Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian says, "US policy now affects every citizen on the planet. So we should all have a say in who gets to the White House"
In order to give a voice to UK citizens, they are emailing out the names and addresses of voters registered in Clark County, Ohio. Actually, they'll give them out to anyone. The program doesn't check the IP location of the person requesting the name and address nor does it only send them to email addresses with a .uk extension.
I got one for someone living on Allison Avenue in Springfield, Ohio.
The person who writes the best letter can win a trip to Clark County. To be eligible for the prize you must be a UK resident and must follow the terms and conditions set forth in the email. For example:
"2. Your letter must be courteous and polite. It must not contain any material which is obscene, libellous, offensive, illegal or which may bring the Guardian into disrepute."
Some of us might argue that The Guardian's attempt to influence voters in the U.S. already brings them into (further) disrepute.
Here is an excerpt from one letter:
I would also be alarmed by your president's breathtaking disregard for the environment, demonstrated by his pulling out of the Kyoto agreement to stem global warming, a phenomenon that may well be the cause of the freak hurricanes that lashed Florida in recent weeks.
Yep, that's right. George W.Bush is to blame for the hurricanes. Don't tell Jeb, it would totally ruin any plans the family might have to get together for Thanksgiving.
John Le Carré is sending a letter. I wonder how long before it shows up on eBay.
According to the Springfield News-Sun (reg. req. so the article is also in the extended entry):
Linda Rosicka, director of the Board of Elections, said The Guardian paid $25 for a “flat file,” a list of all registered voters in the county. Purchasers can extract whatever segment of voters they want, she said, and anyone can buy the list. “We’re still waiting for their check,” she said of The Guardian. Normally, the lists are pay-in-advance, she said."
Makes worrying about providing personal information on the Internet kind of pointless when your local election board is selling the same information to anyone who asks for it.
Not only is it presumptuous for them to attempt to influence American voters, they stole the idea.
Brits want to give you some advice
Thursday October 14, 2004
by Michelle Everhart
Readers of a British newspaper have been invited to write Clark County voters with the aim of persuading the undecided to vote for either George W. Bush or John Kerry.
The 400,000-circulation Guardian, a London-based newspaper, published an article explaining to its international readers that although they have no vote in the U.S. presidential election, they can make a difference.
“ ... We’ve zeroed in on one of the places where this year’s election truly will be decided: Clark County, Ohio, which is balanced on a razor’s edge between Republicans and Democrats,” the article reads. It can be found on the Internet at guardian.co.uk, under the heading “My fellow non-Americans...” by Oliver Burkeman, who is based in the newspaper’s New York City bureau.
The newspaper is encouraging its readers from “Basildon to Botswana” to write Clark County residents who do not have a declared party, “which somewhat increases the chances of their being persuadable.”
Features editor Ian Katz said the unique idea stemmed from many foreigners’ feelings of helplessness while they watched the unfolding of the U.S. election — an election they feel will have a strong impact on the entire world.
“The United States is the most powerful country by far,” Katz said from London. “Domestic decisions are in fact huge decisions that could affect everyone in the world. In many ways this election will have more impact in our countries than our own political elections do.”
See GUARDIAN on Page 4A
Editors looked at counties from Florida, Missouri and Ohio and picked Clark County because there are enough undeclared registered voters to accommodate the desired number of potential letter recipients, Katz said.
The Clark County Board of Elections shows 50,754 undeclared voters, but Katz said they received about 36,000 names and addresses.
Linda Rosicka, director of the Board of Elections, said The Guardian paid $25 for a “flat file,” a list of all registered voters in the county. Purchasers can extract whatever segment of voters they want, she said, and anyone can buy the list.
“We’re still waiting for their check,” she said of The Guardian. Normally, the lists are pay-in-advance, she said.
Rosicka also said she has received calls from Fox News, NBC and ABC, further verifying Clark County’s importance in the election.
Clark County voters also are in the electoral spotlight because of the close presidential election in 2000, when Democratic candidate Al Gore beat George W. Bush by just 324 votes.
The article and Katz acknowledge the plan could backfire, stating, “Anyone might be justifiably angered by the idea of a foreigner trying to interfere in their democratic process.”
Katz said that he does not want Clark County residents to think the newspaper is meddling in the election but simply conveying outsiders’ concerns over the potential outcome.
The Guardian, a traditionally liberal newspaper, makes no attempts to hide that it would like Bush out of office. British newspapers, unlike those in the United States, generally are openly partisan and tailor news coverage as well as editorials around their ideological preferences.
For the letter-writing campaign, however, the editors and reporters tried to craft the message as neutrally as possible, Katz said. The web site is careful to state that each letter-writer is free to support whichever candidate he backs, while noting a poll it conducted showed 47 percent of Britons back Kerry and 16 percent support Bush.
The system is designed so each voter’s information, all public record, is given to only one person participating in the process. This is to prevent one voter’s mailbox being crammed with letters from abroad.
“We don’t want anyone to feel violated,” Katz said. “We don’t give out any details but what is already public record, and we encourage people not to share the information.”
As of 5 p.m. London-time — 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time — 3,000 people requested information on a Clark County voter, although it appears not all of them plan to write letters.
The newspaper already received e-mail letters from people upset about the campaign, even some from Ohio telling the newspaper to get lost, Katz said.
“We’ve gotten a lot of angry Republicans,” he said. “We figured there would be attempts to sabotage it.”
Despite some complaints, Katz said they also have some people copying courteous and reasonably intelligent letters to the newspaper saying “good on you” for its efforts.
The Springfield News-Sun also received about a dozen e-mails, starting early in the day, about the Guardian campaign, from places as diverse as New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Alaska and Switzerland, almost all of which expressed some degree of outrage.
A woman in New York City e-mailed that she had requested Clark County addresses under her six separate accounts. “I intend to immediately delete the e-mails should I ever get them. Thus, I may have saved six Ohio voters from being annoyed by Britishers with an axe to grind,” she wrote.
Katz said they decided to go with postal mail, rather than e-mail, because the former is more personal.
The newspaper also encourages letter writers to include their name and address with the hopes of recipients replying and maybe even creating pen pals, Katz said.
The campaign is more than just a way for foreigners to state their views to locals. It also is a contest. The four most persuasive letter writers will win a trip to Ohio along with Guardian journalists to visit Clark County and campaign at the end of October.