Dispatch From the Polls

By NADIA PFLAUM

Approximation of the van in question.

A volunteer with the Sen. Barack Obama campaign (who happens to be a former police officer) just called to say that two of the five-passenger vans being used to transport campaign volunteers were pulled over by Kansas City, Missouri, police. The occupants were handcuffed, our tipster says.

According to Officer Darin Snapp of the KCPD, the police were called at 11:30 this morning by someone at Research Medical Center, who reported that some customers had left the hospital cafeteria without paying. On their way out the doors, the same customers allegedly helped an old woman who was entering the hospital, and the woman thought that one of her helpers took money out of her open purse.

The police arrived at the hospital and followed a Research security vehicle that was trailing a van full of Obama volunteers. They pulled the van over, and Obama door-hangers spilled out. The occupants were detained for about 20 minutes, Snapp says, but the woman who reported the theft of her money couldn’t positively identify any of the van’s occupants as the people she’d seen, so the police let the Obama volunteers go. Snapp says he heard from one of the officers at the scene that the van’s crew chief said, “Man, we’re gonna be in trouble. We weren’t supposed to take this long for lunch — these door hangers are already supposed to be on doors by now.”