Seth Colter Walls walls@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting
No Shenanigans Expected In Florida, DNC Adviser Says
November 4, 2008 11:57 AM Now that the Florida GOP has assured a county circuit judge the party will not mount a mass challenge of voters on election day, DNC adviser Jamal Simmons says he is less worried about a process catastrophe in the state on election day.
"I think that we've worked with people beforehand, to get around a lot of the potential problems," Simmons told the Huffington Post. "The lawsuit got settled, the GOP agreed not to do mass challenges [in response] in response to what was, of course, a lawsuit by the Florida Democratic Party. They feel good that they stopped that."
Based on a mailer sent by the GOP to many Florida Democrats in September that falsely suggested recipients were "registered Republicans," some in the state were worried that the Republican Party was drawing up a possible list of voters to challenge at the polls on election day. Republicans always denied that the mailers -- which were also stamped "do not forward," thus meaning that if the Democratic voter had moved, their name and address would be sent back to the GOP -- were intended for anything but fundraising purposes.
But in response to the Democrats' preemptive legal strike, a Republican operative gave the legalistic equivalent of a pinky-swear last night. As the Palm Beach Post reported Monday night:
RNC Deputy Finance Director James Rowley denied that the data from the mailers would be used to challenge voters at the polls tomorrow.
"To my knowledge, the RNC does not have poll challengers and has not and will not endorse, approve, authorize or participate in any such challenges by other persons or organizations on Election Day," Rowley's affidavit reads.
Nevertheless, Leon County Circuit Court Judge Kevin Davey will be on standby Tuesday evening, in case Democrats want to present evidence of any mass GOP voter challenges.
Simmons, for his part, seemed calm Tuesday morning.
"It looks good here. We have not really been seeing any problems. There are some lines, but not any extraordinarily long ones anywhere." He said the Obama for America office in Tampa was relatively calm, compared to recent days. "We have teams out canvassing. People are just out doing election day stuff," he said.