Tweet
dirty trickster (photo: reallyboring/flickr)
How desperate are Wisconsin Republican activists? This desperate, apparently:
[State Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee)] said that voters have received calls directing them to vote Wednesday [instead of, of course, today] and telling them petition signatures counted as votes. Taylor told HuffPost she was not sure how widespread the cases are throughout the state, but that she and her staff were continuing to gather more information about the allegations. She noted they have been spreading through social media since Monday.
“It is nonsense,” Taylor said. “It is the desperation. I want the GAB to investigate.”
Staffers at the Wisconsin Education Association confirmed to HuffPost that they have heard similar messages going to voters but they did not know the origin of the messages or how widespread the rumors are. In her letter to the GAB, Taylor said that the calls regarding the petition signatures came from a Madison-area phone number. A call placed to that number came back with a voicemail saying the caller had reached the Wisconsin Republican Party.
[...]
The phone number is not the main listed number of the state GOP. The phone is used by the GOP for phone-bank purposes, including recent phone banks for the Tuesday recall.
Wow. Just — wow. But I guess it shouldn’t surprise me — not after this spring in Maine.
34 Comments
Republicans hate democracy and they are increasingly desperate as they realize demography and time are not their friends. Parties comprised mostly of old Southern white men do not win elections.
Right now, per exit polls, it’s looking like a lot of persons who voted for Walker in the recall are also Obama voters. In other words, any pro-Walker votes were likely to be, as some of my Sconnies were saying, anti-recalls vote more than anything, and certainly not part of a bellwether for November.
Oh, and the Dems got the Republicans to spend at least $40 million (and probably closer to $100 million if all the hidden money’s counted), which is $40 million that won’t go to Romney or to GOP congressional or Senate candidates. Meanwhile, the Dems spent far less on Barrett, and it was mostly Wisconsin money from what I’ve seen.
Hello, DrDick! How goes it?
It goes wet and cold here in the northern Rockies (appropriately for tonight’s results). Still waiting for summer to get here so I can fish, hike, and camp.
PW, what’s happening with the senators up for recall? I think that’s important.
Still waiting on SD-21; that’s going to come down to Racine. But right now, it looks like most of the incumbents have kept their seats — though we won’t know for sure until tomorrow morning, and maybe not even then.
RECALL RESULTS
Thanks. Those senate races have numbers that are too uniform for my comfort.
Racine only has 22% reporting so far, and only one seat needs to flip to put the Senate firmly in Dem hands — right now it’s split down the middle.
Rep. Paul Ryan’s district includes Racine…
In terms of seats-gov.,supreme court, state legislature, how many seats have changed as a result of recall efforts {question mark key broken}
And yet it used to be Les Aspin’s.
Besides, there’s this news:
So he still has a shot. (In fact, I know he does, because one of the Republican trolls that showed up over at Daily Kos is busy trying to poormouth a potential Lehman win.)
Good question!
More on SD-21 in Wisconsin (I’ve been going to DK as they have newer data than the WJS right now):
Let’s see how well Racine does tonight. Fingers crossed!
This is what happens when the president is a fraud.
The Dem Party and Dem Celebrities – Clintons, Obama, etc, Supported Lieberman over the winner of the CT Dem Primary.
The Dem Party at the National Level likewise shunned the D challenger(s) in this event. No money. No speeches.
Incumbency Protection Racket is a bipartisan effort and an affront to Democracy.
There are no comfortable shoes (O pointedly mentioned the donning of such shoes to walk in solidarity with Union Workers) to be found in Obama’s closet.
I guess a lot of the analysis will be defined through blame. I just want to see some facts to learn from.
In this case, much of it is pretty much just recall fatigue.
More on SD-21 in Wisconsin:
Remember, if this seat flips, the state Senate – currently evenly divided since the first recall elections last year – goes into Dem control, thus depriving Walker of an all-GOP-controlled state lege to rubberstamp his atrocities.
How can that be true if so many showed up to vote.
And the estimated total was 2.8 million, nowhere near what really happend.
