Antidemocratic Immoral Scumbags

by hilzoy

That's what I think of anyone who engages in voter suppression. Like this:

"Our own Alec Oveis, who sadly left the Prospect few months ago, calls in from Connecticut, where he's volunteering on behalf of Chris Murphy (one of Tom's "Dropkick Murphys" positioned to defeat GOP incumbents this year). He reports that voter fury over robocalls is amazing and palpable at the polling site he's near. Several people have gone out of their way to tell him and other Murphy people that they're voting for Republican incumbent Nancy Johnson strictly out of anger at the harassing phone calls they've been receiving from the Murphy campaign. Alec and other's explanations that those calls are actually paid for by Republicans have generally been falling on deaf ears (they are, after all, holding Murphy signs while offering these explanations)."

And this:

"Tim Daly from Clarendon got a call saying that if he votes Tuesday, he will be arrested. (...) 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."

Daly has been registered to vote in Virginia since 1998, and he has voted for the last several cycles with no problem. He has filed a criminal complaint with the Commonwealth's attorney in Arlington."

Here's the recorded message (.wav). Also (same link as above):

"Widespread Calls, Allegedly from "Webb Volunteers," Telling Voters that their Polling Location has Changed.

A couple of examples:

a. Norman Cox has been registered to vote in the same location in Arlington since 1972. Someone from a 406 number (in Montana) called to tell him that his polling place has changed. [Note: The Webb Campaign is NOT making any such phone calls.] Cox said he believed that he was being mislead and the caller hung up.

b. Peter Baumann in Cape Charles, VA (North Hampton) got a similar call from a "Webb volunteer" saying his polling location had changed. He said: No, I'm a poll worker and I know where I vote. The girl--who was calling from California--hung up.

The Secretary of the State Board of Elections Jean Jensen has logged dozens of similar calls, finding heavy trends in Accomack County (middle peninsula) and Essex County (outer peninsula) [as reported by the counties' registrars].

3) Fliers in Buckingham County Say "SKIP THIS ELECTION" (paid for by the RNC) have caused many in the African American community to call the Board of Elections to see if the election is still on. The full tag line says: "SKIP THIS ELECTION... (and then in smaller print): Don't Let the Tax and Spend Liberals Win.""

The FBI is looking into it.

And this:

"An Ohio woman, who did not leave her name, called The Washington Post in tears yesterday, saying she could not keep her phone line open to hospice workers caring for her terminally ill mother because of nonstop political robo-calls."

And this:

"There are reports out of Nashville that African Americans are getting phone calls telling them if they voted for Harold Ford Jr. in the August primary, they don't need to vote for him again now.

According to media reports from Nashville, volunteers driving senior citizens to the polls for early voting have had their voters tell them they'd received these calls. "

And this (via AmericaBlog; it has a hateful registration system), which takes the Official Chutzpah Prize:

"Just because it's Scott Kleeb's prerecorded voice on the other line, doesn't mean his campaign is behind the phone call, according to his communications director.
Prerecorded telephone messages supposedly from Kleeb, a Third Congressional District candidate, have been repeatedly calling people in Central Nebraska, and Ben Lumpkin, Kleeb's communications director, is concerned about the effects.

The messages, known as robocalls, are designed to inform voters about certain candidates. However, Lumpkin said he has received numerous complaints about the prerecorded messages calling repeatedly -- as many as six times an hour. (...)

Adams County Democratic Party Chairwoman Deb Quirk, who also volunteers with the county's phone bank, said she and other volunteers had called people who were irritated at the Democratic party because of the Kleeb calls.

"We've had a couple of people who said they were tired of the harassing phone calls and wanted us to stop calling," she said.

Some of them said they weren't going to vote for Kleeb, or at all, as a result, she said."

And who could forget this gem, sent out a month ago by a Republican candidate in California?

"The letter, which purports to be from a Huntington Beach-based group, warns that immigrants will not be permitted to vote in the election. It also warns that the state has developed a tracking system that will allow the names of Latino voters to be handed over to anti-immigrant groups.

"You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time," the letter, written in Spanish, says."

There should be serious jail time in these people's future. I don't know enough about election law to know whether there will be, but it seems obvious to me that fines alone are not enough of a punishment for voter suppression. Campaigns can set aside money to pay fines; it's a lot harder for them to convince people to go to jail for a candidate*.

In my fantasies, our government decides to take the resources and jail cells it has used to combat marijuana use and devotes them all to catching, convicting, and imprisoning people who work against democracy, whether through voter suppression, accepting bribes, or any other form of public corruption. Parents warn their children not to grow up to be like Karl Rove and end up in jail, and not to let smooth-talking campaign operatives convince them that they can engage in just a little bit of underhanded election fraud, just this once, and they'll be able to quit any time. Organizations that pay for voter suppression are regarded the way we now regard drug gangs, and the people who work for them have to hide what they do from their friends and neighbors, because otherwise no one would speak to them. Their operatives have to stay underground, on the run, one step ahead of the law, knowing that each moment they spend at liberty could be their last.

