It it was the presidential election of 1964 that marked the first national effort at partisan vote suppression. It was called Operation Eagle Eye. The approach was simple: to challenge voters, especially voters of color, at the polls throughout the country on a variety of specious pretexts. If the challenge did not work outright—that is, if the voter was not prevented from casting a ballot (provisional ballots were not in widespread use at this time)—the challenge would still slow down the voting process, create long lines at the polls, and likely discourage some voters who could not wait or did not want to go through the hassle they were seeing other voters endure.
A Republican memo, obtained by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 1964, outlined plans for challenging voters at the polls and described the tactics as including encouraging stalling on lines in Democratic districts, equipping poll watchers with cameras to “frighten off . . . Democratic wrong-doers,” enlisting the help of local police sympathetic to the Goldwater campaign, and charging that ineligible Democratic voters were on the registration rolls.
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