Just in case their weak ground game doesn’t deliver Missouri for McCain, maybe the Republicans are up to their all-too-usual dirty tricks. The latest stir on talk radio is that Democratic voters in purple states have been receiving absentee ballot applications sent to them by the McCain campaign with postage paid envelopes addressed to the wrong county clerks.

The progressive online election expert is Brad Friedman at Bradblog. He’s been check into this, and he says that so far it doesn’t seem to be a deliberate vote caging effort:

Kathie Wild, City Clerk of Mayville Wisconsin, has replied to our query concerning the above, after I’d forwarded a copy of a McCain mailer which had been sent to a Madison voter with an “Absentee Ballot Request” postcard included as addressed, incorrectly, to the County Clerk in the city of Mayville. Wild’s response follows …

If an absentee request that isn’t for a Mayville voter was sent to my office I would forward the application on to the correct clerk. So far I have not received any requests that weren’t for Mayville voters. Actually so far I have only received one request from this mass McCain mailer. I personally received this mailer at my home address and it did have the correct address on it.

……….

My feeling is that the address thing is just a mistake on the McCain campaign.

Thanks,

Kathie Wild

City Clerk

City of Mayville

And in a response to concern about mailers sent to voters in St. Louis County, MO, reportedly with postcards addressed to a different county, a source close the Sec. of State’s office tells us:

We’ve seen these. My initial concern is that although it includes two copies of the correct absentee request form, the mailer says “vote by mail” and in Missouri we do not have “vote by mail” and you still have to have an excuse to vote absentee. Might be confusing to voters.