Reid’s Letters to the Casinos? Maybe Not Classy, but Not Voter Intimidation
I’ve been asked by numerous quarters whether I think Senator Harry Reid engaged in voter intimidation by having casinos send letters and emails to employees urging support for Reid. This wasn’t voter intimidation. Reid might have survived through all sorts of shenanigans, but intimidation wasn’t one of them.
Voter intimidation is a term of art. It doesn’t mean a voter was annoyed or unsettled. It doesn’t mean pressure was put on a voter to act a certain way. Federal laws prohibiting voter intimidation rely on an objective standard. Simply, would a reasonable person find the behavior a threat that might reasonably result in bodily harm or other imminent harm? A letter from an employer or union urging a vote for a particular candidate does not fall into this category.
Of course, the content of the letter may make a difference. If the letter says: “If you don’t vote for Harry Reid, the casino may burn down your house,” that’s another matter. But that isn’t what the letters said.
Indeed, it may even be protected political speech. Why shouldn’t an employer be allowed to communicate with employees about an election? Why shouldn’t an employer be allowed to communicate objective truth to employees about what the outcome of the election might mean for their business? Hardly intimidation, such communications are protected by the First Amendment and would serve the important purpose of informing an employee about what is best for the company, and therefore for the employee’s employment.
Harry Reid was a strong supporter of gambling interests, and the employees benefit by knowing this factual information. If it is true the casinos would lose a strong Washington ally if Reid lost to Sharron Angle, then the casinos have every right — and perhaps, to some, an obligation — to communicate this message to employees.
Telling employees the truth about the outcome of an election isn’t voter intimidation. If electing a certain candidate will result in harm to an employee’s health care plan, employers should tell their employees that ahead of the election. If electing a certain party will result in harm to the employer’s ability to meet payroll, the employers should tell their employees that too. It’s called the truth wrapped in political speech. In this country, we still protect the right to say it.
No offense intended, counselor Adams, but that was fair and balanced.
Good article. The conspiracy theorists I’ve seen commenting on other stories are strangely silent…
I guess Reid likes some corporations, if they bring his voters to the polls and/or make him rich.
Question: If I’m a business owner and the employees were taking a vote to unionize, could I tell them that the results of their vote would determine if I would remain in business or not?
I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express once, so though not a lawyer think that’s where your free speech ends. Unfortunately.
Had a friend do that once. Staff voted on Friday and when they came in Monday the plant was locked and business closed. Termination checks were all special delivered that day. Over the weekend he had already sold his stock on hand, the building and the equipment. Retired in peace and never looked back. Thirty years later said he would do it again. No regrets.
So, what would have happened if a Republican had done this? Answer: It would be remapped as a crime by the demoncrats, the media would be screaming their foolish head off for weeks to come. The Republican would be tried convicted and sent to jail, as has happened before. Demoncrates get away with crimes while Republicans get convicted on trumped up charges.
J. Christian Adams has made a convincing case that no laws were broken. We can still economically boycott the Nevada casinos. The citizens of that state are moochers. They voted for Harry Reid because he is supposed to bring home the bacon. In other words, he will steal the money of those living outside Nevada. We have every moral and legal right to treat the majority of adults of both Nevada and California like jerks.
Correction – I do think laws were broken, just not voter intimidation laws. Other laws were broken but they weren’t the focus of my article. For example, I am convinced corporate coordination occured, which probably constituted illegal in kind corporate donations. But that wasn’t the purpose of this article. I only wanted to address federal “voter intimidation” statutes.
I’m glad you stopped back in, Mr. Adams, because that was going to be my question. It appeared to me that there was a coordinated effort between Reid’s office and the corporation. And I was pretty certain that was a no-no.
Agree with the comment about moochers in Nevada: Reid brought home the pork, bailed out casinos after the ’08 crash by arm-twisting banks and was rewarded with organized corporate support from the casino sector. That and the Latino vote put him over.
So to with the moochers in Alaska. Part of what deflated Joe Miller’s balloon was the realization of how much pork he was going to cut, and that fat, lazy state talks a good game but can’t walk the lean walk. Alaska is one of our nation’s worst welfare queens and corrupt RINOs like Stevens, Murkowski and the deeply corrupt Don Young (just re-elected w/ 69%) of the vote, keep the greasy pork line running.
So let’s hope that when a new Hause decides and enforces the end of PORK, all those PARASITES from Alaska, Nevada, KAILIFOHNIA, Delaware suddenly realise that they have to start to work hard to survive, they all will run towards Sharon Agle, Christine O’Donnel, Carly Fiorina, Joe Miller and kiss their hands while begging them for forgiveness and to run for their respective offices again.
It shall be a great fun to watch this, even from the distance of 20 000kms.
Exactly!!
Boycott Nevada.
They are right next door..but we can do that, no problem. There are plenty of other places to play around.
Politics in general needs to be cleaned up. He’s not a good man to have represent anyone and his only concern is power. Too bad..hehe..sonny lost his bid.
I agree, there was plenty of wrong doing done during this election, but the letters from the Casinos are no different than all the crappy letters I get from the unions about my votes. I ignore them just as easily as I’m sure the Vegas casiono workers could ignore theirs.
On the other hand, if you a health care provider, and you send out a letter to your customers stating that you believe a certain piece of legislation would result in higher premiums, I think that you could count on Sec Sebelius the threaten both you and your business fairly quickly…
Obama already told the public to boycott Nevada when he said Americans should think twice before going to Las Vegas during tough economic times. Oops.
What the problem was that the employer was monitoring who WAS and WAS NOT voting. Not just monitoring, spending time going person to person to make sure they voted for Reid. That is intimidation.
Whether we vote or not is NOT the employer’s business.
Standing alone, monitoring isn’t intimidation. What happened next is the more important question. Were they asked to vote? Then it is GOTV. Where they threatened if they didn’t? How? What was said? This is process of inquiry.
Are we the only family that feels disgusted when we see unethical, if not illegal vote tampering? We talk about this at home at night and the end result of their manipulation is we scratch Nevada off of our vacation list. We spend our hard earned wages, after high taxes of course, in Utah, Montana and Wyoming. We also love the Grand Strand South Carolina and the pristine beaches of Florida especially the panhandle. Nevada does have some attraction. 15% unemployment and the highest home foreclosure rate in the country. Our family expects that will continue.
It probably isn’t difficult to win an election when you consider SEIU was in charge of maintaining the voting machines in at least part of if not all of Southern Nevada. It doesn’t hurt to have bus loads of union workers taken to the polls from the Harrah’s and other casinos. How many were illegal? Harry doesn’t bring the bacon home to Nevada. We are on the low end of the totem pole in tax dollars returned to the state. Anything Harry brings back goes to the Union thugs and to his own enrichment. I don’t believe for one minute that he won this election. He was down 3-4 points when I woke up and won by 6-7 when I went to bed. Didn’t happen!!