More Fun From The Party Of Moral Values

by hilzoy

Josh Marshall has been reporting a new and despicable set of dirty tricks: robocalls that call over and over, or in the middle of the night, pretending to be for one candidate when in fact they are from another. The point, apparently, is to annoy voters so much that they decide not to vote for the candidate they (mistakenly) think is making the calls. One example from the Philadelphia daily News:

"BEING SICK in bed, which I was for the past couple of weeks, is bad enough.

But being sick in bed while living in a political combat zone - in this case, the 6th Congressional District - is enough to MAKE YOU WANT TO KILL SOMEBODY.

My God, the phone calls! Just as I'd begin to drift off to sleep, the phone would ring and it would be YET ANOTHER DAMN COMPUTERIZED MESSAGE ABOUT LOIS MURPHY.

One, two, three, four times a day it seemed, the phone rang with "robocalls" about the Democratic challenger to incumbent GOP Rep. Jim Gerlach in one of the nastiest races in the country.

I never listened to one word of it, just slammed the phone down and seethed with resentment. (...)

But if they annoy voters rather than enlighten them, what's the point?

That's what I asked Lois Murphy's campaign yesterday.

The answer was simple:

"It's not us!"

Only three recorded calls have been made on behalf of Murphy's campaign, including one from Gov. Rendell, which were sponsored by the Democratic State Committee.

The rest? A "dirty trick" by the Republicans, said communications director Amy Bonitatibus.

The calls, which begin by offering "important information about Lois Murphy," are designed to mislead voters into thinking the message is from her.

Most recipients slam down the phone before finding out otherwise - and then call to complain.

"We've got a ton of complaints, starting about two weeks ago," Bonitatibus said.

"Some of our biggest supporters have said, 'If you call me again, I'm not voting for Lois.' ""

Josh Marshall has more examples: New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Kansas, and others. Most of them seem to be funded by the National Republican Congressional Committee:

"In at least 53 competitive House races, the National Republican Campaign Committee has launched hundreds of thousands of automated telephone calls, known as "robo calls." (...)

The NRCC, the GOP campaign arm for House candidates, has spent $2.1 million on such automated calls nationwide. In Illinois, at least three versions of a phone message target Tammy Duckworth, the Democrat in a tight Chicago-area race, and her positions on taxes, Social Security and immigrants."

And then there are the push polls. From the NYT:

"An automated voice at the other end of the telephone line asks whether you believe that judges who “push homosexual marriage and create new rights like abortion and sodomy” should be controlled. If your reply is “yes,” the voice lets you know that the Democratic candidate in the Senate race in Montana, Jon Tester, is not your man.

In Maryland, a similar question-and-answer sequence suggests that only the Republican Senate candidate would keep the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. In Tennessee, another paints the Democrat as wanting to give foreign terrorists “the same legal rights and privileges” as Americans.

Using a telemarketing tactic that is best known for steering consumers to buy products, the organizers of the political telephone calls say they have reached hundreds of thousands of homes in five states over the last several weeks in a push to win votes for Republicans."

Luckily, in addition to doing the reporting, TPM has also provided an email from a reader that states my views so well that it would be pointless for me to try to think of a better way to say it:

"I think it's useful to take a step back and examine, in the simplest terms, what the Republicans are doing here: they are attempting to sabotage the American democratic process because it's inconvenient for their candidates.

Of course these robo-calls are only one manifestation of a consistent theme, but when I approach the calls without the cynicism of a political news junkie, I find them breathtakingly despicable. The people behind this aren't schoolyard bullies, or even college kids. These are adults with years of political experience and a comprehensive understanding of what exactly their acts amount to. The NRCC simply does not believe that Americans should be able to make informed choices about their representatives in the voting booth. They are perfectly willing to dismantle the democratic process, which cannot function properly when voters are harassed (or even worse, harassed under false pretenses). I think it's fair to say that their behavior in this instance is "profoundly immoral and malevolent," which is how the Oxford English Dictionary describes "evil." Despite our desensitization to these types of transgressions, we cannot afford to take them lightly."

The people who do this are antidemocratic. They don't believe in making their case and letting the voters decide. They don't care about democracy, or citizens' right to choose the candidate who best reflects their views, or fair play or honesty or decency or moral values. They care about power, and they will undermine our democracy before they let the voters pry the reins of power out of their claws.

Comments

[radish]

OCSteve, Sebastian: If you think Wisconsin/Milwaukee was stolen you have to take it up with a [Republican] guy named Steve Biskupic. ("No vote fraud plot found" -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, Dec 5, 2005, 7 months after your link, OCSteve)

Retail fraud is hard. You need a well-established machine, because without the cooperation of a whole lot of election officers and poll watchers, you can't get enough traction to tip even a whole district. It's a lot safer to suppress your opponents' turnout. Especially if they're easily distinguished demographically.

[Slartibartfast]

Ok, speaking of BSG: did we, or did we not, actualy see Vger?

Enquiring minds would like to know.

