Web site helped expose fraud in
signature drive
Letter to the editor, Salem News | February 1, 2006
To the Editor:
As the co-director of KnowThyNeighbor.org, I was disturbed by your recent editorial criticizing our Web site, which publishes the names of the anti-gay marriage petition signers.
Our Web site has been instrumental in providing many citizens with the means to identify the fraud that was perpetrated against them. Yet you call our efforts to expose this fraud "disingenuous at best and crassly hypocritical at worst."
Let's get the facts straight: Despite promising a grass-roots, citizen-driven campaign, the sponsors of this petition paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to contract a California signature-collection company with a national reputation for committing fraud. The out-of-state workers shipped in by this company were trained in bait and switch and other con-artist techniques and were paid up to $2 per signature with some of the "better" workers making over $1,000 per day.
How do we know this? It was reported to the civil investigator appointed by the attorney general, it was discussed in detail at the Statehouse hearing held by the Joint Committee on Election Laws, and it has been described in thousands of fraud reports filed by Massachusetts citizens. Didn't you see the "Fox Undercover" report showing how 30 people had their signatures stolen in one hour at the Swampscott Market Basket?
Anyone who is concerned about the integrity of our democracy should welcome the scrutiny that KnowThyNeighbor.org is bringing to this process and be thankful that this deception is being exposed. And as far as hypocrisy, you should be directing those charges against petition sponsors like the Massachusetts Family Institute, not us. They claim to be protecting families, but are sponsoring an amendment that would make it impossible for many children in our state to have married parents.
I guess it's just too bad for our gay friends, neighbors and relatives whose rights continue to hang in the balance while newspapers like yours turn a blind eye to the senseless and mean-spirited act of bigotry that is this proposed amendment and its duplicitous sponsors.
Aaron Toleos, Director
KnowThyNeighbor.org
Boxford
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