Voting Rights Watch: Bogus flier in VA tells Democrats wrong date for elections

It's a classic voter-suppression strategy: send out misinformation to voters about the day of the election.

The Virginian-Pilot is reporting that in the Hampton Roads area on the Virginia coast, official-looking fliers are being distributed that tell Democrats to vote on November 5 -- a day after the election.

The paper reports on the contents of the bogus announcement:

The somewhat official-looking flier - it features the State Board logo and the state seal - is dated Oct. 24 and indicates that "an emergency session of the General Assembly adopted the . . . emergency (voting) regulations to ease the load on local electorial (sic) precincts and ensure a fair electorial (sic) process."

The four-paragraph flier concludes by apologizing "for any inconvenience this may cause but (we) felt this was the only way to ensure fairness to the complete electorial (sic) process."

The flier obviously is attempting to suppress Democratic votes. It's also no secret why the flier is being distributed in Hampton Roads. Ten localities in the Hampton Roads area are 25% or more African-American. [pdf]

And it's also clear why the Republican sympathizers behind this flier are doing this in Virginia: As the election forecasting site 538.com notes today, Virginia is Obama's "firewall" -- a state that he currently leads in and, if he wins, will make John McCain's chances for victory very small.