Yes, facts are nice. Can you spot them in my comment? See any non-facts, please point them out.
I very much doubt that the WI Republican Party is so stupid as to make such calls from phones so easily traced back to them (please refrain from taking obvious shots at Republican stupidity; really, do you honestly believe they would be so stupid?). However, the blow-out one-sidedness of the result must still be accounted for, so clearly fraud is involved somewhere. I refuse to believe that the will of the people has spoken.
Hi folks. I’m sorry the R’s proved that you can buy elections.
Yes. I really do believe the R’s can be that stupid.
They’ve done stupider things in the past — breaking into Democratic HQ and then trying to cover it up? Turdblossom bugging his own office in a Texas governor’s race?
The question is rather, “Will they get away with being that stupid?”
History seems to say, yes.
This might be my last comment for the night as I must hit the hay, but I wanted to share this with you all:
Recall fatigue can motivate people to go to the polls to tell the recallers to STFU already.
I’m not sure how much I believe that. But it’s possible.
Sorry hackworth, it is late and I am tired. I was not objecting to or disputing your comments, but mostly stating that I need to see further analysis to figure out all of what has happened here. I am not a party member, but I invested a lot of personal effort to beat Walker. I’ll try to be a bit more precise with my comments. No offense intended. I am not defending the democratic party. My apologies to you.
And with 30 of 36 SD-21 precincts reporting, Lehman’s pulled ahead of the GOP incumbent Wanggard, 25,169 votes to 23,918 votes.
Keep those fingers crossed and touch wood!
They call voters and told them to vote tomorrow. They tell them that their vote for the recall counts as a regular vote. They put up road blocks and have cops perform random roadside vehicle inspections on election day. They purge D voters from voter roles. They Gerrymander districts. They lose the ballots. They require ID. They physically assist the elderly and the blind in marking their ballots inside the ballot box.
They own the governorship and the legislature. Will they fire themselves?
Who is going to punish them and what is the penalty?
You know what JEB did when he got called out for the roadside safety checks on election day 2000? (He had the Hiway Patrol do it on the poorer roads en route to the precincts.)
He said that perhaps that was not a very good idea and he wouldn’t do it again.
You know what Obama did to Dubya, Cheney and Rumsfeld for lying us into a war?
nonquixote, if you’re still reading…we are proud of the hard work you did. No matter the result, we know you put in the effort.
Now we just have to get more people to put in the effort next election…and then more for the next election after that…Anyway, good on ya for putting in the effort.
SD-21′s been going back and forth the last hour, but the City of Racine’s remaining dozen or so wards just might — touch wood — put Lehman over the top for keeps.
Even the Republicans admit this: http://www.dailykos.com/comments/1097730/46335198#c101
Yet another travesty of justice and the true will of the electorate in Wisconsin.
Oh well, none of it really matters, all parties are owned and operated by the corporate fascist 1% . . .
Our votes are but a gesture to sheep us all . . .
I hand inked my ballot only to watch it disappear into the bowels of an electronic scanner that can be easily manipulated before, during or after the election to produce any results desired by the one who programs it.
Stalin . . “It only matters who COUNTS the votes.”
LeSigh.
Today WAS my first vote ever in my life since ’72, as a non DIM.
Fleeting, but it felt good sending Obama, Feinstein and Matsui down as I inked them out at every base (not that the ballot scanner will tally it like that).
On we trudge.
RE: the recall == People had just had enough and wanted things to go back to ‘normal’.
That’s why the exit polling showed that 53% of those who voted to keep Walker were also Obama supporters. So this was not a bellwether on him, no matter how much the GOP wants to say it is.
In essence, we got the national Republicans to spend at least $40 million (and more like $100 million if we could count everything that all the billionaires secretly donated), $40 million that now can’t be spent on Mittens or GOP congressional/ Senate candidates, for an effort that cost the Dems a lot less — and which got Wisconsin a new Democratic-controlled Senate.
when you got trillions of dollars, whats a hundred million?