Ohio political blogs are buzzing about a series of posts (1, 2, 3) on the Buckeye State Blog suggesting an effort to infiltrate Republican get-out-the-vote efforts. (See also here.)
This may well be a hoax or put-on designed to send right-leaning blogs into a tizz. (If so, it worked.) Nonetheless, if this were real, would infiltration of this sort be illegal? Bizzyblog notes the following Ohio Revised Code provisions.
(A) No person, during the course of any campaign for nomination or election to public office or office of a political party, shall knowingly and with intent to affect the outcome of such campaign do any of the following:
(1) Serve, or place another person to serve, as an agent or employee in the election campaign organization of a candidate for the purpose of acting to impede the conduct of the candidate’s campaign for nomination or election or of reporting information to the employee’s employer or the agent’s principal without the knowledge of the candidate or the candidate’s organization;
Whether this provision would apply to the alleged (and as-yet unconfirmed) infiltration effort would seem to depend on whether a party-run get-out-the-vote effort would qualify as an “election campaign organization of a candidate” under the statute. Certainly the purpose of the statute is served by s uch a broad reading of the text, but I do not know whether this is the interpretive approach Ohio courts have used in similar contexts. In addition, the state would also have to demonstrate that any alleged infiltrators (or infiltration organizers) acted with the requisite intent: “knowingly and with intent to affect the outcome of such campaign.”
There is also the question of how actual infiltration efforts of this sort could actually be detected. Given the nuber of people involved in get-out-the-vote phone banks and door-to-door efforts, I would think it is very difficult to ensure that those whovolunteer for such efforts are sincere. So, whether or not this campaign is real, I would not be surprised if partisans on both sides of the aisle have sought to infiltrate opposing operations in the past, even if only to get a better handle on the opposition’s tactics. But that does not make it proper or legit.
UPDATE: I posted on this issue, as opposed to others (e.g. fake robocalls), because it’s getting lots of attention on local blogs here in Ohio, and I thought it presented an interesting legal question. As for the fake robocalls, if they are as described they are a deplorable campaign tactic. The two things I am curious about (and have not yet seen) are a) the actual text of the calls, and b) why such calls would be illegal under current law. I welcome any comments that elucidate either of these points.
FURTHER UPDATE: The folks at Buckeye State Blog and Plunderbund claim their efforts to solicit infiltrators was “a purely psyops operation” designed to see how the right-wing blogosphere would respond. Write the folks at BSB: “what we really infiltrated was their paranoid minds. In fact so successful was this infiltration that it actually affected the GOP’s GOTV effort.”