Fools and Their Money

All Things Considered:

Dozens of anonymous billboards have popped up in urban areas in the crucial battleground states of Ohio and Wisconsin. The signs note that voter fraud is a felony, punishable by up to 3 1/2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Civil rights groups and Democrats complain that the billboards are meant to intimidate voters.
The billboards began appearing two weeks ago — 85 of them in and around Milwaukee, and an additional 60 in Cleveland and Columbus. The signs say in large white letters "Voter Fraud is a Felony!" There's a big picture of a judge's gavel and small letters at the bottom that say the ads are funded simply by a "private family foundation."
A number of liberal groups and labor organizations are demanding that the billboards be taken down.
"I think that these billboards are designed to suppress the vote. That is their intention," says Scot Ross, executive director of one of those groups, the Institute for One Wisconsin.
Ross notes that many of the signs are located in predominantly black, Hispanic and university neighborhoods.

I believe that Republicans have passed voter ID laws to try to suppress the vote among poor and elderly minorities, but I don't really see this as a very effective campaign to intimidate voters.  I would think that instead of preventing nearly nonexistant in-person voter fraud, it will encourage people to go out to vote, just to stick it to the folks behind the billboards. I imagine that some crazy, old, rich white guy who believes that the only reason Obama won election was massive voter fraud (and not the total incompetence of the Bush administration) got the hare brained idea to buy up all these billboards to help "take back his country."  Well, it is a good thing he's rich, because I think he's just wasting good money.

However, I am currently reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and I am amazed at all the crazy things her family believes/gives credence to about Johns Hopkins killing black folks and stuff.  I know there have been some terrible interactions between blacks and the medical establishment, and in the case of Lacks, she was treated fairly poorly by Hopkins.  But their ideas are really out there.  So maybe some folks would think that the law would come after them and throw them in jail if they voted, even when they legally can.  Maybe I'm just approaching this with the detachment available for a rural white guy.  The only obvious winner here is Clear Channel, the owner of the billboards.