Scam Threatens Voter Roll Removal
WHITFIELD: All right, this race for the White House is coming down to the electoral votes in the battleground states. And Florida takes the cake. It has 29 electoral votes. A poll taken before the last debate shows Romney leading Obama by just one percentage point in Florida. So every Florida vote is crucial. But an investigation is underway after some Florida voters received letters questioning whether they are legally eligible to vote. The letters claim to be from the county election supervisor saying this. Quote, "failure to submit this form within 15 days will result in the removal of your name from the voter registration rolls and you will no longer be eligible to vote. A nonregistered voter who casts a vote in the state of Florida may be subject to arrest, imprisonment and/or other criminal sanctions," end quote. I'm joined right now by one of the voters who actually received that letter. Bill Bishop is the president of the Jacksonville City Council. So, Mr. Bishop, you received one of these letters in the mail. How did this strike you when you received it? Did it look authentic?</s>BILL BISHOP, RECEIVED BOGUS VOTER INTIMIDATION LETTER: Well, when I received the letter, at first blush it looked like just another piece of political junk mail. But then after closer inspection of the outside of it, it had just enough officiality to it that made me open it up. But even then it didn't quite look exactly right.</s>WHITFIELD: So given you work for the city, you probably are a little bit more astute as to what kind of mail looks official or not. Do you know anybody else who received this kind of letter and, if so, what was their reaction? How have they responded?</s>BISHOP: Well, I don't know anybody personally who else received it. I do know there were several in Jacksonville that did. And after further conversations with our supervisor of elections, there were many throughout the state and in multiple counties that received them.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, Joe Johns, our correspondent out of Washington, is also with us now to join in on the conversation. Joe, you recently did a documentary about voter fraud, intimidation and, you know, voter ID changes in laws. Is this -- this kind of campaign, where these letters are going out, is this kind of in sync with a wave of confusion that is sweeping many jurisdictions across the country leading up to this election day?</s>JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, I think that's exactly the word you need to use. It's -- we're talking about confusion here. And there's a lot of confusion around the country, certainly there in the state of Florida. And I think Mr. Bishop is one good sort of representative of it. And the question is, why? Why would somebody create confusion? In this case, the authorities say they're looking at it as, you know, plain and simple, mail fraud. The FBI, we're told, has just announced that they have launched an investigation, joining up with United States Postal Inspectors and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, all to try to take a good, hard look at why letters like these coming from Seattle, Washington, going to the state of Florida, would actually have been put in the mail. For what purpose? Confusion, yes. But the thing that's interesting is that if you look at Mr. Bishop, there are a lot of others, we're told, who are people who are very politically active, who received these letters. So it doesn't appear that the objective was just to quietly make people not vote. Whoever did this appears to have wanted it to become public and to become known and for people to talk about it, Fredricka.</s>WHITFIELD: OK. So, Mr. Bishop, you know, Joe underscoring there, you know, many of these letters actually targeted, you know, city officials. Many also targeted registered Republicans. And when you look at a postmark from Seattle to some of these Florida addresses, what does this tell you about this campaign or who might be responsible? Who is behind this kind of letter campaign?</s>BISHOP: Well, as far as who's behind it, I have no idea. I mean this is something that just doesn't make any sense. All it could potentially do is just tie up various time of the employees of all the supervisor of elections office because it doesn't ask anybody to do anything other than contact your supervisor of elections. So all it -- the end result is, it just becomes a major distraction of everybody's time and I think, as it was described as voter confusion, is probably about the only thing you can fathom out of all of this, because otherwise it just doesn't make any sense.</s>WHITFIELD: Just 13 days before election day. Joe, you mentioned there's an investigation underway. But there are a lot of investigations on so many different levels and so many different jurisdictions. Is it possible that these investigators who really get to the bottom of anything by November 6th?</s>JOHNS: Now, you know, that's the million dollar question. And the question for voters out there is, what do I do? And I think that underscores the importance of staying attuned to your media, reading your newspapers, keeping up with what's going on in the elections so that you know if there's a scam out there or somebody suggests you're not supposed to vote or somebody says vote on a different day or whatever it is, be aware. It's more important for the American electorate to be aware and sort of prepared for anything because a lot of people think this is a very unusual election, but, Fredricka, I have to tell you, to some degree this is about social media and the ability to move a message around, so more people are actually finding out about the underbelly of elections and the strange little things that go on in the last few days leading up to a hotly contested election.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, Joe Johns, Bill Bishop, thank you to both of you gentlemen. I appreciate it.</s>BISHOP: Thank you.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, up next, the comments that are giving Mitt Romney's campaign a big headache today. A U.S. Senate candidate, who Romney endorsed, said pregnancies from rape are intended by God. And you're about to hear Richard Mourdock's response to his critics.