Republican Voter Suppression -- Catch 'Em on Tape
Josh Marshall has been reporting today on the NRCC's apparent effort to suppress Democratic turnout and negatively influence undecided voters through harassing robocalls. The calls are designed to appear to be coming from Democratic candidates and seem to be targeted at Democratic and independent households across the nation:
We're getting reports from a number of congressional districts that one or another of the GOP committees is sponsoring robocalls that begin with "I'm calling with information about [fill in name of Democratic candidate]." Apparently, many voters, irate with the flood of calls, assume that the Democrat is the one sponsoring the call.
In addition to the New Hampshire 2nd and New York 19th, which we covered below, TPM readers report such calls in the Illinos 6th (Roskam v. Duckworth), Illinois 8th (McSweeney v. Bean), and California 4th (Doolittle v. Brown).
A reader explains how the calls work:
Apparently the call starts with something along the lines of "Diane Farrell has some information for you," then pauses, waiting for annoyed people to hang up, and then delivers a negative message about Farrell. The canvassers say the call has hit some people as much as 6 times, and at 5 - 6am as well. Presumably, the intent is to annoy people and stick Farrell with the negative name ID as somebody who keeps robo-calling them.
If the recipient hangs up, the call is automatically redialed 7 or 8 times.
Josh suggests writing "down as much information about it as you can (time, phone number, etc.) and call[ing] the 'metro desk' of your local paper. They're looking for political stories in the final days. And this is a good one."
Even better is to record these calls on answering machines or through other devices, if possible. A recording can really lift these stories from the anecdotal to the factual for reporters, and also makes it far easier for TV and radio news to report on the Republicans' dirty-tricks tactics.
This comment at MyDD suggests one method of recording and saving harassing robocalls when they end up in your voicemail, through a free service called GotVoice, which retrieves your voice messages from home and mobile phones and delivers them directly to your email inbox (from whence they can fly easily through the blogosphere, or better yet, be forwarded on to reporters). And this diary has some eye-opening numbers about how much the Republicans rely upon robocalls for voter suppression.
The New Hampshire Attorney General has already warned that such calls are illegal, but as Josh points out, "the folks placing the calls [simply] factor in the price of whatever fines might be meted out after the election when the damage is already done."
The real challenge in the next 48 hours is for someone to capture these calls on tape -- that to me seems to be the only way to move the story to the cable networks.
Recording calls
If you have a voice-memo attachment for your Ipod (a $20 device) you can also record them as an MP3/.wav file once the message is left on your answering machine.
Format and Recording options
Another options is to purchase an inexpensive program to record and format these calls using a microphone and some recording software. I'm sure there are free ones --I'll bet Mac users have one ;-)
I use Total Recorder from High Criteria
http://www.highcriteria.com
The program is cheap, $17.95. Download online.
I've used it and a headset microphone to record answering machine messages. It allows you to digitize it into Windows media audio files, MP3 or wav files.
Simple to set up and use. Then you can attach your files to an email.
Also, people who have webcams with audio input should also consider using that. To make it more "visual" for tv, you can show yourself pushing the buttons on your answering machine or videotape yourself getting the robocalls with multiple call backs after the first hang up..
This year I prepped to record Push Polls, but I didn't get any.
Be prepared! Don't let them use this scummy tactic with out consequences.
Hard to read your posting
Do you really have your blog set to run black type on a dark green background, or is it just the way my (admittedly ancient)browser is showing it? It's impossible to read without highlighting the entire thing, and even then it's only white on a dark background.
I think it must be
your admittedly ancient browser.
The background is white in the center column -- or should be!
Robo call NY19
NRCC_anti_Hall_ad 0:27 2 11/5/06 10:38 PM
I don't know if this will transmit. It's in i-tunes.
Hmm...
I can't find it by searching Itunes. Is there a direct link? Or can you email the mp3 to deride at gmail dot com?
Legal help wont be needed.
While I can appreciate the need for legal action after the fact if it is needed, it will be just too late. After all these years of finding out afterwards that there was voter fraud, the one thing that never changed was the final tally. So Im sure it wont happen this time. Somehow, this needs to make it to the mainstream media TOMORROW. I just watched tonight's news, and there was no mention.
Format and Recording options
Here is a simple format and recording option for the computer- or equipment-challenged (my Luddite computer runs on kerosene) and good for when you are not home:
Click on Windows Movie Maker (comes with XP). Click on the little microphone. When the recorder volume control shows up, click Record. Volume control should be set at about halfway, which is the default, I think.
Ensure your phone answering machine plays within 3 feet of your microphone (but not too close) and is turned to its highest volume.
When your phone rings and your answering machine takes the message, your microphone picks it up perfectly.
When you stop recording, or when you use another program on your computer, the recorder will stop and the Save window shows up.
Once it is saved, you can then split the message from all other noise on the recording. Then delete the extraneous, and save that clip. It saves as a wma file, playable on any Windows Media Player.
If you record the call
It doesn't call you back. The re-dial is triggered by not having the message play through to the end. If it gets on an answering machine, then it will play to the end and only play once. The messages left are pretty standard lies about the candidate and seem to be within the bounds of what passes for political discourse these days. What is satanic about these calls is that if you hang up, it calls you back 5-8 times, every fifteen minutes -- it is that activity that is truly annoying and voter suppressing.
The Club For Growth was
The Club For Growth was sponsoring exactly these type of robocalls on behalf of Republican Scott Garrett, during the 2002 congressional race for NJ's 5th district. Democrat Ann Sumers was the victim that time around ("This is a call concerning Ann Sumers...")
Of course, the Garrett campaign had "no idea who was behind these calls".