More Republican Dirty Tricks?

Last week I mentioned the plan by Republicans in Michigan to use home foreclosure information to target voter challenges (thus disenfranchising people who had lost their homes to foreclosure). Today, I learned of a new apparent Republican dirty trick playing out in Wisconsin. According to Racine Post, Democratic voters have been receiving absentee ballot request forms from the McCain campaign. The problem? These absentee ballot requests have the wrong address for the completed requests to be returned to. So? Apparently, this would not jeopardize a voter's registration, but it might prevent the voter from receiving the absentee ballot (as the office receiving the request would be required to forward it to the correct office, but would have to do so in a very limited time frame [1 day] with an already overburdened staff).

Hopefully, this is not a case of singling out Democrats and is not intentional. Hopefully, these requests were sent to all voters and someone made an honest mistake. But, given the history of Republican dirty tricks and efforts to disenfranchise voters and given the McCain campaign's seeming willingness to do anything to win (lie, cheat, and will steal be next?), it is hard to give the campaign the benefit of the doubt and assume that this was an honest mistake. After all, lately the words "honest" and "McCain" don't seem to belong in the same sentence. Even Saturday Night Live has recognized that sad fact:

I think that my favorite ad might be the "Obama supports tax breaks for pedophiles" bit. That really goes right to the heart of the ridiculous exaggerations that have plagued Sen. McCain's ads.

Interesting note on the skit: Apparently it was co-written by former SNL writer Al Franken who is currently running for Senate in Minnesota (seeking to defeat Republican incumbent Norm Coleman).