ELECTION DAY How ballot campaign sowed voter confusion
Misleading information handed out citywide
Daniel Connolly, Samuel Hardiman and Sarah Macaraeg
A 20-year-old college student with his rent due, Chris Schulze started election day eager to earn $20 per hour handing out campaign literature to voters.
By 7 a.m., he had picked up the sample ballots he was to pass out and stationed himself at a voting location.
Once there, Schulze followed talking points that he and three other campaign workers told The Commercial Appeal that employees of political consulting firm Caissa Public Strategy coached them to say.
“I have the OFFICIAL Democrat or Republican party ballots. Would you like one or both?” Schulze said he was told to say.
The flyers, which urged voters to choose a specific slate of candidates, appeared similar to dozens of other endorsement ballots distributed at polling stations across the city for years.
But as Schulze distributed them outside the Bert Ferguson Community Center in Cordova, strangers told him the “official” Democratic ballot he was offering voters wasn’t official at all. It was fake, they said, and the Shelby County Democratic Party had gone to court to stop it.
Schulze sent a text message to Max Miller, the fraternity brother who had recruited him.
“So I just heard that a judge issued a temporary restraining order on the ballots I was handing out,” Schulze wrote.
Miller, a project coordinator for Caissa, replied: “It’s not true.”
What is an endorsement ballot?
In Memphis election parlance, the flyers that show a slate of candidates endorsed by a local public figure or entity, are referred to as “ballots.” They’re a common sight during election season.
More inside
Are sample endorsement ballots effective campaign tactics? Memphis candidates differ. Page 12A