Republicans Harass Millions of Voters

POSTED BY: SoupCatcher
UPDATED: Friday, November 10, 2006 23:43
VIEWED: 2465
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HERO

Monday, November 6, 2006 9:11 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Whimsicalnbrainpan:
I have to say, I am a registered independent and I am getting equal amounts of harassment from both sides. I now answer my phone: "WHAT!"

I answer mine in a really deep voice: "Go for Blaine" like that guy on The Unit.

Its confusing, since my names not Blaine.

H

SOUPCATCHER

Monday, November 6, 2006 9:31 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Quote:
Originally posted by Whimsicalnbrainpan:
I have to say, I am a registered independent and I am getting equal amounts of harassment from both sides. I now answer my phone: "WHAT!"

I answer mine in a really deep voice: "Go for Blaine" like that guy on The Unit.

Its confusing, since my names not Blaine.

H

I have yet to get a call from a real live person. As soon as I hear that it is a recording I hang up. (* edited to add: Okay, I just got a recorded message that I actually listened to all the way through. Not because I agreed with the call, it was for someone I'm not voting for, but because it was Clint Eastwood! I just liked listening to his voice

).

When I was out walking a precinct in the neighboring district people had complaints about the number of recorded calls they were getting. They were really ticked. However, nobody was rude about me knocking on their door on a Saturday afternoon. Some politely told me they were busy and I thanked them for their time and left.

I'd be pissed, too, if I was getting the number of automated calls that these people were reporting.

CARTOON

Tuesday, November 7, 2006 12:43 AM

I wonder if having a "listed" (as opposed to "unlisted") telephone number would make a difference. I know that most telemarketers probably just use computerized-dialers which randomly run through numbers. But, these may be different, since they seem to be targeting people from particular parties.

I've always been registered to vote, but my telephone number is unlisted. Thus far, I've not received any calls from candidates (or anyone associated with a candidate) -- while my mother (with a listed phone number, in a neighboring town) seems to be getting pestered incessantly.

I have been polled twice in the past year, but to date, haven't received a single political call.

I'm grateful, but suddenly feeling overlooked.

RUE

Friday, November 10, 2006 8:31 AM

I just thought I'd plunk this here.

I really wonder why George Allen conceded so quickly. He was revving up for a recount, then suddenly 'folded like a cheap suitcase'. I keep thinking Warner told him - lookit, idiot. Ixnay on the ecountray. You got more votes counted than you should'av. We really don't want 'em poking through the elections.

Any thoughts?

SIMONWHO

Friday, November 10, 2006 1:45 PM

Perhaps this thread should now be retitled "Millions of Voters Harass Republicans".

Nice also to see Bush and Rumsfolded being so charming about democracy in action, calling voters stupid and having defective values.

CHRISISALL

Friday, November 10, 2006 2:08 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
We really don't want 'em poking through the elections.

Well, you can only easily phoney an election by 10-20%, and that means if the vote ain't close, you're wasting your time at best, and leaving prints for nothing at worst. They'd probabably be shooting for 'best'.

Chrisisall

RUE

Friday, November 10, 2006 5:52 PM

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1553682,00.html

Quote:
The exit poll data that will be used by the media on Election Day comes from one source: the National Election Pool (NEP). The NEP is a consortium of six news organizations: the Associated Press, CNN and the news divisions of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. It was created in 2003, after a previous consortium of the same news organizations, the Voter News Service (VNS), failed to provide accurate exit poll data in both the 2000 and 2002 general elections.

The main difference between the two consortiums is that the NEP employs two outside consulting firms — Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International — to conduct the actual exit polls. (The AP still compiles county-by-county voting results.)

... Because of the online (EARLY) leak, "it became widely believed from about 3 p.m. to 7 p.m that John Kerry was ahead," ...

But the quarantine, it is hoped, will prevent the MISTAKES of 2004.

