U.S. ELECTION British paper ends readers' letter writing

The writers targeted Clark County, Ohio.
LONDON (AP) -- A British newspaper that set off a trans-Atlantic political storm when it urged its readers to write to Ohio voters in an attempt to sway their ballot choice in the U.S. presidential race said Sunday that it had ended the campaign.
The Guardian newspaper said that it stopped giving out names and addresses of undecided voters after hackers broke into its Web site a week ago, effectively ending "Operation Clark County."
Editors also professed themselves overwhelmed with the response to the campaign -- a response that included Guardian reporters' being deluged with thousands of angry e-mails from Americans.
The newspaper also has abandoned plans to take four of the best letter writers to Springfield, Ohio, to meet voters. Instead it will send the winners to the "more tranquil" Washington D.C. for a vacation.
Targeted Clark County
The Guardian had invited its readers to contact voters in Clark County, Ohio, a swing state, about the importance of the Nov. 2 election.
The newspaper's Web site said letter-writers were free to support either President Bush or Sen. John Kerry but noted that a Guardian poll showed 47 percent of Britons backed Kerry and 16 percent supported Bush.
Within the first day, more than 3,000 readers logged on to the newspaper's Web site to obtain the name and address of an unaffiliated voter taken from the electoral roll.
The campaign became a worldwide story, and Web site readers from several countries, including Australia, Japan, Canada, Morocco, Chile, France and Italy, applied for addresses.