'This is Obama's House'.. chanting poll worker breaks law.

[Glocksman]

Chant caught on tape

Video

Like I said in the 'comments' section, she looked and sounded drunk or stoned.

[Glocksman]

It gets worse.

Goddamn

The man heard on a WTVW-FOX7 videotape making pro-John McCain statements inside a polling place Tuesday was a Republican poll worker who was simultaneously a candidate in a contested election.

Republican and Vanderburgh County elections officials acknowledged it was illegal for Leon "Big Man" Collins to promote McCain or to serve as a poll worker while his name was on the ballot to be a delegate to the GOP state convention, but they said there wasn't time to vet poll workers.

GOP Chairman Nick Hermann said the party was forced to work on the fly to make 37 poll worker substitutions to address cancellations in the hour before polls opened at 6 a.m. Tuesday.

But Hermann acknowledged that Collins, a veteran poll worker, probably was one of the first Republicans recruited to work.

"I don't think it occurred to anybody that he was a candidate," he said.

In a WTVW-FOX7 news report that subsequently was posted on YouTube, Collins is heard bantering with a Democratic poll worker who is shown making pro-Barack Obama statements.

The woman, identified Thursday as Kim Minor, was shown saying, "This is Obama's house," chanting Obama's name and asking who in the polling place supports the Illinois Democrat. Collins replies that it is "McCain's house."

The incident occurred in a building at Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1800 S. Governor St.

Attempts to reach Collins Thursday were unsuccessful. A man at Minor's residence said she was "unavailable."

Indiana law states no one may solicit votes or electioneer within 50 feet of a polling place. Candidates may not enter polling places except to cast their own ballots.

County Clerk Susan Kirk said state law requires the two major parties to find the required 655 poll workers for elections and to turn in their lists to her office two weeks before election day.

"But I'm not real strict on that because I know how hard it is to find people willing to take the whole day to serve as poll workers," she said. "It's a monumental task. You just get desperate and it gets down to the wire, and you're like, 'Please just work the polls.'

"It's so hard to find people that, if the parties did turn in their lists two weeks before the election, (they) would be half full."

In some years, one or both parties have faced a scramble to find workers for the one-day poll jobs, which pay from $90 to $130, depending on job title and duties.

Five days before the 2006 primary elections in Vanderburgh County, frustrated and anxious elections officials reported they had about 80 percent of the required number of poll workers. The League of Women Voters of Southwestern Indiana had to put out another call for help from members.

In the midst of the crisis, Kirk said she was frustrated that local and state government employees get primary and general election days off as holidays and are no longer required to work the polls.

She said then that she would consider trying to mobilize her fellow county clerks across Indiana to push for a change in the law.

But Thursday, Kirk said nothing had changed.

She said vetting poll workers is further complicated by the requirement that workers "can't even be related to a candidate (in a contested election) down to being a second cousin."

"I don't have everybody's genealogy tree, and neither do the party headquarters," she said.

Hermann said the sheer number of poll workers required — Republicans had to produce 262 while Democrats needed 393 — makes comprehensive vetting impractical.

Democratic Party Chairman Mark Owen agreed it can be difficult to vet poll workers fully, but he also marveled at the GOP's failure to weed out a poll worker who was simultaneously a candidate.

"That I've never heard of," Owen said.

The Democratic Party chief condemned Minor's actions as "totally and completely intolerable."

"She won't be reappointed to work at the polls under my leadership," Owen vowed. "She has been a poll worker several times and never had a problem, never had an incident, but that doesn't negate (the incident)."

Owen could conceive of no change to state law that would have prevented what Minor did.

"You do the best you can, you rely on the people you appoint to best represent your interests," he said.

Hermann also sees no need to change any of the relevant statutes, though he said party officials can take extra care to prevent even candidates in relatively obscure elections from serving as poll workers.

"You bet we will next time," he said.

Jesus fucking Christ!

Believe it or not, not all of us are fucking idiots down here.
Though I will admit that the news makes it difficult to prove otherwise.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Dumbass woman; I hope she realizes just how much destruction her little stunt could very well get spun up into by our oh so loyal Corporatist Media. You know they'll try their damnedest, too.

[Coyote]

They "didn't have time to vet poll workers"??

What, this election kinda snuck up on them all of a sudden-like?

[Noble Ire]

They "didn't have time to vet poll workers"??

What, this election kinda snuck up on them all of a sudden-like?

Quite. If there is any benefit to the ludicrous length of the American primary cycle, added time for preparation should be it. Even considering the tremendous level of political apathy in the United States, the parties had months to prepare for this election; vetting and recruiting should not have been a problem.

[Rogue 9]

I dunno; I wasn't vetted at all when they asked me to be a precinct inspector. Yeah, not some random clerk; the goddamned inspector. As in, the man in charge of the polling station, with authority to take ID, turn away voters if there was suspicion of fraud, eject people I deemed to be causing trouble, the whole nine yards. Now to be fair, this was because the previous inspector had dropped out the morning of the training day, so it was very short notice, but even so.

Now they got lucky; the only thing they missed was that I'm not a Democrat, and since the Democrats are the ruling party in the county they get to pick the polling officials. But it could have been ugly.