DENVER, Colo. – Throughout the nation, GOP hopefuls have recently begun offering voters who submit personal contact information to their campaign websites and e-mailing lists the chance to win a firearm through number-based raffles.
Though a relatively unexploited political maneuver, such gun raffles have been used to collect information during a California race for sheriff, a Senate primary in South Carolina, and an unsuccessful gubernatorial run in Colorado. Though he was unsuccessful in making the Republican ballot, state Sen. Greg Brophy also ran his own gun sweepstakes while campaigning for governor of Colorado.
Brophy was quoted in an April 19th interview with Patriots, Pecs, and Ammo Magazine saying, “This gun sweepstakes, it’s just the beginning. These men and women who are entering the raffles are Republicans anyway. Now the next step is we gots [sic] to figure out how to get these people to the polls.”
In cooperation with the fundraising group Sons and Daughters of Constitutional Soil, a new Colorado GOP-sponsored website has since been launched. The site attempts to solicit volunteers to “help get hesitant voters to the polls, and, more importantly, educate them on why they should vote right”, according to the website’s mission statement.
The website, VOTEORWE’LLBLOWYOURSKULLAPART.COM, so far has already received 50,000 hits and attracted upwards of a 1,000 volunteers.
A request from the site owners for further information has been ignored, though an excerpt from an instructional handbook, normally available only to volunteers, has been obtained by Newslo.
It reads, in part, “To attract voters who might be hesitant to vote, and vote right, we are embarking on a new strategy in which we send armed volunteers to the homes of anyone who has not submitted contact information to our gun raffles… If, after gentle prodding, they still seem undecided or hesitant in voting, we suggest firing a warning shot just to let them know this is serious business. Perhaps aim at a birdbath or vanity mailbox. If the warning shot doesn’t produce the desired effect, more extreme measures are encouraged.”
State Sen. Brophy, when queried on the Colorado GOP’s new strategy responded,
“Look, man. No one’s doing anything illegal. You’re allowed to go door to door here. And to be honest if we have to blow a skull apart it’s only because these people still refuse to vote, and, to be entirely honest now, that scares us.”
He continued, “So really we’re just standing our political ground like a political Zimmerman, and what’s wrong with that? When Jay Z said ‘Vote or Die,’ he’s on all your musical televisions. But when we actually carry the warning out, we’re demonized by the liberal media. Now isn’t that the real issue here?”
