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Here, I
use the definition of Swing States by the Swing State Project. Please
select your state of interest to proceed. (If there is no link, that
means there is no content for that state yet).
NEW
HAMPSHIRE 11/16/04
[Permalink]
Kerry supporters in New
Hampshire who had Kerry-Edwards signs found roofing nails in their
driveway on election day Via Votersunite,
we have this
report:
The election is over,
but police are still investigating criminal acts in Wolfeboro that
may have been politically motivated.
Several residents
found roofing nails scattered in their driveways the morning of the
election.
"I didn't really
think much about it until the next day, and we heard other people
had nails in their driveway, too," resident Steve Davis said.
Davis and his wife,
Joyce Davis, said they realized that all the victims had
Kerry-Edwards sign in their yards.
"To put nails in
a driveway -- that just crosses the line," said Joyce Davis,
who is also vice chairwoman of Wolfeboro Democrats. "I just
don't understand. If the object was voter intimidation, that didn't
work. It's just not funny."
Police said the nail
incidents started right after a number of Kerry-Edwards signs were
reported missing. Some residents reported that the nails were thrown
directly underneath their back tires.
Police said it's
fortunate no one got hurt. The 1-inch nails have a flat head and
stand up easily, making it possible to puncture a tire or someone's
foot. Many of the nails were discovered over the weekend when kids
were out trick-or-treating.
"Everybody is
passionate about their candidate, but this is just too much,"
Lt. Brian Black said. "It's not right."
Police said they are
continuing to investigate the incidents.
11/2/04
[Permalink]
Bogus phone calls in New
Hampshire tells Kerry supporters he is leading and that they don't
need to go and vote Via Campaign
Desk, a report in TNR:
CONCORD, NEW
HAMPSHIRE, 2:05 p.m.:
First dirty trick of the day up here: The New Hampshire Democratic
Party says somebody is making bogus phone calls that advise voters
to sit out the election because Kerry is already so far ahead.
According to a transcript of the call provided by the Dems:
"So, if you're going down to vote you don't have to bother,
because he's doing so well that we feel that there are enough people
that have already voted in the state of New Hampshire."
The call is so
ridiculous, it's hard to believe that anyone would take it seriously
[eRiposte note:
Really? Don't be too sure].
But Kathy Sullivan, the ever-quotable chairwoman of the state
Democratic Party, described the calls as an "assault on our
democracy" and said she's alerted the New Hampshire attorney
general.
10/15/04
[Permalink] UPDATED
10/26/04
New England Chair of
Bush-Cheney 04 - Jim Tobin - reported to be unindicted co-conspirator in 2002 GOP
phone-jamming vote fraud scandal in New Hampshire which has already produced two felony guilty
pleas; Bush Justice Department intervenes to prevent further depositions
and delays fact finding,
but Tobin resigns from current post (while denying wrong-doing) Here's
Josh
Marshall:
Ya
heard it
here first.
And now the Manchester
Union Leader comes
on board.
The unindicted
co-conspirator in a 2002 election
fraud case, which has already yielded two felony
guilty pleas, is none other than Jim
Tobin, New England regional chair of Bush-Cheney 2004, according
to court
documents filed Thursday by the New Hampshire Democratic Party
and now reported
by the Manchester Union Leader.
Tobin is named,
according to the Union Leader and TPM sources, in the plea
agreements of Allen Raymond and Chuck McGee, the two men who have
already pled guilty to felonies in the case.
Tobin, says the
article, did not return calls requesting comment from the Union
Leader Tuesday or Wednesday. Tobin has also not returned
repeated calls over the last three months from TPM requesting
comment on his alleged involvement in the case. TPM last attempted
to contact Tobin on Sunday and Monday of this week.
Now the Justice
Department is intervening
to delay discovery and depositions that would almost certainly
bring more of the facts to light before election day.
Tobin's alleged role
has been an open secret for some time within the Bush campaign,
political and journalistic circles in New Hampshire and, of course,
among the lawyers involved in the case. But late Thursday the state
Democratic party, which has been trying for months to get more
information on what happened in this case, identified Tobin by name
in a new
court filing and the Union Leader ran the story.
A few questions ...
1. Why do Justice
Department officials in Washington seem to be interfering in the
legal proceedings surrounding this case to push depositions and
discovery past November 2nd? (See the Union Leader article
and today's court
filing.)
2. When did the
Bush-Cheney '04 campaign first learn of Tobin's alleged involvement
in the phone-jamming
case?
3. Does the
Bush-Cheney '04 campaign believe that Tobin is an appropriate person
to oversee the Bush campaign in New Hampshire and the rest of New
England when his alleged involvement in this earlier election fraud
case is still being investigated.
UPDATE 10/16/04: Josh
Marshall has a couple of updates. First, this:
Bush-Cheney
New England campaign chair Jim Tobin resigns
over election
tampering scandal.
A few suggested
questions for national political reporters needing to do catch-up on
this story.
Tobin was named by
the two men who've pled guilty in the case as part of their plea
agreements. The Bush campaign has known for months of Tobin's
involvement in this case. The only reason he resigned today is that
this information was finally pried free from court documents. Why
did they keep him in such a senior post if they knew of his role in
such serious wrongdoing?
At the time the
incident happened Tobin was the Northeast political director for the
National Republican Senatorial Committee. This was under Sen. Bill
Frist's tenure as chairman. Did anyone else at the NRSC know about
this at the time?
Next:
Beside
the Bush
campaign angle to Jim Tobin's resignation
today, there's the connection to the National Republican Senatorial
Committee.
