Payback for Celine Dion? 
Heh. Next you’ll tell me Bill O’Reilly is an independent…
But he has a card that says so.
Of course, when I was 12, I had a card that said I was a Playboy photographer/scout. I wasn’t. Really.
Yeah. I was a member of the F. B. I.
Female Body Inspectors! Heh heh! Snort!
Apparently, right-wing talk host, Laura Ingraham is telling her listeners that it would be a good idea to call and jam the phone lines to report voting problems. Thinkprogress has an audio clip of her doing so.
Isn’t this blatantly illegal?
It’s the same sort of thing the New Hampshire Republican Party got spiked for not that long ago.
There’s probably a case to be made that she’s violated one of the Voting Rights Acts as well as telephone harassment laws, and a pretty good conspiracy case as well.
:dubious: Look hard, did ya?
Here.
And here.
And here.
And Here.
Took me all of five minutes.
I’ll observe forum rules and bite my fucking tongue now.
Can any of our left-wingers here defend this kind of activity, some of which is being done with little apology or shame by the official Democratic election committees, and high party officials?
Your first link leads to a blog that leads to a broken link of a news story about the 2004 election. It also doesn’t appear to be related to voting fraud in any way. Election fund issues, sure, and lock them up if proven. Voting fraud? I’m not seeing it. Also note that many of the folks who are demanding answers the loudest in this case are Democrats.
Second link leads to another blog that dicusses the problems in Wisconsin in 2004, but I didn’t see any indication that we had discovered what happened, much less who perpetrated it.
Third link is to another blog that has a broken link, and also appears to be from 2004, although it’s pretty hard to figure out what the hell’s going on since no source data is available from there.
Fourth link is to another blog, which cites a report which was created by the “non-partisan American Center for Voting Rights”, which just happens to have as principlas: the co-chair of “Democrats for Bush”, the National Election Counsel to President Bush’s reelection campaign, a former Republican National Committee Communications Director who worked for Bush, and the founder of the Virginia Conservative Action PAC. It’s also the only “Voting Rights” group that was allowed to testify before Bob Ney’s (R) congressional hearings on voting rights issues, even though it was created the month prior to the hearings and created their website five days before the hearings to have an air of legitimacy. That their fundraising efforts go through the same funnel as the folks behind the Swift Boat Veterans doesn’t even surprise me at this point.
Perhaps an extra ten minutes might have helped in this case.
I’m finding it difficult to find even mildly substantiated Democratic Voter fraud in any of your links, but if it’s there, I’m more than happy to see those involved punished to the fullest extent of the law. This includes anyone who does so in the present election, as well as future elections. I feel that voting should be equally quick, easy, honest, and fairly handled for all, regardless of party affiliation. What about you?
So, what’s your stance on the current dirty tricks that have been outlined in this thread?
The first and third are obviously indefensible and seem pretty clear-cut (if allegations are actually true beyond the anecdotal), though the former seems more about misappropriation of resources, which is still bad but not germane to the OP.
The second link didn’t work for me.
But your last link is a joke. The “non-partisan” ACVR is far from non-partisan, so I’m going to take any claims they make (whether “discrediting” evidence or making new allegations) with a serous grain of salt.
… And it looks like DMC beat me to it more thoroughly anyway…
Cite #1 is two years old and is about a guy who has long since been bounced from office (via recall, I believe; he might have resigned).
Cite #2 is headlined “Wisconsin Voter Fraud Probed”; it is remarkably devoid of content. A task force was formed (again, from early 2005) and . . . I have no idea what else. Did anything come of this, or was it just allegations?
Cite #3 is about fraud in East St Louis, Illinois. The sum total of allegations nets about 750 voters. That, I’m sure, tilted the balance of power in that city from 88.7% Democratic to 89%.