[hilzoy]

Another enquiring mind wonders: if a person missed the last episode of BSG, is there any way she can find it? (ITunes seems to want me to buy a whole season; no more reuns on SciFi.)

[Gromit]

You can still buy individual episodes of BSG on iTunes. It does take them a few days to add the most recent episode, though, so the one that aired Friday isn't available yet. You might also check SciFi.com. I think they let you watch episodes there, in a browser-based player.

[Gromit]

Or. I should say, I still see the option to buy individual episodes. I broke down and bought the season, myself.

[Slartibartfast]

I watched it last night on SciFi, JFTR. Although sometimes it shows on one of the HD channels, which is...well, just the best.

Side note: yes, I am aware it's spelled actually, but sometimes my fingers forget.

[radish]

Good example today, of exactly how tricky retail fraud really is. Daggett County, Utah. Republicans try to fix a Sherriff's race, with the cooperation of pretty much everybody, and they still get busted. I mean this is rural Utah, ferpetessake. That's at least as lopsided as Chicago in the fifties. (of course the Chicago machine had plenty of time to refine its technique -- the Campbell family are presumably rank amateurs.)

[Slartibartfast]

Given that this is Election Day, this is the best news possible.

[hilzoy]

Slarti: that's a fascinating story, and one that implies a whole bunch of stuff that people didn't know was possible. For that reason, I really want to see the underlying article, which I'll try to find after the election. Until now, as I understand it, it had been a completely open question whether the kind of stem cells found in cord blood could be made to differentiate into other kinds of tissue (I mean: other than the kinds that can normally be grown from hematopoetic cells, which they are), let alone turned into 'mini-livers'.

[Anarch]

Mists of dreams drip along the nascent echo and love no more, Slarti.

[Anarch]

OCSteve, Sebastian: If you think Wisconsin/Milwaukee was stolen you have to take it up with a [Republican] guy named Steve Biskupic.

I mentioned a while back that there were voter irregularities in Wisconsin but that they were too complicated to go into at the time; this is part of the reason why.

[Slartibartfast]

Anarch is the hybrid?

[John Thullen]

Slart, that is an amazing piece of news.

David Crosby's stem cells weren't anywhere in the vicinity, were they?

[OCSteve]

If you think Wisconsin/Milwaukee was stolen you have to take it up with a [Republican] guy named Steve Biskupic

I never meant to imply it was stolen – just that the number of suspect votes was a concern given the margin. Thanks for linking the follow up article – I had not seen that. I can live with a few dozen a lot better than 6,000!

[Prodigal]

Although I will note that Ralph Nader is still being attacked -- fairly or not -- for his role in 2000.

I'd argue that it's entirely fair, Lemuel. The number of votes Nader drew in Florida was enough that if even a fraction of the people who had voted for him had instead cast ballots for Gore, Bush would never have gotten into the Oval Office.

[KCinDC]

Presidential humor of the day:

We live in a free society, and our government is only as good as the willingness of our people to participate in it. And therefore, no matter what your party affiliation, or if you don't have a party affiliation, do your duty; cast your ballot and let your voice be heard.

Almost as good as when various members of the administration were decrying divisiveness and partisanship.

[Jesurgislac]

Prodigal: I'd argue that it's entirely fair, Lemuel. The number of votes Nader drew in Florida was enough that if even a fraction of the people who had voted for him had instead cast ballots for Gore, Bush would never have gotten into the Oval Office.

If even a fraction of the votes that were both punched for Gore and had Al Gore's name written in had been counted as votes for Gore (as, according to Florida law, they should have been) Bush would never have gotten into the Oval Office. 46,000 people thus voted for Gore and had their votes discarded as "spoiled ballots": how many votes was Bush supposed to have "won" by, again?

It's ridiculous to blame people who voted for Nader for "letting Bush in", when it's been known since November 2001 that the candidate who actually won in Florida was Al Gore. I suppose it might have been harder for the Florida Republican party to rig the election so that Bush got in if Gore had got a few more votes from Nader voters, but certainly not impossible.

[KCinDC]

Prodigal, the problem with the analysis is that if Nader hadn't been running the whole election campaign would have gone differently. Bush and Gore decided how to distribute their resources with the knowledge that Nader was running, so without him who knows what would have been done differently. Besides that, the number of Democrats who voted for Bush was far larger than the number of Nader votes, so those people are at least as much to blame.

Of course, when an election is that close there are innumerable things one can point to that could have swung it. My favorite is the Palm Beach County butterfly ballot -- the most significant user interface design mistake in history.

Jes, to be meaningful that 46,000 number needs to be accompanied by the number of ballots marked similarly for Bush.

[Jesurgislac]

Jes, to be meaningful that 46,000 number needs to be accompanied by the number of ballots marked similarly for Bush.

You're right, of course. (cite) There were 17,000 such overvotes for Bush.

[Slartibartfast]

There were 17,000 such overvotes for Bush.

Sha. At least oneL of those was a write-in for Bush's Chili Hot Beans, I have it on excellent authority