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PrintLONDON — The Guardian newspaper is offering its readers a role as little birds on the shoulder of some Ohio voters in the presidential election. So far, there’s not much to indicate the voters are particularly interested.
On Oct. 13, the British newspaper launched a campaign to give its readers the addresses of voters in Clark County, Ohio, so they could write letters offering opinions on whom to vote for in the U.S. presidential election. The paper, which bought the list of voters, would only give out names of people who had not registered with a political party.
The Guardian wrote that it sees the county as key because Al Gore won it by 324 votes, about 1 percent, in 2000. Thus, editors reasoned that influence might be tangible in the too-close-to-call contest between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry.
The paper provided only one address to each person who requested one so as not to inundate a voter. Letter-writers were encouraged to be polite. Still, Oliver Burkeman, a Guardian reporter who has helped cover election issues in the United States, admits that “anybody might be justifiably angered by the idea of a foreigner trying to interfere in their democratic process.”
Republican and Democratic leaders in Ohio say they don’t think it will matter.
“The last thing Ohio voters want is an opinion from someone who doesn’t live in Ohio,” said Jason Mauk, spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party. “This is America and we value free speech, but at the end of the day I think voters will make up their minds based on their own insight and not the ideas of non-U.S. citizens.”
The race is tight in Ohio, traditionally a battleground state. Mauk said polls show Bush holds a slight lead in Clark County.
Although the Guardian stressed that letter-writers could support whomever they wished, the paper’s editorial pages have expressed disdain for Bush and disgust over the war in Iraq. As Burkeman wrote in the paper on Oct. 13: “British political life may now be at least as heavily influenced by White House policy as by the choices of U.K. voters.”
The Guardian has given out more than 14,000 names and addresses so far.
Closer to the election, the four people who write the most persuasive letters will travel to Clark County with Guardian journalists.
Michelle Everhart covers the story for the Springfield News-Sun, the newspaper in Springfield, Ohio, the county seat. She said letters began arriving on Tuesday and Wednesday and that some voters were confused.
“Some people didn’t know what it was, and they thought it was from a terrorist,” Everhart said. “One woman had already voted for Kerry absentee. She felt that the letter was inappropriate because it was addressed to her invalid mother.”
Clark County, in southwest Ohio, has sat in the national spotlight before. In its 50th anniversary edition in 1983, Newsweek magazine profiled four all-American families from Springfield, Everhart said.
Ohio Democratic Party spokesman Dan Trevas said it is difficult to gauge which way Ohio voters will go. Voters are not required to register except when voting in a primary, he said. About 7.6 million people are registered to vote in Ohio. About 1 million are registered as Republicans and 1 million as Democrats, Trevas said.
“So many people have already made up their minds,” Trevas said. “This might be gratifying to people who were already voting for Kerry and infuriating for people who aren’t.”
However, Trevas said, the letters might persuade some voters.
“It just shows that there’s a lot of people out there who are impacted by the president’s policies,” Trevas said. “We hear that Tony Blair is his ally, his buddy. This just shows them that real people in Britain don’t share that view.”
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