In 2004 the FINAL exit polls still called the election for Kerry - in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio (key states) as well as several other states. It was those final polls' (brief) appearance on the internet that gave credence to the idea that the elections had been manipulated. Because in all cases, 2-4% Kerry leads conflicted with 2-4% Kerry losses in the vote. The original FINAL exit polls were later scrubbed and replaced with 'official' exit polls. Those polls were noted to have been 'corrected' to reflect the 'vote'.

BTW, what do these faggots think we are anyway? Do they think no one remembers what really happened in 2004? Is that why they feel they can so blatantly lie about what happened a mere two years ago? The EARLY data wasn't the issue, it was the FINAL data that statisticians were analyzing. The FINAL data that was scrubbed ASAP. Thank fate for the internet and the google cache. Sure it makes getting the news a do-it-yourself job, but at least there's some way to show up these lying sacks of crap for what they are.

SOUPCATCHER

Friday, November 10, 2006 9:53 PM

Well the Feds in Virginia are investigating vote-suppression phone calls and that investigation should continue no matter if the vote counting stops. Unless they canned the investigation. I haven't heard anything about it since election day.

I was happy to see a strong proponent of open-source software for voting machines elected as Secretary of State here in California. No matter what happens in the rest of the country, it looks like our election process is about to improve.

I wanted to kind of do a post-mortem on the robo calls. It's hard to say how effective they were. Ended up there were two companies contracted by the NRCC that did these types of calls. There were hundreds of thousands of calls paid for in each district. Numerous complaints to the Democratic candidates campaign office. So we know that people were getting pissed off about these calls (and getting pissed off at the wrong party) we just don't know how many. I don't think these calls were the major factor in these races but, for races that were pretty close, the effect of these calls might have been enough to push the election one way or the other. So my prediction is, unless this practice is definitively ruled illegal and cracked down on, we should expect to see the Republican party use this tactic again next election (and, most probably, the Democratic party following suit).

Here's the list of districts where the two companies were contracted to call people. Some of these were pretty close.

Republican holds
CA-04 Doolittle R - won by 7k votes
CA-50 Bilbray R - won by 18k votes
CO-04 Musgrave R - leading by 7k votes
CT-04 Shays R - won by 7k votes
FL-13 Open R - leading by 386 votes ** (updated number)
IL-06 Open R – won by 4k votes
IN-03 Souder R – won by 15k votes
KY-02 Lewis R – won by 23k votes
KY-04 Davis R – won by 16k votes
NE-03 Open R – won by 20k votes
NM-01 Wilson R – leading by 1.5k votes
NY-25 Walsh R – won by 4k votes
NY-29 Kuhl R – won by 6k votes
PA-06 Gerlach R – won by 3k votes
VA-02 Drake R – won by 5k votes

Democratic takes/holds
AZ-05 Hayworth R - lost by 6k votes
CT-02 Simmons R - losing by 167 votes
CT-05 Johnson R - lost by 27k votes
FL-16 Foley R - lost by 4k votes
GA-08 Marshall D – won by 2k votes
GA-12 Barrow D – leading by 889 votes
IA-01 Open R – lost by 24k votes
IA-03 Boswell D – won by 11k votes
IL-08 Bean D – won by 12k votes
KS-02 Ryun R – lost by 7k votes
NC-11 Taylor R – lost by 17k votes
NH-02 Bass R – lost by 15k votes
NY-19 Kelly R – lost by 4k votes
PA-04 Hart R – lost by 10k votes
PA-10 Sherwood R – lost by 12k votes
TX-22 Open R – lost by 15k votes * (write-in candidate Sekula-Gibbs)
WI-08 Open R – lost by 7k votes

* edited to add: This isn't a definitive list of districts where the illegal robo-calls were used, by the way. Just a subset.

RUE

Friday, November 10, 2006 10:41 PM

Wow. That's quite a lot of information. THANKS.

SOUPCATCHER

Friday, November 10, 2006 11:43 PM

Thanks, Rue. I hadn't seen any follow up on this story so I decided to do some digging. Turns out, I could've just linked to this post - http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001974.php .

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