Four employees hired by a temporary staffing agency to encourage absentee voting for Sen. John McCain in Wisconsin say they were instructed to tell people they were Republican volunteers.
The employees told The Associated Press in interviews on Monday they were hired by Allstaff Labor Group to go door-to-door in the Milwaukee suburbs locating McCain supporters and distributing absentee ballot request forms.
Allstaff recruited the workers under a contract with a consulting firm hired by the Republican Party of Wisconsin to run its absentee ballot program.
The workers claim they were told to say they were GOP volunteers even though they were getting paid $10 an hour for the work. They were required to sign agreements stating they would not speak publicly about their work with anyone including reporters, but they decided to speak out because they were angry they had not been paid for their final few days.
"I told the Republican Party and Allstaff, I wanted to know why we were lying to these residents," said Loyalty Dixon, 26, a Milwaukee resident who worked about two weeks in Waukesha. "I said, isn't that fraudulent? They didn't give me a good explanation. They said, you guys know you're getting paid. Don't worry about it."
Is there anyone running the store in Madison and keeping an eye on things? Because how the heck do you allow this to happen?
The state's top election official, Kevin Kennedy, said the effort ran into problems in the Green Bay area, with at least one employee turning in numerous absentee ballot distribution forms that were falsified. He said the worker was promptly fired and the local clerk tossed out the forms.
Of course, this allows the "non-partisan" Kevin Kennedy of the GAB to go off the deep end.
Kennedy compared the problems to those seen during voter registration drives by the liberal-leaning group ACORN, which Republicans have accused of voter fraud. Anytime workers are paid for campaign work they have an incentive to cut corners, he said.
And this will help McCain how? It's like watching an electoral Gallipoli.
ht: Jim Rowen
