Fake Robo Calls, Push Polls, Dumping Absentee Ballots and Other Republican Dirty Tricks

by James Parks, Nov 6, 2006

In a desperate effort to hold on to power, the Republican Party is unleashing a frenzied assortment of dirty tricks aimed at depressing the Democratic vote.

In the latest attack, Republicans are bombarding Democratic voters with misleading and false “robo calls.” Here how it works, according to G2geek on Daily Kos:

Your phone rings, there’s a brief recorded intro that makes it appear the call is from a Democratic campaign or related group, and then a pause, and then a recorded message. If you hang up, it calls you back six or seven times or more. The goal is to make people think they are being harassed by the Democrats, and piss them off enough to change their votes. It works well enough to potentially flip some close races.

In Florida’s 13th Congressional District, Democrat Christine Jennings issued a statement condemning calls being made in her race district. Some voters are receiving as many as 10 calls per night. Many of these robo-calls impersonate Jennings’ voice and create the impression that she is the person speaking. The calls are so long (they sometimes last several minutes) that few people listen to them all the way to the end, where they would hear that the calls are paid for by her opponent Vern Buchanan or the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).

Matt Stoller on MyDD writes that the practice is widespread. He cites a campaign against Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.):

Initially callers will think they are hearing a call from the Menendez campaign asking for support. If they hang up, it will repeatedly call them back. The intention is to annoy the voter so much that they no longer support the candidate. For those who actually listen to the entire call, they are presented with a series of lies and smears against Menendez, also with the intention of suppressing turnout.

The NRCC is doing the same exact thing in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and at least 53 other races across the country.

In New Hampshire, the Union Leader reports the NRCC over the weekend pulled the pre-recorded phone calls after the state Attorney General’s Office said the maneuver has violated New Hampshire law by contacting residents listed on the federal Do Not Call Registry.

The National Republican Congressional Committee voluntarily agreed to stop making automated calls to homes on the registry, said Deputy Attorney General Bud Fitch, who oversees election law. Under state statute, political campaigns are allowed to contact people on the Do Not Call list, but cannot use automated recordings to do so.

Many states have laws against harassing phone calls, according to G2geek:

In many states the definition of ‘‘obscene, indecent, or harassing phone calls” includes placing repeated calls to a subscriber who does not wish to be called.

In addition to robo calls, voters are being harassed by Republican front-groups with harmless-sounding names like Tennesseans for Truth and Common Sense Ohio. These groups carry out what’s called “push polls.” A push poll is a political campaign technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll.

Dave Johnson at the Patriot Project describes how it works:

The phone rings, and a person—or more likely an automated voice—says they are conducting an opinion poll, and would you like your opinion to be included in the results? You are flattered—you’ve heard about opinion polls but probably never knew anyone who was actually contacted, so you say yes. You are asked which candidate you support.

Now this is where things get nasty. As the “poll” progresses you start to hear a series of “questions” that are designed to influence rather than measure your thinking….The questions are often coordinated with organized whisper-campaigns, leafletting or other “stealth” tactics designed to disguise the source.

Among those questions? Would you support Candidate X if he/she supported medical experiments on unborn babies?

Push pollers are in many states. Bloggers wrote Johnson documenting receiving push calls in Arizona, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee.

The New York Times reports those behind these political telephone calls say they have reached hundreds of thousands of homes in five states over the past several weeks in a push to win votes for Republicans.

In Ohio, according to Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, co-authors of What Happened in Ohio? Ken Blackwell, secretary of state and candidate for governor, is trying to dump as many as 10 percent of absentee ballots, which are usually overwhelmingly Democratic. On Common Dreams, Fitrakis and Wasserman write:

About 10 percent of the absentee ballots cast so far are being rejected because of a technicality involving obscure driver’s license numbers demanded on the ballot. Ohio driver’s licenses contain two separate numbers: an 11-digit number above the photo, and a much smaller eight character license number that begins with two alpha-numeric characters, followed by six numbers. It is the eight-character license number the Boards of Elections demand on the absentee ballot. But many Ohio voters don’t know that, and are using the wrong number—and thus having their ballot invalidated. Absentee ballots cast in Ohio tend to be overwhelmingly Democratic.

Worse, the list of voter intimidation goes on:

• In Maryland, a recently distributed guide for Republican poll watchers spells out how to aggressively challenge the credentials of voters and urges these volunteers to tell election judges they could face jail time if a challenge is ignored.
• In New Mexico yesterday, the state Democratic Party accused its GOP counterpart of calling Democratic voters and falsely telling them their polling place has changed. This morning, the AP reports, the Democrats are asking a judge to immediately bar the Republicans from calling any registered Democratic voters in the state.
• In Kentucky, the Republican Party announced plans to send challengers to polls in the predominantly African American West End of Louisville to aggressively challenge voters.
• Last month, we noted that a Spanish-language letter had been sent to Latinos in Orange County, Calif., warning they could be jailed or deported if they vote in the November election. The Orange County Republican leaders urged their own congressional candidate to withdraw from the race after he acknowledged his campaign was involved in sending out the letter to 14,000 registered Latino voters in Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Anaheim.

Several states have passed voter ID laws that restrict the rights of mainly low-income voters, immigrants and people of color. In Arizona, a proposition passed in 2004 requiring residents to show photo IDs was struck down this month by a federal court—only to be reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Georgia, new ID laws were blocked (twice) by a federal judge as being a modern-day poll tax that discriminated against people who don’t have driver’s licenses, passports or other government identification.

• The Missouri Supreme Court declared the state’s voter-ID requirements invalid this month, saying the state couldn’t prove any instances of voter fraud at the polls.

In an editorial subtitled “Pond-Scum Politics,” The Philadelphia Inquirer writes:

The ruling party can’t talk about the war in Iraq, gas prices, out-of-control spending or huge budget deficits. So Republican leaders decided weeks ago that the best option was to wage personal attacks on Democrats in the most competitive races.

The nonpartisan Annenberg Political Fact Check group (factcheck.org) said last week that House Republicans have spent $41.9 million attacking Democratic opponents, and only $5 million supporting their own candidates, nearly an 8–to–1 negative-to-positive ratio. The House Democrats have spent $18 million and $3.1 million, respectively, for a 5–to–1 ratio. The group found that the GOP commercials have a “pronounced tendency to be petty and personal.”

The national AFL-CIO Voter Protection Program is working to educate union households about their voting rights and to help prevent voting violations in 23 cities in six states—Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington. The Voter Protection Program has developed several tools that you can download from the AFL-CIO website in English, Spanish or Haitian Creole, including a list of six simple steps to protect your vote in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole and what to do if you see voting violations on Election Day also available in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole.

This portion of this website is paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, 815 16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006, with voluntary contributions from union members and their families, and is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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