Partisan Suspicions Run High in Swing States

MILWAUKEE â€”  The vast open rotunda soared above them as they waited by the hundreds to register and cast absentee ballots inside City Hall, the 19th century landmark modeled after a long-forgotten Dutch guildhall. It was a predominantly African American crowd, and people sang “We Shall Overcome.â€�

But Yuri Nielsen was unmoved. Sitting on a hard chair near the front of the line, legal pad on his knee, the 26-year-old Republican Party worker cared about just one thing: Catching the notorious “Cigarette Lady,� who four years ago trolled the city’s homeless shelters trading smokes and beer for votes for Democrats.

Now, Nielsen said, he was “looking for any group that comes in with one person telling them what to do.� That, he said, would be “a definite red light for ‘smokes for votes.’ �

Martha Love, head of the Milwaukee Democratic Party, was indignant. “It’s plantation style,� she said. “He’s just sitting there, watching. It’s an owner mentality.�

If Nielsen’s fears seem a bit dramatic, or if Love’s comparison of a poll watcher with a slave owner seems exaggerated, they nonetheless reflect the extraordinarily rancorous and mistrustful atmosphere that pervades battleground states in the final days of the presidential campaign. In Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Oregon and other key states, Democrats and Republicans seem convinced their opponents are bent on stealing the election.

“There’s meanness, and it’s coming from the gut, from deep down inside of us,� said Jim Gill, director of adult ministry at St. Joseph’s Church, who has scheduled an ecumenical election-night prayer service to begin the reconciliation. “It’s about more than issues. There’s a fear about the world, about our country, about moral issues.�

Each side sees the Nov. 2 balloting as a critical choice between clashing values and ideas about where the country should be heading. Each state, precinct and volunteer organization is convinced its efforts alone stand between the nation and a catastrophic miscarriage of electoral justice.

Partly, this is a result of the 2000 election, in which George W. Bush lost the popular vote but won in the electoral college after a heated battle over how the voting had been carried out and the ballots counted. Florida dominated the news, but bitter memories of voting problems linger in other closely contested states as well.

Also, this year’s surge in newly registered voters has come largely from urban areas that are predominantly Democratic and black or Latino. In Cleveland and surrounding Cuyahoga County alone, registration has increased five-fold, officials say. Democrats fear GOP machinations to disenfranchise these voters. Republicans fear the new voter lists are rife with fraud.

Missouri Republicans, for example, recently accused Democratic groups in St. Louis of filing hundreds of fraudulent voter application cards.

“Right now,� Democrat John Bowman recently fired back, Republicans are “trying to take this election from us. But we’re going to monitor this election, we are going to lawyer this election, and we are going to win.�

It’s not just party spokesmen who talk that way. Such feelings can be found at the grass roots.

Consider Mabel Lee, 71, of St. Louis, who said she had already cast an absentee ballot for Sen. John F. Kerry. But “how do I know my vote is going to be counted?� she asked. “There was so much trouble last time I want to make sure they count it.�

Among Democrats in St. Louis, and especially African Americans, that is a common concern. The city experienced election chaos in 2000. A Justice Department investigation concluded that large-scale disenfranchisement of black voters had occurred. This time, while most analysts expect Missouri to go for Bush, Democratic supporters say newly registered voters could change that.

Sara Howard, communications director of America Coming Together, a pro-Kerry group, estimated that there were 125,000 new voters in Democratic areas in St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield and Columbia.

Local election officials, operating under a consent decree signed with the Justice Department, insist they are doing their best to avoid problems. “We have had an unprecedented effort to clean up the rolls,� Dario Gambero, chairman of the Election Board, said last week.

But those efforts, though lauded by nonpartisan groups, apparently have done little to improve the electoral climate.

America Coming Together recently distributed more than 100,000 fliers in black neighborhoods featuring a civil rights-era photograph of a fireman blasting a black man with a fire hose. “This is what they used to do to keep us from voting,� the caption said. On the back, the flier said Republicans were still seeking to block the black vote by breaking the rules, “like they did in Florida and St. Louis� in 2000.

