Dirty tricks sully US polls

Scare-mongering ads, voter registration forms dumped in the trash and misleading statements on the stump: the list of dirty tricks sullying the US presidential election is seemingly endless.
With the high-stakes race culminating with voting Tuesday, experts warn that the unfortunately typical attempts to keep a rival's supporters from the polls or sway voters with flat out lies could end up deciding the outcome.
"If an election is close those kinds of things can matter," said Kathleen Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
"We've had the chastening experience of 2000. And 2004 was close as well."
Some of the uglier tactics could end up backfiring, Jamieson said, citing a DVD sent to voters in swing states claiming to have uncovered nude photos of President Barack Obama's mother in a bondage magazine.
False and misleading statements on the stump and in advertisements run the risk of alienating voters by undermining a candidate's trustworthiness.
But given the "abysmal" level of political knowledge among most voters, the payoff often outweighs the risk, said FactCheck.org editor Brooks Jackson.
Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney recently came under fire from both Democrats and the heads of General Motors and Chrysler for ads that falsely implied an automaker rescued by Obama is now shipping American jobs to China.
The Obama campaign has also told its share of whoppers, including claiming that Romney plans to outlaw all abortions when he has clearly stated his support for exceptions in the case of rape, incest and a threat to the life of the mother.
Meanwhile, a conservative group called True the Vote has sparked fears of voter intimidation with its vow to train thousands of volunteers to challenge any "suspicious" people at the polls as they seek to ferret out voter fraud.
While tossing out voter registration forms is a serious problem, many dirty tricks don't have much of an impact on the outcome, according to elections expert Rick Hasen of the University of California, Irvine.
"What is likely to have a larger impact is changes in laws, especially laws passed by Republican legislatures, which have the potential to moderately suppress Democratic turnout such as cutting back on early voting, making registration more difficult and voter ID laws," said Hasen.