In an outdated "old South" style of vote buying, the Democrats held a free fish fry for their voters in Belhaven today, while the early voting was in progress. They sent paid door knockers around to turn out Democrats to go get a free fish dinner and vote their slate. It will be interesting to see in the campaign reports who bankrolled this sleazy and corrupt affair.
Republican voters do not have to be bribed with a free fish dinner to vote for GOP candidates.
Political corruption becomes easier to do in lots of ways with early voting and mail-in voting.
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It doesn't look like the fish fry drummed up many votes. Saturday was the lightest day of voting during the four days that early voting was open in Belhaven, with 121 voters, compared to 193 on Wednesday, 138 on Thursday, and 159 on Friday.
I have seen the same tactic when I worked with pro-western political parties in Moldova. The Communists would take around goodie bags to older voters to try to create a sense of obligation that they owed them their vote in return. This is not a southern thing or an American thing but a corrupt political practice employed in too many countries. I recall seeing it directly while I was an International Election Observer in a Moldovan parliamentary election. Around lunch time my observation team pulled into a polling station in the city of Comrat, capital of the Gaugauzia automonmous region. Soon after we arrived several older voters came in carrying white plastic bags with a red hammer and sickle printed on them, obviously filled with things like canned goods. A German international observation team that was also present questioned the first woman who came in with the bag, and she said she had just come from church (Moldova votes on Sunday) and the priest had told them there were some presents for them at the front of the church and they should go and vote (in Moldova the Russian Orthodox Church supported the Communists while the Romanian Orthodox Church was supporiing the Christian Democrats at first but then switched to the Liberal Party). The German team made notes for their report, but since my organization had trained the poll observers of the pro-western parties, I spoke with them and they made a formal complaint to the election officials. The election officials then told the voters with the bags that they could not enter the polling station with them, could not leave them outside, and could not stand around with them outside. They had to leave with them. This was largely due to the fact that election law there did not allow party symbols in or around the polling station on election day. Maybe some of them came back after taking the bags home, but probably not all of them. That was unlikely to have been the only Russian Orthodox Church where that happened. I also remember the Moldovan Democratic Party fighting fire with fire in some local elections in northern raions of Moldova. The Communists made a practice of giving goodie bags to older voters to create an obligation to vote for them, so the Democrats made up their own goodie bags and took them to the same profile of voter. On election day, there was a huge spike in spoiled ballots because a lot of those voters then felt obligated to both parties and thus voted for both, spoliing the ballot so that it counted for nobody. That led the Democrats to pick up a fair number of seats from the Communists. |
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