Or, failing that, enough people become angry enough about this stuff that the people who engage in it are thrown out of office.

* PS: Guess who wrote a law providing for prison sentences for people who try to mislead voters about the time and place of federal elections, the qualifications for voting, etc? Just another "there he is again" moment. It's not clear to me, from the statute, whether the $100,000 fine/one year in jail penalty is per violation or not, but I hope so.

[UPDATE: From TPMMuckraker:

"I just spoke with a Latino election monitor in Arizona who said that a trio of men, one with a handgun visible, is harrassing Latino voters as they go to the polls in Tucson, Ariz. (...)

"As voters are coming out of their cars and walking up towards their polls, one person is videotaping the voter as he walks towards the polling place," she said. Then another person, wearing an American flag bandana and a shirt with the image of a badge ironed or embroidered on it, approaches with a clipboard to talk to the voter. "While the clipboard person is. . .talking to [the voter], the cameraperson comes up and starts videotaping their face," Perales said.

As this happens, the third man -- with a gun visible in a sideholster -- stands next to the voter. According to Perales, he is wearing a shirt with an American flag on it, and camouflage shorts.

The men only approach Latino voters, she said, and noted they have been doing so since early this morning."

END UPDATE]

Comments

[lily]

Jay Fawcett got his third death threat today and his office was vandalized for the second time.
I hope the Democratic leadership will challenge every close defeat and I how they will push mericilessly for presecution of the Republicans behaind the calls.

[LizardBreath]

I was looking at the Virginia incident, and I really hope I'm wrong -- I don't know from Virginia state law, and I could be missing something -- but it appears to me that intimidating someone into not voting is just a freaking misdemeanor. I do not understand how this can be the case.

[cleek]

this is the November Surprise.

these people are enemies of the state. hang them.

[DaveC]

Also, via The Corner on NRO

(Mountainside, NJ)-Statement by Kean campaign manager Evan Kozlow:

"It appears the Democrats have already resorted to Election Day dirty tricks. Late last night vandals struck the Kean for Senate Headquarters and an auxiliary office of the Star-Ledger by chaining closed the main entrance to the building as well as breaking off keys in the side door entrances.

Desperate ploys such as using Hudson County Correctional Inmates to disrupt press conferences or chaining closed the front door to our headquarters, will not prevent us from informing voter's that Bob Menendez is under Federal Criminal Investigation and is unfit to serve in the United States Senate."

[OCSteve]

There should be serious jail time in these people's future. I don't know enough about election law to know whether there will be, but it seems obvious to me that fines alone are not enough of a punishment for voter suppression.

I hope so too. Some of these might be tough to prosecute - but some would seem to be a slam dunk. Misdemeanors and fines? I would make it felonies and serious jail time.

The penalties for suppression should be at least as high as for voting illegally.

[cleek]

the penalties should be deportation and stripping of citizenship. i'm 100% serious.

[rilkefan]

Inability to vote due to technical problems strikes both sides. Sheesh.

[Gromit]

You know, if I had no scruples, and if I wanted to get my election a bit of pity/equal time coverage in a news cycle awash in serious allegations of electoral shenanigans, the cost of a length of chain, a padlock, and a bolt cutter would be an absolute bargain, with the added benefit of costing me no votes whatsoever. Just a thought.

[Ugh]

Well, this is certainly most, dare I say, fun?

[wmr]

Get real. As long as the final result stands, somebody will be willing to take the chance.

The only way to stop this is to have the election voided and do it over.

My choice: paper ballots. I'm willing to wait two weeks to find who honestly won.

[bemused]

The status of Obama's bill -- referred to the Rules committee. The status of the House bill that is its companion: referred to the Homeland Security committee. In other words, dead.

Let's try to get it resuscitated in the next Congress.

[John Thullen]

Yes, as long as so many have purple ink residue on their index fingers from celebrating the importation of American democracy in Iraq, let's use the opportunity to get their fingerprints, book them, and begin deportation proceedings.

So, if my representatives (both parties) aren't actually legitimately elected, the laws they pass must not apply to me.

This train of thought could be very delightfully subversive.

[john miller]

The problem is that although we have no problem praising the courage of voters in other countries protesting election results when the bad guys win, in this country any sort of protest is considered almost treasonous.

AS OCSteve states, actually proving the suppression or intimination is hard enough, proving that it also impacted the election is even harder.

DaveC, if this was the work of Democratic operatives, I will gladly hope they also serve jail time. However, I wouldn't put it past the Republicans to do this to themselves just so they can say, see how bad the Dems are. The Republican justification math is something like 1 Dem bad behavior is equal to 30 of ours.

