thugs on the ground

Dave Ross (KIRO m-f, 3-6p) shed light Wednesday on an apparently legal but creepy tactic perpetrated by the Building Industry Association of Washington, the Gregoire-hating, ham-fisted, pro-business lobby the Republicans use as thugs on the ground in the Guber-unvote battle field.

After the election, in a bold tactic that saved the day for Gregoire, Democrats went door-to-door collecting affidavits from voters  they suspected were for Gregoire but whose ballots had been rejected for various reasons. They had them swear they'd voted for Gregoire thus ensuring they'd be recounted.

In January and February, the BIAW sent out 400 phony "housing" questionnaires to these voters, accompanied by a $10 check. They hoped they could harvest the signature from the check and match them againstany fake signatures on the affadavits.

"I wouldn't mind if they'd not been deceitful," Cheryll Triplett told Ross. "I would have given them my signature if they'd told me why they wanted it."

A spokeswoman for the BIAW told Ross they'd found no suspicious signatures among the 120 checks returned. But in this morning's Times, Tom McCabe, the BIAW's executive vice president told David Postman there were indeed about 20 that "raised questions."

Triplett told Ross, and Postman found others who said they used a different style signature when signing the check than they had signing the affadavits. It seems some people have "formal" signatures when signing certain documents and casual, less legible ones for others.

Ross and his KIRO listeners tended to opine that the BIAW tactic using the fake survey, false premises and the greed-incentive checks was sleazy.

Kirby Wilbur and his Thurs. morning listeners mostly thought it was just fine.
"They paid the 10 bucks," said Wilbur.

Can you imagine the righteous conservative outrage if Democrats had pulled such a deception?

Comments

[Rutherford]

This is one thing we'll agree on. I've told my GOP friends that this was unethical and unnecessary and they've rationalized it as justifiable investigative work. They could have had better reults jsut knocking on doors and asking for verification, and not looked so bad. It was a dumb move.