It's hot and windy and this older black man with one missing front tooth is standing outside the DMV in long, dirty shorts and a T-shirt, drinking hot black coffee, pushing a clipboard at passersby.
"Are you registered to vote?" he asks in a sing-songy voice, like he's said it so many times it's become a ditty, a jingle, something akin to a ballpark "Hot dogs and beer, here!" But what he's offering is something people fight wars for. And he's peddling it in the parking lot, gratis, for a moment of your time.
This passerby says yes, I'm registered, and he follows up without missing a beat, "Well have you moved? Because you can fill this out and avoid having troubles on Election Day." He's smiling, and little beads of sweat are gathering on his balding head, and somehow, he takes another sip of steaming coffee from a 7-11 cup.
"Who pays you to register people to vote?" I ask.
"Huh? Oh. They're right over here on, is it 28th? Southwest Strategies, or Strategic Political. They just pay a small amount because I stand out here in the heat; it's just a small amount."
"Per registration form?"
"Oh, no. I know what you're talking about, but that's a felony. They just pay us a small amount, a standing fee."
He turns to the next passersby and continues pitching voter registration. People shoo him away.
A couple of hours later in the clean, quiet Clark County Elections Department building, a pleasant clerk comes out from behind the counter and hands me a list of some 200 organizations that requested blank voter registration forms to circulate.
Samples: Southwest Group, aka Southwest Strategies; Nevadans for Sound Government; New Voters Project; Lord of Host Ministries; American Institute of Technology; Nevada Theatre Co.; America Coming Together; Young Latino Democrats; Cabo Apartments; Caesars Entertainment; Alcoholics Anonymous; Bush/Cheny '04.
Some of them have been accused by the elections office of illegally paying canvassers per completed form, but Clark County Registrar Larry Lomax doesn't want to name names now, he says, because new investigations are under way.
I take my list and some red, white and blue voter guides in Spanish and English, and leave. On the radio in the car, pundits are anticipating Bush's convention speech, saying he'll focus on "enduring prosperity."
Later, on the phone, Lomax, sounding anxious, tired and irked, tells me he's never seen so many organizations interested in registering voters. Lomax is a man who can feel the ghost of Florida 2000 settling into his office space. He's overwhelmed. His office is processing piles of registration forms and, he says, one in six contains false information.
"A lot of these organizations popped out of nowhere," he says. "Some are doing it for the right reasons, others are in it for the money."
Southwest, he says, is a for-hire canvassing organization that represents primarily liberal interests, but, Lomax says, both parties have hired similar groups to push registration.
"A lot of out-of-state groups are pouring mone into this battleground state on hiring people to register voters. The people who are circulating are being incentivized to turn in a bunch of fraudulent forms," Lomax says. He's been saying it all summer, but hasn't been able to stop it.
He's called several of the organizations that have turned in false forms, including Southwest, into his office to discuss the problem.
"They act as if they're shocked," he said. "They say they'll go back and research it ...We've met with some of them more than once, and they've fired a couple of their employees—in fact some guy came in here yelling that we got him fired."
I called Southwest Solutions and someone named Dan hung up on me. I left a message with another Southwest representative, and by press time, she hadn't called back.
What's the impact of paying people to register other people to vote? If you're turning in hundreds of false registrations, the likelihood that you've also got bodies and false IDs prepared to go to the polls and turn it into votes is small. So is this trickle-down economics? A few extra bucks to the registration schlepper in the hopes that he'll turn in some real ones, too? Enduring prosperity, indeed.
Or does this get people involved in the process?
"It's about civic duty and exercising a right that many people have died for," says Kevin Griffis, Las Vegas spokesman for America Coming Together, another get-out-the-vote organization. "It's about the right to vote. There is simply an element of civic concern that transcends politics."
ACT is spending about $100 million nationally on efforts to register and turn out voters. ACT requested 3,600 forms from Lomax's office to register Nevada voters, and pays $10 to $12 an hour to its canvassers.
ACT opposes President Bush, but it's technically not affiliated with the Kerry campaign, in accordance with federal law. Still, ACT is chock full of veteran Democrats, including many with ties to Kerry and his advisers.
"This year, there is unprecedented outreach," Griffis says.
"If you listen to the issues that the candidates focus this election on, you see who they're concerned with—[the privileged], and you can tell who they expect to vote. If you're not voting, I can see how you can think that the election wouldn't matter to you, because they're talking about things that don't concern you" like tax cuts for higher earners, Griffis says. It's a cycle that keeps the poor and disenfranchised out of the system.
To that end, ACT spends time canvassing areas where citizens of lower socio-economic status and lower voter turnout might be—and who just happen to traditionally vote Democrat. "Everyone knows which communities are under-represented," Griffis says. "ACT is trying to expand that focus so people don't feel like they're being left out."
But, he says, his organization doesn't pay per-form and hasn't turned in any fraudulent forms.
"As far as the voter fraud thing goes ... there's some concern that this is being used as a form of intimidation to try to intimidate people not to work to register voters, thinking that they'll be caught up with some sort of fraud charges.
"Mr. Lomax needs to be specific and say who's doing what and not to make broad accusations ...
"I don't think there's ever been this level of scrutinizing. I just don't know how real or widespread the false registrations are. The problem with our election process isn't fraudulent voting, it's people who are eligible not voting ... I think the fraudulent voting issue is kind of a red herring."
Griffis suspects that there is foul play, however—that other organizations, particularly those on the right, are trying to confuse both voters and election officials, preparing the state for a challenge should Kerry win. "A lot of them have talked about challenging registrations, and they're actually giving out the wrong date for the elections to groups who aren't in their base—I can't think of anything more un-American. It's truly despicable behavior."
To Lomax, recruiting the downtrodden and "incentivizing" them to turn in false documents is the despicable behavior.
"We had three guys come in here yesterday turning in forms and, well, they were desperate for money. I don't know if you know what I'm saying, but it was clear that they were desperate."
Another guy, Lomax says, admitted to falsifying forms when confronted and is in jail. Lomax said that from what his department has been able to figure, they're getting paid between $1 and $3 per completed form.
"The people who are available to go out and do this—well, they don't have jobs," Lomax says. "They're desperate."
In other battleground states— Missouri, Florida, Ohio—ACT has taken heat for hiring ex-felons to canvass. After some political stir, the Missouri Department of Corrections in April removed ACT from its list of potential employers for parolees.
"From a public-safety standpoint, we didn't want offenders to be in a situation where they would be handling that information," spokesman John Fougere told the Associated Press.
Here, Griffis says he doesn't think ACT is specifically recruiting parolees, but said their doors are open to most anyone.
"About the felons," he says, "as long as folks are allowed to vote and take part in the process, there's not a problem. It's called democracy. And that's what makes America special."
On my way out of the DMV, I ask the man with the clipboard of voter registration forms what issues matter to him this election.
"Getting you to fill out your registration," he says, laughing.