November 6th, 2006
It is really bad in Virginia:
Over the past several days, voters throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia have filed complaints of incidents aimed at suppressing voter turn out in heavily Democratic and African American neighborhoods. Today, the Secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections Jean Jensen concluded that the incidents appear widespread and deliberate.
… ) Calls that Voting will Lead to Arrest.
Tim Daly from Clarendon got a call saying that if he votes Tuesday, he will be arrested. A recording of his voicemail can be found online at: www.webbforsenate.com/media/phone_message.wav
The transcript from his voicemail reads:
“This message is for Timothy Daly. This is the Virginia Elections Commission. We’ve determined you are registered in New York to vote. Therefore, you will not be allowed to cast your vote on Tuesday. If you do show up, you will be charged criminally.”
… Widespread Calls, Allegedly from “Webb Volunteers,” Telling Voters that their Polling Location has Changed.
It is not just happening in Virginia. People in New Mexico and New York have been called and told that their voting location has changed. TPM has reports of these kinds of calls from WI and MN as well. Unlike the harassment calls, the NRCC and RNC have not admitted to these calls, but the number and widespread nature of the calls is suggestive of co-ordination.
And, of course, the harassing robo-calls designed to make voters think Democrats are the harassers are happening all over the country:
In each case, the calls begin with “Hi, I’m calling with information about [insert local Democratic candidate here],” and then continues to provide negative information about the candidate. Counter to FCC rules, which require that the caller identify themselves early on in the call, the calls only reveal that they are paid for by the NRCC at the end of the call. You can listen to one of these calls (from New York’s 19th district) here. There are more than a few reports of voters getting frustrated by repeated calls they believe to be from the Dem candidate. [Update: Here is a recording of someone's glutted answering machine in Tammy Duckworth's district.]
The firm conducting the calls is Conquest Communications, and reviewing the NRCC’s independent expenditures filed with the FEC over the past week shows Conquest active in 20 different House races. The full list of expenditures, which includes the incredibly cheap price tags for these calls which reach hundreds of thousands of voters, is below the fold.
So this is what the GOP thinks of American democracy. They aren’t interested in convincing their fellow citizens that they are right and the Democrats are wrong. They aren’t interested in respecting the decisions of the American people. They are interested in keeping power, and they are willing to deny people their right to vote to get it. These are the tactics of the bully, the thug, and strongman. These are the tactics of the modern GOP.
Categories: General, Politics |
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November 6th, 2006
My email is hosed at the host level, and I am not sure how long its going to take to fix. As much as I enjoyed not getting hate mail for a month you can use this one until I get the mess at the host worked out. The link on the right has also been fixed.
leanleftblog@yahoo.com
Categories: Bloggin, General |
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November 6th, 2006
I don’t like doing mid-term projections, since the races are so poorly understood, but what is a blog without rampant speculation and wild guesses? I am making these predictions with the following assumptions:
- GOP voter suppression will have an effect. The combination of dirty phone tricks and the usual intimidation and shorting of supplies to Dem precinct will help drive vote down.
- Early voting will blunt some of the voter suppression tactics. There seems to have been a lot of early voting in contested races.
- Racism still has enough currency in parts of this country to make a difference in close races.
- The DEM GOTV effort has mostly caught the GOP GOTV effort.
- I am not a terribly optimistic fellow.
Having said that, and based on the most recent polls and the assumptions above:
SENATE: +4 Dems. Ford will almost certainly lose. Too Black, too Memphis, too Ford for the rest of the state. It’ll be close, though: the early voting in Dem strongholds was impressive. Webb will almost certainly win, as will Cardin and Menendez. Brown and Casey will almost certainly win. I suspect that McCaskill will win, Chafee will win a close one (he is well liked, his apology ad seems to have some effect, and voters like the appearance of bi-partisanship, even when the reality is not present), and Tester will lose a close one. Lamont and Pederson will lose, through both will be closer than expected. MO, MT, and RI are still so close, though, that it’s possible that the Dems could sweep them and end up with +6. I can see the logical argument for that, but I think that until proven otherwise, the combination of voter suppression and GOP voters coming home has to lean against that outcome. If Chafee and Allen both go down, and especially if Chafee goes down ugly, then the GOP could be in for a long night and Ford has a real shot and even Pederson in AZ could surprise, as we might just be looking at a real wave.
HOUSE: +20. This is pretty pessimistic, but, as noted, the GOP closes well. I basically gave the GOP the benefit of the doubt in close races, especially outside the Northeast. I think voter suppression, incumbency, and GOP voters coming home will prop up some incumbents in the Mountain West, knock off a couple of Dems in the South (specifically, Georgia) and hold a couple seats in Upstate New York and Pennsylvania. The Dems will probably roll through the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, coming close to wiping out the GOP in that region. They will do well in the Mountain West and Upper Plains, and probably take a couple of GOP incumbents in strange districts in California. Ohio is probably going to swing completely blue, but that is a special circumstance. The GOP will look much, much more Southern after tomorrow, and much less like a national party. If all goes well, the 30-40 seats is an outside possibility, and that kind of number would mean that the GOP was decimated everywhere outside of the Confederacy.
Governors +6. Again, conservative for the same reasons as above.
Categories: Politics |
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November 6th, 2006
This is why I am not optimistic about tomorrow:
Talking Points Memo has been gathering evidence that Republicans are using robo-phone-calls to annoy voters in Connecticut and New York - i.e., the calls make voters think it’s the Democratic candidate harrassing them, so they won’t vote for him or her.
The messages start like they are going are from the Democratic candidate “I have a message from….” but then turn in to a negative call. However, callers are only hearing the first part of the message, thinking that it is the Democrat. If callers hang up, they’re called back again, and again, and again. End result? The Democratic callers are so ticked off at the Democrat harassing them that they don’t vote, or vote for the Republican - without realizing they’ve just been tricked.
The National Republican Campaign Committee admitted they’re making the calls in an Associated Press article reported on TPM Muckraker last Wednesday:
NRCC spokesman Ed Patru denied any illegal intent.
“All of our political calls are in compliance with the law,” Patru said.
Not so, said the Democrats.
“They are violating the regulations that were set up,” said Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who said the DCCC employed one robocall this cycle and paid $500 for it.
This is happening all over the country:
tates in which GOP fake calls are happening so far:
* Philly
* Kansas
* NH
* CT
* NY
To be clear: the GOP is deliberately harassing voters with calls designed to sound as if they are coming from Democratic candidates. They are doing this to anger people enough to get them to switch votes or to stay home. The GOP has nothing else but lies, deception, and harassment. It seems clear that the GOP plan to hold onto the House rests largely on voter suppression. Unfortunately, voter suppression has worked in the past. Combine these kinds of harassment with the deliberate plans by the GOP to challange voters — primarily to slow down the lines and get people to leave; anyone they can intimidate out of voting is a bonus — and a lack of proper equipment in democratic areas — as happened in 2004 — and you have a recipe for winning through denying people their right to vote.
The GOP is intent on denying the will of the voter. It is, as evidenced by their un-democratic tactics, the only way they can hold onto power. These peole have to go, if for no other reason than their tactics poison the democratic process.
UPDATE: Help make these calsl meaningless: Do More Than Vote
Categories: Politics |
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