Vote 'challengers' in Kentucky raise hackles - and specter of racism

Jay O'Brien, a Louisville money manager, will vote Tuesday as he always does. But he won't stop there. He'll move from his precinct, in the upscale St. Matthews section of Louisville, to a polling station in the rougher neighborhood of California. He's not doing it to vote again, but to make sure others don't vote illegally.

Mr. O'Brien is one of a small army of Republican "challengers" monitoring Tuesday's election in Jefferson County. To him and to other Republicans, it's a safeguard for democracy: He's looking, after all, for felons, foreigners, or anyone else not eligible to vote. But to some Democrats, it's a case of voter intimidation that echoes Jim Crow days in the Old South. And it could set a precedent for the 2004 election, as a nation still jittery from the Florida fiasco of 2000 heads to the polls.

Extra poll watchers are allowed everywhere in the US. In the past, they were used mostly in the South, but today they're common in places like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Albany - aging urban areas where one party or another controls the political "machine." Even in those elections, though, challengers usually reside in the precincts they monitor.

Challengers are "part of the process," says Tom Patterson, a political science professor at Harvard University. But in Kentucky, critics say, the mobilization of mostly white challengers in poorer minority districts is a bold move to intimidate - and problematic, too, because challengers may not know the local terrain. They're being deployed amid a major voter-fraud investigation in the eastern Kentucky hills. And they come at a critical time: Jefferson County could swing a governor's election that Republicans haven't won since 1971.

"There seems to be a pattern of a power-grab by Republicans ... from Florida to California to Texas and now in the West End of Jefferson County," says Mark Riddle, executive director of the Kentucky Democratic Party. "Kentucky's elections, despite what popular opinion is, are clean and very well run."

Challengers don't actually go head-to-head with questionable voters. In fact, they're not allowed to talk with voters at all. Instead, they file official complaints to be investigated after the polls have closed. O'Brien and the other challengers took part in nonpartisan poll training.

Tuesday's election marks the first time the GOP has found enough conservative-leaning poll workers to fill its slots in some precincts. In fact, after years of rumors of botched elections, a recruitment drive brought in so many volunteers that there were extras. The "challengers" were born.

O'Brien says he's just helping correct a wrong - the historic lack of GOP poll workers, especially in the mostly-black neighborhoods by the Ohio River. "This is not a covert designation," he says. "It's as much a part of the election process as ... any other official. In my view, this whole challenge role is being really twisted."

But Republicans may have failed to realize how minority poll workers might perceive the outside supervision: "I find that insulting," says Donna Allen, a West End hair stylist. "It makes me think they don't trust us."

Page: 1 | 2