail for the cause. But, when I called the HQ, they gave me strict instructions to stand down — their concern was that if voters saw a civil rights attorney getting hauled off in cuffs, it would most scare the shit out of them, and thus likely be the best vote-suppression strategy the Republicans could hope for.
Outside the polling station, I walked over to a chair, and fell into it. I thought that battle ended before I was born. The emotion that sat on my shoulders and collapsed my whole body was shame – shame at being part of a society that still considered equal rights to be a nuisance, shame that I didn’t do more, shame that I was so naive that until Nov. 2, 2004, I truly disbelieved everyone who told me a story like this. But this time I was there. I couldn’t deny that it happened, and I couldn’t deny that what I saw was an organized effort to deny people the right to vote.
That was a dirty election.
So here in Nevada… were the caucuses really dirty? What were they like?
NEXT: Part 2.0 – Wallowing in the Democrats
This post originally appeared on Popehat. View it here.
