(Any other action items you’d suggest? – promoted by Bob Brigham)
[crossposted at Daily Kos. This is a living document that I’m making continuous updates to – please offer suggestions to improve it.]
The Courage Campaign and the Democratic party establishment are pushing back against the Dirty Tricks Initiative.
What can we as individuals do to help fight this campaign and hopefully prevent it from getting on the ballot?
Let me make a few suggestions:
1. Sign up here with the CA Dem Party’s group set up to fight this: the FraudBusters.
2. Add your name to Courage Campaign’s No More Dirty Tricks pledge and kick them some money (same page). (Courage Campaign is bloggers – they are us, so kick ’em some money.)
3. Check for any “assignments” from the FraudBusters folks (I believe they are supposed to come by email). If you’ve got nothing, then DON’T WAIT — simply go to the most high traffic places that ballot petition signers frequent to get signatures — Wal-Mart, Target, etc., determine whether Dirty Tricks ballot petitioners are there, and notify the Courage Campaign, the CA DEM Fraud Busters and also the state Dem organization fighting this (Californians for Fair Electoral Reform). When you’re at the location, go up to them, present yourself as someone who they would tend to target (pose yourself as someone uneducated about how ballot petitions work, in a hurry, etc.) and see if they take an illegal or unethical approach with you.
4. If you encounter Dirty Trick petition signature gatherers (aka Dirty Tricksters) and they are doing clearly illegal or misleading things, or if you learn from Courage Campaign or the CFER folks about places where such Dirty Tricksters are, go there and see if you experience it yourself. If you do, go to the store manager and complain as a customer that you don’t want the store to protect lawbreakers. See if you can get the names of the signature gatherers from the store manager while there.
5. File a complaint against the Dirty Tricksters with the Secretary of State. Form available here.
6. If you encounter Dirty Tricksters and they are giving incorrect descriptions of the ballot initiatives they are getting signatures for, especially the Dirty Trick initiative, then get a video camera, read the ballot summary to them on camera so that they cannot say they were not aware they were misinforming people of the ballot initiative. Misleading people about ballot petitions is not a crime unless you can show it’s purposeful – that’s why getting proof they were informed of the ballot initiative is very important.
7. (For the intrepid) Get lawbreakers on camera or audio doing clearly illegal things — instructing potential signers that they need to sign multiple times, misinforming voters when you have proof they’ve been informed of the actual ballot summary — or even sleazy things which might not be illegal but totally wrong, and get those to the Courage Campaign and the Californians for Fair Election Reform folks.
A couple of suggestions if you are going to use video tape: use one take, do not cut — even if there are boring parts, it makes it a lot clearer that you are not messing with the timeline. Also, to establish the place, date, and time, consider making a purchase at the store and then showing the receipt to the camera so that no on call into question the When or the Where of the illegal activity you capture if it’s on the same take as when you’ve shown the timedated receipt.
8. Get on your local progressive local talk radio show, inform folks about the Dirty Trick campaign and encourage them to do the above.
9. Bring up the issue at your local Dem Club or other progressive organization meeting and get people involved there.
Please feel free to comment on or add to the my suggestions above. I don’t pretend to know a lot about these issues, but I hadn’t seen an effort at a practical “What to Do” list for average folks, so I offer this modest effort…