I've heard of this before and I'm inclined to agree with Dicky Cranwell that it's not just republicans doing their civic duty. From what I've heard, oftentimes voters who's registration is completely current get these calls while people who actually do have a problem hear nothing. I would be extremely interested if there was some way to find out exactly who is getting these calls.

Let's say some voter who is properly registered gets one of these calls and reasonably takes it at face value. Then election day rolls around and the voter realizes that he/she has not had a chance to follow up. So they don't go to the polls. If this voter was a dem that's +1 for Kilgore.

We've all heard how both campaigns have gotten so sophisticated that they can link voting characteristics to specific households. I'd bet anyone a dollar I could guess the characteristics of the households that are getting these calls.

Thomas Jefferson, you are ignoring an important point in Jenkins' post:

And even if it was some suppression strategy, Cranwell admitted he had no evidence that these calls were going to a specific voting block: Democrats or Republicans, blacks or whites, rural or urban voters.

No evidence in Cranwell's hands does not mean that particular voting blocks were targeted, Will. It is nevertheless, under any circumstances, pretty darn intimidating. I'm pretty sure this will eventually play out in the courts as a campaign law violation, though that may come too late to stop its current cooercive effect.

It's rather disheartening that despite the Republican Party's rhetorical advocacy of voting rights, here in Virginia, the party is easily willing to compromise that core conviction.

How does engaging in voter intimidation practices (like this) and fraudulent absentee balloting REALLY advance the party?

Heck, don't folks in the party remember that these kinds of practices stand completely contrary to the founding principles of the Republican party?

In Southwest Virginia, AKA Kilgore Country, the calls and mailing went specifically to Democrats. That's means Kilgore and his cronies must be scared the people in my neck of the woods are showing awareness about his lack of experience, leadership and just about everything else it takes to be an effective governor.

I would merely suggest that you pass on your evidence to Mr. Cranwell, as he appears to unaware of specific targeting of these calls.

I am not defending these calls, merely defending the reporting of the story--no one speaking for the Democratic Party is charging that the calls are targeted to particular groups.

It appears that some readers of this blog are anxious to stereotype the reactions of those purported to have received the calls.

Maybe Mr. Cranwell is smarter than that.

Will--

The issue isn't how folks react, it's the mere fact of the provocation.

Direct threats of voter intimidation, is subject to criminal punishment under both federal and state law. There are several federal laws that can be used to challenge direct intimidation. The most important of these the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The incredible part of this whole story is that it even happened at all...

Maybe there is no "proof" of targeting, save the anecdotal evidence people have shared here. But, in the absence of such evidence, what are we to conclude? Until convinced otherwise, I'm not ready to believe that the republicans are scanning the voting rolls for people that aren't properly registered while completely ignoring anything that might indicate how they would vote.

Remember, fireflyinva: It's not whether evidence actually exists, what matters is the seriousness of the charge.

There is no evidence for but more importantly there is no evidence against. And who has the evidence? The republicans. All they would have to do is release the lists of the people they called and alarmists like me would be stopped in their tracks. But they're not doing it.

So why should we give them the benefit of the doubt? Would we give Karl Rove the benefit of the doubt? And that, I think, is what bothers me the most. Karl Rovianism is making inroads in my state. A state where, not long ago, politics was still a gentlemanly affiar. Let's everyone send a message that we won't stand for these tactics in George Washington's home state.

"Do it's part"? Come on, WaPo, you know English better than that.

Will, the evidence is in history. They did this last year in battleground states.

The fact is, they are lying. This is the EXACT same MO as last year. The game is that the RNC calls/mails everyone with Dem history (please don't buy the excuse that they would contact people with 100% Dem primary history as a "discerning Dem") and then uses the results (wrong numbers, refused calls, bad addresses) to file tens of thousands and thousands of individual challenges at local BOEs, basically sending Democrats scrambling to track down the challenged voters (who are often elderly, minority, often out of town, military, etc.) to attend the hearings to defend their right to vote.

Nothing usually ends up coming of the challenges: these aren't fake voters: last year thousands of real voters showed up at the hearings, outraged, and they had the Republican local lawyers in apologetic tears by the end: they hadn't known exactly what they were getting into. But plenty more didn't: intimidated by the very idea of a hearing, unable to get off work for 8am meetings... on in one famous case, away fighting in Iraq but still outraged via letter the RNC would challenge his registration.

It's classic, classic voter suppresion. It may even be perfectly legal as far as I know. But let's not pretend this isn't what they are doing all over again: let the light of day show what the RNC spends its time doing. And let's not make apologies for it. We don't need this sort of thing in Virginia.

I keep wondering when someone is going to ask if Will Vehrs is using a state computer when he posts his apologistic, pro-Republican comments on blogs early in the afternoons here and on Jeff Schapiro's blog. Surely someone who has publicly criticized the Governor for not going far enough on the matter of government reform isn't actually using his state agency's computer to blog on behalf of Jerry Kilgore, is he?

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