Megyn Kelly on Fox's America Live speaking with the Iowa GOP Chairman Matt Strawn about the Occupy movement's plans to protest the Iowa caucuses which is their excuse for moving their ballot counting to an undisclosed location.
FDL's Dave Dayden has more on that here -- Iowa GOP Borrowing Cheney’s Undisclosed Location for Caucus Ballot-Counting:
Concerned about a nonexistent threat to the integrity of the caucuses, the Iowa Republican Party will move their ballot-counting operation to an “undisclosed location.”
The state party has not yet told the campaigns exactly where the returns will be added up, only that it will be off-site from the Iowa GOP’s Des Moines headquarters. The 2008 caucus results were tabulated at the state party offices, which sit just a few blocks from the state capitol.
Activist groups including the Occupy movement have indicated that they’ll attempt to interrupt rallies in the closing days before next Tuesday’s caucuses.
The AP reported today that Occupy is making plans to even attend some caucuses and vote “no preference,” but not disturb the voting process.
I get the press releases and have talked to a couple of the folks running the Occupy the Iowa Caucuses movement, and the idea that they have a nefarious plan to disrupt the caucuses and tamper with the vote-counting process is completely misguided. What you believe about the Iowa GOP’s decision can range from interpreting it as pants-wetting fear of scary hippies all the way to control of the votes to ensure no “mistakes” like, say, Ron Paul winning. But whatever it is, it’s not a legitimate response to what is planned to be peaceful protests with no bearing on the outcome.
Meanwhile, the same Republicans who spent all year fretting about voter fraud, and who are shrouding their vote tabulation activities in secrecy, do not require a photo ID to vote in the caucuses they run.
As Dave noted in response to Brad Friedman's question as to why they're not concerned about photo ID's during their caucus:
I’ll take “Voter Fraud is a Non-existent Problem Designed to Force a Response that Disenfranchises Minorities and Voters Expected to Cast Ballots for Democrats” for $200, Alex.
I'll second that.
