Res Publica 2005

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Missouri's Republican Party wants a Democratic-aligned group to stop circulating a get-out-the-vote flier that includes a 1960s photograph of a firefighter hosing a black man that reads: "This is what they used to do to keep us from voting."

The America Coming Together handout accuses Republicans of conspiring to suppress the black vote through intimidation and such tactics as putting "phony cops at polling places - but only in African American neighborhoods."

"They make African-American voters stand in line for hours, then turn them away from the polls," the flier reads. "Now (U.S. Attorney General) John Ashcroft is trying to prevent African-Americans from registering to vote at all."

The Republican Party of Missouri called the fliers "racially charged" and said they were designed to obscure Republican efforts to increase black voting.

"This kind of false advertising aimed at African-Americans is clearly an attempt to intimidate and mislead voters," said Paul Sloca, a spokesman for the state GOP.