The Obama campaign has been working to enlist as many as 100,000 lawyers nationwide for its Voter Protection Project and plans to send them to polling places as observers in New Mexico and other battleground states on Election Day.
High-ranking officials in Obama’s New Mexico campaign would not discuss the project Monday, and El Paso lawyers who were heading for places as close as Anthony, N.M. and La Union and as far away as Silver City were told not to talk about it.
Finding anyone with the Obama campaign to discuss the project and the reasons for it was hard the day before the day everyone has been waiting for.
Vicente Perez, the Washington press secretary for U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, and a spokesman for Obama’s New Mexico campaign, was the third Obama official who Newspaper Tree reached who declined to say a word about the voter project Monday.
The fourth was Carlos Sanchez, who identified himself as press advisor for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and as the New Mexico press secretary for the Obama campaign.
“It all gets done at national,” Sanchez said. “We’ll have someone from Chicago contact you.”
But the call never came.
Although there's been little reporting on the voter project, there is an Obama website with some information. (See voteforchange.com)
And Politico.com had an article on the effort Saturday (click here) that quoted no Obama official by name.
It reads, in part: “Barack Obama organized the most ambitious legal campaign ever run by a Democratic candidate, according to aides who also worked on Sen. John F. Kerry’s 2004 bid, with lawyers integrated into state field teams far earlier than ever before.
“They said their efforts led to the addition of more than 300 early voting sites in key battleground states and more than 30,000 extra voting hours.”
Recognizing that some states, like Texas, are lost to Obama, his campaign has worked hard to send battalions of red state volunteers into the states that might go blue Tuesday.
El Paso lawyers have been recruited to head into New Mexico to be at their assigned polls by 6 a.m. Tuesday.
The Politico.com article by Lisa Lerer states that, “The Obama campaign started planning their Election Day strategy immediately after winning the nomination in June, integrating lawyers into state field teams to help prepare for potentially record turnouts.”
Jim Harrington, director of Austin’s Texas Civil Rights Project, said he was also aware of the effort.
“We are working with a group of lawyers in New Mexico that went from Austin,” he said. “We’re providing translators … and poll watchers, for sure. I just know one of the lawyers from here took a big group of lawyers over there.
“Just watching, I have to say Obama’s campaign has got to be the best organized things I have ever seen. … It is an amazingly tough and sophisticated campaign.”
TCRP and Harrington partnered with Newspaper Tree this summer in filing a lawsuit to intervene in the federal public corruption investigation cases in El Paso to open guilty plea hearings that have been closed, to unseal court transcripts of defendants’ hearings in those cases and to make the criminal dockets of federal Judge Frank Montalvo open in those cases.
Although the Obama campaign’s recruitment of thousands of lawyers has stayed off the national press’ radar, there was also a reference posted Monday to the Obama campaign’s voter efforts in New Mexico and elsewhere on an Oregon blog (click here) where the writer admits that he is an OOSA -- an Out Of State Attorney, who has been recruited.
“The Obama campaign has been tireless in recruiting OOSAs to travel to swing states (at our own expense) and spend Election Day at polling places where there is a reason to anticipate the possibility of voter suppression efforts by the Republicans,” blogger Portlandia writes. “I read the other day that Obama has recruited 5,000 OOSAs to go to Florida alone.
“I don't know how many OOSAs are here in New Mexico with me, but tomorrow I expect to meet a lot of them when we have pre-Election Day training.”
To reach David Crowder, write dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or call (915) 351-0605.
David K
November 4, 2008
I'm glad the Democrats are poised to steal this election if they can not win it - that's the kind of "go get'em" attitude I like.
paul j strelzin
November 4, 2008
we learned from you republicans david...the gop mastered the art of stealing national elections and now you complain.
Saul
November 4, 2008
The fact that the Obama people hired thousands of lawyers is a total turn off. Using lawyers in the election process would cause a tremendous amount of hostility. Hopefully, there will be zero issues and the lawyers can all go home.
Helen Marshall
November 4, 2008
I'm puzzled by David K's comment. Preventing suppression of the vote is stealing the election?
I worked in the non-partisan Election Protection campaign last time. The entire purpose is to prevent people from losing their vote. If that benefits one party as it apparently will do, then perhaps the other party should ask itself - why do we not want people to vote? Is it because we really are the party for the few and the haves?
There will be no lawyer involvement unless there are efforts to prevent people from voting who are entitled to do so. If the Democrats had paid this much attention in 2004 in Ohio, for example, quite possibly we would have been spared four more years of the Bush Administration. Clearly the Obama folks do not intend to lie down in front of the tanks. Good. It's time that we have a president about whose election there is no question of manipulation, computer fraud, voter suppression, or any other stain on our constitutional system.