[KCinDC]

Wouldn't squirting glue into the keyhole be easier than finding a key that fit and breaking it off, unless you already had a key that fit?

[John Thullen]

Hilzoy, your update regarding the harrassment in Tucson reminds me of other elections. Thing is, the election was in a province outside of Manila and I think Imelda's cousin got elected.

So, if a guy in an American flag shirt sporting a pistol starts talking to me outside the polling place, accompanied by a guy with a video camera in my face, the first thing that should happen is the video camera gets Russell Crowed into about a thousand unidentifiable pieces and the guy with the gun gets to think real fast if the caps in his toy are going to sound scary enough under that high sky in Arizona.

I can't think whether this happens before or after I soil myself, but that notwithstanding, I'll throw the unconscious gun lover over his saddle, snap my bullwhip against the flanks of his horse and send her back to Boss Limbaugh's ranch as a warning.

We Thullens are wiry. My mother's wiry.

By the way, regarding political phone messages, I hate the mere fact that I am being talked AT without a chance to respond.

That alone smacks of something other than a free society.

[cleek]

for some reason, the word "flensing" keeps poppong into my head, when i think of the hundreds of soulless cynical bastards the GOP is employing to do this crap.

[KCinDC]

I don't know, Hilzoy, it looks like you may have voted for one of the antidemocratic immoral scumbags. Apparently Ehrlich's wife was directly involved in the "Democratic sample ballot" scam.

[Phil]

Vandalizing someone's campaign headquarters posited as equivalent to threatening a registered voter with arrest if they go to the polls. Oh, I wish Andrew were here.

[liberal japonicus]

My partisan opinion, of course, but the goal is not to win, the goal is to create enough uncertainty about the process and the results so that if results do go against, the Republicans can harness the sense of outrage and disenfranchisement to keep their side fighting.

[russell]

The solution is jail time.

Break the law, go to jail. See you in five years.

That, and nothing else, will put a stop to it. Fines will not make a dent.

Send them to jail.

Thanks -

[Phil]

Jail, schmail. Transportation for no less than twenty years. I hear Antarctica is still mostly empty.

[Anarch]

The only way to stop this is to have the election voided and do it over.

Screw that: if a politician's campaign is caught tampering with the electoral process, that politician should lose the election. If a political party tampers with the electoral process, that party's candidate should lose the election. It should be a flat-out forfeit.

[cleek]

It should be a flat-out forfeit.

i'd be willing to throw in automatic re-election for everyone in Congress who voted for it, if they'd pass that law.

[rilkefan]

"if a politician's campaign is caught tampering with the electoral process, that politician should lose the election."

Sounds good to me, except for the incentive to tamper against oneself and plant clues the other guy did it.

[Phil]

From CNN's coverage of the Virginia intimidation efforts:

State election officials expressed concern about the calls Monday but said they were hesitant to launch an immediate investigation for fear of politicizing the vote.

Oh, Jesus. We're doomed.

[Anarch]

And jail time, of course, but jail time isn't enough IMO.

[hilzoy]

KCinDC: I didn't, actually. Voting right after writing this story meant that I went into the voting booth very angry, and couldn't bring myself to do it.

High turnout in my precinct. I heard one of the many operatives standing around say to another: this ward is getting 40%. This at 5ish; polls close at eight. My ward is very, very demcratic.

Plus, one unanticipated benefit of moving from my old house (in a Republican area) to my new one (Democratic): I have finally, finally gotten off all the Republican mailing lists. No more collection of 8X10 glossy pictures of George and Laura on my refrigerator, no more amusement writing back, in each and every postage paid envelope, asking politely to get off the mailing list on the grounds that I was a Democrat, knowing that they never read replies but that having replied makes it more likely that they'll keep sending mail; no more little cards saying: Congratulations, hilzoy! As one of our strongest supporters in Baltimore County, we'd like to invite you to become a Charter Member of our Republican Pioneers Leadership Circle! (which always got special replies in the postage paid envelopes, which normally began: Dear Ken, I can't tell you how glad I am to hear that I am one of the Republican Party's strongest supporters...)

[Ugh]

I'm headed to the DCCC election night shin-dig at the Capitol Hyatt Regency here in an hour and a half. I'd try to file live reports on mood, politico sightings, etc., but have no idea how to post comments here via blackberry. If I'm not too drunk (they serve drinks at these things right?), I'll try to file a report when I get home (assuming they don't kick me out when they find out I'm a registered republican).

[Shinobi]

the penalties should be deportation and stripping of citizenship. i'm 100% serious.

The severity of the punishment sounds good, but why should these antidemocratic scum be the rest of the world's problem?

Australia, for one, is not letting those low-lifes anywhere near our efficient and reliable yet low-tech voting system.

[cleek]

but why should these antidemocratic scum be the rest of the world's problem?

we could send them to Iraq.