Republicans were furious at what they described as racial demagoguery. Ed Gillespie, chairman of the GOP National Committee, denounced ACT for “using a 40-year-old photo and associating it with the Republican Party to suggest intimidation.� He called the flier “unethical and despicable.�

Meanwhile, Missouri GOP leaders accuse St. Louis Democrats of gathering flawed and sometimes fraudulent new voter registration applications. In the mayoral primary in 2001, Republicans noted, a number of dead people turned up on city voter rolls, including at least three deceased alderman.

And last year, temporary workers from a group called the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, were found to have submitted hundreds of voter applications with invalid names.

“It’s a legitimate worry,� said Jack Bartling, an aide to Republican Sen. Christopher S. Bond.

But Mike Lueken, one of the two GOP members of the four-member St. Louis Election Board, said there had been “no intent to commit fraud� on the part of the voter registration groups. “The rolls are generally in good shape,� he said. “The quality of the cards has been high after we met with [the voter registration groups] to discuss early problems.�

Everywhere, it seems, the presidential campaign is awash in reports of fraud, dirty tricks and intimidation.

In Ohio, within little more than a week, the Board of Elections in Cuyahoga County received complaints of voters being contacted by people they said claimed to be from the election board: One Cleveland woman said her mother got a call from such a man telling her, falsely, that the location of her polling station had changed.

Another woman said two men posing as election officials knocked on her door and said they had come to pick up her absentee ballot.

An elderly woman in a suburban senior center complained about a call telling her the Nov. 2 election had been postponed until Nov. 3.

“It’s happening more and more,� said Board of Elections Administrator Jane Platten.

Michael Hackett, deputy director of the Board of Elections in Franklin County, which includes the capital Columbus, said his office was getting similar calls. At first they were “sporadic,� he said, but now there are “a lot of them.�

The Ohio Voter Protection Coalition, an alliance of voter rights groups, plans to look into the calls. “You can’t believe that people could be that sneaky and backhanded,� said Emilie Karrick, spokeswoman for the coalition.

Meanwhile, Ohio Republicans are up in arms over what they say has been an unprecedented level of fraudulent registration activity.

One example, they said, was the case of 22-year-old Chad Staton of Defiance, Ohio, who was arrested for filling out more than 100 fictitious registration forms, according to the Defiance County Sheriff’s Office. Staton said he was paid for the registration forms with crack cocaine.

“Some would like to dismiss these cases as the effort of overzealous workers looking to make a bounty,� said Robert Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. “The fact is, a crime has already been committed, the system has already been abused, and the potential remains for these cases to produce fraud on election day.�

Democrats downplayed Republicans concerns about the faulty voter registration cards. “Most of these cards are getting tossed by the boards of elections,� said Dan Trevas, spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, Leslie Gromis Baker, volunteer head of the mid-Atlantic Bush-Cheney campaign, said: “In Philadelphia, there are more people registered to vote than the census said can vote. It’s sort of these same things that happen every time, especially in Philadelphia.

“We’re keeping our eye out so that people don’t vote twice.� she said.

In Florida, where Democrats insist Republican voting officials swayed the election in Bush’s favor four years ago, Democrats have already filed nine lawsuits alleging that state officials -- led by Secretary of State Glenda Hood, an appointee of GOP Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother -- have conspired to disenfranchise minority and low-income voters.

Liberal voting rights activists say Hood blocked the opening of early-voting sites in African American communities, for instance, while stacking a list of banned voters with the names of African Americans.

This spring, Hood tried to keep secret a list of convicted felons -- who are not allowed to vote in Florida -- who had been removed from the voting rolls; a Florida newspaper obtained the list and found glaring inaccuracies.

“They’re trying to scare people away from the polls,� charged Matt Miller, a Florida spokesman for the Kerry campaign.

For their part, Republicans have accused Florida Democrats of violating state campaign finance laws by colluding with unions, outside fundraising groups and other supporters.

“They’re breaking the law and no one seems to care,� said Mindy Tucker Fletcher, a senior advisor to the Florida Republican Party.

Wallsten reported from Wisconsin, Silverstein from Missouri and Shogren from Ohio. Times staff writers John Glionna in Florida and Richard Rainey in Washington contributed to this report.