Cite #4 is from the blog of a self-described “staunch conservative”. This entry is about a 368-page report on 2004 election fraud, issued by a group called the “American Center for Voting Rights”. The ACVR describes itself as a “non-partisan, non-profit organization that neither supports nor endorses any political party or candidate”. This statement is known among political scientists as “complete bullshit.” ACVR is an astroturf organization that is staffed exclusively by high-level GOP operatives with ties to Jack Abramoff and Karl Rove, among others.
In other words: there’s nothing whatsoever here, beyond rank partisan screeching, that implicates “the official Democratic election committees, and high party officials”. There were no races you cited whose outcomes might have been altered by whichever voter fraud you mention; there is no implication that national Democratic organizations were involved.
Meanwhile, the RNC paid for the legal defense of a man who jammed the phones of Democratic GOTV phone banks in New Hampshire on Election Day 2002. The man was campaign chairman for George Bush in New England in 2004.
And today we hear more charges of phone-jamming of Democratic campaign offices throughout the entire country. I haven’t heard one case yet today where it’s happened to the GOP.
The more things change . . .
Dag-nabbit, both of you beat me!
To be fair, if the stuff posted in that blog is actually true, then I’m all for condemning it soundly, whether it had any effect on the outcome or not. I just couldn’t make that determination since it was to a 2 year old blog entry that sourced a broken link. I’m quite sincere when I say I want it stopped, on all sides. I do agree with the premise of this thread that evidence so far shows it to be predominantly a Republican driven problem, but if the side engaging in most of it becomes the Democrats in the future, I’ll be just as pissed.
Why is it that liberals can find examples of Republican voter-supression tactics in mainstream media outlets, while conservatives have to dig through right-wing moonbat bloggers (like Powerline) to produce “evidence” of Democratic shenanagans?
(And please, let’s not get this “liberal media” nonsense – the non-coverage given to the Bush Administration over the last six years should put that canard to rest)
I didn’t jump to the defense of anything. I said that I know two of the people in that flier were know to me to have endorsed Steele or Ehrlich, and with that in mind that it didn’t seem misleading. Now, you posted a link that said Johnson did not endorse Steele. Did he endorse Ehrlich? I don’t know. If he did, well my original point stands. If he didn’t, and I got him confused with his predecessor (there is also a Mr. Jackson who is a prominent minister in PG county who HAS endorsed Steele, I may have confused the two of them), then he doesn’t belong there. Seems pretty simple to me.
In any event, even if all three of the men on that flier had stated that they hoped Ehrlich and Steele got hit by a bus, I have a hard time getting upset about it anyway. I think it’s STUPID more than anything else, and I also know that it’s a tactic that has been used by both the Democrats and the Republicans in countless elections since time immortal. Frankly, if you’re (generic you) a big enough moron that you just blindly vote for whoever is on a piece of paper handed to you by an electioneer outside the polling place, then you deserve what you get. The actual ballot itself says in big letters “Ehrlich-Republican for Governor” and “O’Malley-Democrat for Governor”. Don’t go crying idiot to me if that’s too complicated for you. Maybe you should give up on voting and stick to something that’s a little more reasonable for someone of your abilities, like breathing.
Wanted to toss up two links to sites that are following the election and various outrages. They don’t deal only with the robo-calling but I think it fits with the OP.
sigh Still new here.
Here is the second one:
Video the Vote
Oh, I should also note that the first appears to probably be partisan while the second appears to be less so.
Ok, I’m done now. Really.
At least we haven’t heard anything, yet, about Pub “poll watchers” in low-income precincts buttonholing would-be voters and demanding to see their ID, like we did in 2004.
For the record, of the 3 men pictured on the flier, one (Wayne Curry) has endorsed Steele, and none of them have endorsed Erlich. And the flier does not make the claim that Erlich and Steele are Democrats. On the back it helpfully points out that:
So the intent of this flier is clearly to suggest that Erlich and Steele are endorsed by Curry, Johnson and Mfume, which is complete bullshit.
Is this OK by you? if so, where do you draw the line? What kind of crap is it OK to peddle about a candidate before it crosses the line?
I should have also added a note expressing this sentiment. Voter fraud has to be stopped, regardless of whom does it.