NYT calls phone-jamming "voter fraud", plus new Tobin outrage

For more on the DOJ "slow-walk" of the phone-jamming investigation.. (0.00 / 0)

• An excellent summary by the NH Democrats created 20070321


• http://www.bluehamps... of the phone-jamming slow-walk, created 20070403


• What finally forced the US Attorney to move forward?

"Making trouble today for a better tomorrow" http://BetsyDevine.com/blog

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by: Betsy Devine @ Mon Sep 17, 2007 at 14:25:32 PM CDT

whoa, got a little tangled up in my html there. (0.00 / 0)

the second list item should read...

Timeline of the phone-jamming slow-walk, created 20070403

"Making trouble today for a better tomorrow" http://BetsyDevine.com/blog

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by: Betsy Devine @ Mon Sep 17, 2007 at 16:03:18 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Jammin' (0.00 / 0)

Next time, there may be no next time.

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by: Jon Bresler @ Mon Sep 17, 2007 at 20:40:55 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Betsy, You Are the Best! (0.00 / 0)

And another four star member of the phone jammer fighter club! 


"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Mon Sep 17, 2007 at 15:26:24 PM CDT

Thanks, Kathy--and congrats (0.00 / 0)

.. your hard work and persistence kept this thing alive despite the combined efforts of a horde of ill-wishers--many of them, alas, paid salaries out of your tax dollars and mine.

"Making trouble today for a better tomorrow" http://BetsyDevine.com/blog

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by: Betsy Devine @ Mon Sep 17, 2007 at 16:04:59 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

thanks for the timeline (0.00 / 0)

Betsy, I agree with Kathy, the materials you have put together
have been consistently very helpful throughout the way too long history of this case.

"But, in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." Si se puede. Yes we can.  

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by: Paul Twomey @ Mon Sep 17, 2007 at 18:06:32 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Full Text (0.00 / 0)

Editorial
The New Hampshire Phone Scam

Published: September 17, 2007

On Election Day in 2002, when New Hampshire voters were going to the polls in a hotly contested Senate race, the phone lines in Democratic get-out-the-vote offices were jammed. The executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party pleaded guilty to phone harassment charges, but there has never been an adequate investigation of reports that the White House may have been involved.

Paul Hodes, a New Hampshire congressman, is asking the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to investigate. It should conduct the searching inquiry that the Justice Department has not.

The Bush administration has spent a lot of time talking about mythical cases of voter fraud and election improprieties, but the New Hampshire phone jamming case was the real thing. Republican operatives hired an Idaho telemarketing firm to jam the lines to prevent people who needed help in voting from getting through. The scheme was a direct attack on American democracy.

After the guilty plea from its executive director, the New Hampshire Republican Party paid to settle a civil lawsuit filed by the state¹s Democrats. There is reason to believe, however, that the phone jamming ploy may have been coordinated out of the White House. Democrats say there were
22 phone calls between New Hampshire Republican officials and the White House Office of Political Affairs on election night and early the next morning.

Mr. Hodes says that rather than trying to learn the truth, the Justice Department has engaged in unlawful interference to block the investigation.
He reports that according to one of the defense lawyers, the attorney general personally had to sign off on all actions in the case, an extraordinary rule that would slow things down considerably. According to Mr. Hodes, the only F.B.I. agent assigned to the case was told that she could not pursue leads to Washington.

It is shocking to think that anyone in the White House was involved in a dirty trick designed to prevent Americans from exercising their democratic rights. Unfortunately, after this year¹s revelations about the firing of United States attorneys for partisan political reasons, the possibility cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House oversight committee, has a lot to investigate these days, but he should find time for the serious inquiry into the New Hampshire phone jamming case to which American voters are entitled.


Next time, there may be no next time.

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by: Jon Bresler @ Mon Sep 17, 2007 at 17:20:21 PM CDT

Election day 2002 (4.00 / 1)

I will never forget the panic in the coordinated campaign office when I arrived there around 9 am after spending a couple of hours holding signs outside the polling place for my ward in Manchester. The damage was not just the lost calling time for period that the phone lines were down, but the collateral damage from the havoc that was caused. It threw the operation off.

 

I'm a Jeanne Shaheen friend and staffer.

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by: Judy Reardon @ Mon Sep 17, 2007 at 21:46:49 PM CDT

The Shock (4.00 / 1)

I will forever be haunted by the stunned shock on the faces and in the voices of the young people charged with implimenting the election day work they were prevented from completing.

We will never know the full extent on the 2002 results but the spirit of countless dedicated young people was tatterted by the actions of the NH Republican Party - which is heinous.

Democrats solve problems, Republicans sit and say no.

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by: Ray Buckley @ Mon Sep 17, 2007 at 22:30:31 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Never Forget (0.00 / 0)

I'll never forget the Republicans jammed our phones.  But, as the brilliant Ivanka Trump said in The First Wives Club, don't get mad, get everything. 

Energy and persistence conquer all things.


Benjamin Franklin


 

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by: Kathy Sullivan @ Tue Sep 18, 2007 at 19:01:41 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

A central tenet. (0.00 / 0)

I think it's a central tenet of the Republican ideology that it's the intent that counts, not the result or effect.  Which is why, even though killing a human is murder, if the intent is to punish, or if it's simply collateral damage, it doesn't qualify.
Next you'll hear Tobin argue that he hired his old consultant friend to do some last minute phoning and had no idea that the computers were going to dial the same numbers over and over again.
And besides, they were just trying to get the Republican elected and had no interest in messing with Democrats.  You see, that's the neat thing about intent; it's so damned hard to prove what someone was thinking, unless you get a confession.

Republicans always accuse others of what they intend themselves. 
Be that as it may, the trial of Brent Wilkes, associate of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who's already gone to prison is about to get under way in the court of District Court Judge Larry A. Burns, whose nomination was approved by 91 Senators in September of 2004.  The nine non-voting were:
Dodd (D-CT)
Edwards (D-NC)
Graham (D-FL)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Specter (R-PA)
Sununu (R-NH)

Now, why would both NH Senators be in the non-voting group.  Surely this isn't one of those times when Sununu failed to support the President.

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by: hannah @ Tue Sep 18, 2007 at 15:42:23 PM CDT

The intent thing (0.00 / 0)

I seem to recall commentary right after the case sent back for re-hearing that the prosecutors had been a little too cute, using phone harassment charges rather than something conspiracy to deny civil rights.

The phone harassment laws are aimed at jilted lovers and fired workers who go after those who supposedly wronged them. I don't know the wording of the specific statutes, but it seems plausible that there is an element of intent required.

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by: elwood @ Tue Sep 18, 2007 at 19:42:28 PM CDT