At the time the
election-tampering incident happened, Tobin was Northeast political
director for the Committee. What now seems clear from the offers
of proof of the two men who've pled guilty in the case is that
the scheme was not a local affair but arranged through the NRSC
or at a minimum through its regional political director, Tobin. This
is, again, what the first man to plead guilty in the case, Allen
Raymond, told prosecutor Todd Hinnen during his plea negotiations.
Which raises the
question, is Tobin the only person at the NRSC who was aware of the
scheme? And was this the only such scheme Tobin was involved in
during his tenure at the NRSC, given that he had responsibility for
several other hotly contested senate races that year?
During the 2002
election cycle, the Executive Director of the NRSC was Mitch Bainwol;
the Political Director was Chris LaCivita. Bainwol
is now Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of
America (RIAA). LaCivita now works for push-poll king Tom
Synhorst's DCI Group and is also a senior advisor to the Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth.
Asking them might be
a good place to start.
UPDATE 10/21/04:
Via reader PT, here's a report in the
Nashua
Telegraph:
Why is it taking the
U.S. Justice Department so long to get to the bottom of the
phone-jamming incident in the 2002 New Hampshire election?
The phone jamming, initiated by Republican campaign operatives to
suppress Democrats from voting in that heated state election,
doesn’t involve an entangled international conspiracy. Nor is it a
plot with a cast of thousands.
Yet, two years later, the Justice Department is still plodding along
in its investigation. So far, two of the parties in the
phone-jamming incident have pleaded guilty.
Chuck McGee, the former executive director of the state Republican
Party, pleaded guilty a few months ago to paying $15,600 to a
Virginia telemarketing company to make the calls that jammed the
get-out-the vote lines of Democrats the morning of the 2002
election.
The Virginia company then hired another firm to jam the lines. Allen
Raymond, a GOP consultant and president of the Virginia company, has
also pleaded guilty in the phone-jamming incident.
McGee and Raymond, in pleading guilty, said they had spoken about
the phone-jamming operation with an unidentified official of a
national political organization. Now the question is whether the
responsibility for this abuse goes farther up the Republican
campaign ladder.
Unfortunately, we’ll probably only know after Nov. 2. But the
state Democratic Committee thinks there are other Republicans
involved and, frustrated by the investigation’s slow pace, took
matters into its own hands last week by going to the state Superior
Court to get permission to question Republican officials believed
involved in this incidence.
One of them is James Tobin, the New England campaign chairman for
the re-election of President Bush.
Two years ago, Tobin was the northeast political director for the
Republican Senatorial Committee. He stepped down Friday as New
England campaign chairman for the Bush-Cheney ticket, but said it
was only to prevent distractions in the campaign effort.
The 2002 race between then Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and U.S. Rep. John
Sununu for the U.S. Senate was the most heated of the contests that
year and the dirtiest. The phone-jamming blocked get-out-the-vote
efforts by Democrats in Nashua, Manchester and several other places
for a couple of hours. That in itself may not have tilted the
election, but it’s a blatant abuse of election laws.
Give credit to the state Democratic Committee for keeping the heat
on this phone-jamming case. The Superior Court OK’d the
committee’s request last week to obtain depositions, but the
federal Justice Department then stepped in and brought the effort to
a halt. It said allowing the taking of depositions now would mess up
testimony from potential witnesses in criminal proceedings the
department is working on and also in ongoing action before a federal
grand jury.
It would be easy to accept the pleas from McGee and Raymond, punish
them with fines and jail time, and call the case closed. Once an
election is over, voters forget and move on to other controversies.
But if others were involved in this phone-jamming, they, too, ought
to be brought to justice, except, it ought not to take years for
this to happen.
Voter suppression tactics are the occasional topic of rumors on the
political circuit. The 2002 incident in New Hampshire is one of the
few that has led to convictions. Democratic Party Chairwoman Kathy
Sullivan, in pressing for accountability in this incident, has
rightfully refused to roll over and let bygones be bygones.
Vote suppression tactics interfere with the right of political
parties to get out the vote and, in extreme cases, could intimidate
people from voting. This case should be a warning that in New
Hampshire that kind of chicanery won’t be considered business as
usual.
Yet, it shouldn’t require many more months before the Justice
Department gets to the bottom of this particular case and the
identity of all the law breakers is made known. By then, the
department’s findings may only produce yawns and suspicions of
foot-dragging.
UPDATE 10/22/04
Josh Marshall notes
this:
Back
on July 1st a source first told me that Allen Raymond, the
man at the heart of the New Hampshire phone-jamming
scandal, had fingered Jim Tobin as one of his accomplices.
(Tobin's role was reported
first on TPM on October 11th.) Tobin, as we've noted earlier,
was the New England regional director of the Bush-Cheney campaign
until he resigned
last Friday.
That's more than
three and a half months ago. The Bush campaign has known at least
since then. And I suspect much longer. And yet they left him in the
post.
That means the
campaign kept in place a man implicated in an election tampering
scam that took place in the same part of the country over which the
campaign had given him oversight.
What does that tell
you?
Another point ...
To the best of my
knowledge no political reporter covering the Bush campaign has asked
a campaign spokesperson 1) when they found out about Tobin's role in
the election tampering scheme and 2) why they didn't remove him from
the campaign after they learned.
What does that tell
you?
If anyone knows of a
reporter who's asked or an article where an answer has been
published, please let me know.
In other
phone-jamming news, yesterday the Justice Department again went
to the mat to prevent New Hampshire Democrats from gaining
access to evidence about Tobin's role in the case.
UPDATE 10/26/04
Via
Dailykos, Former NH GOP Senator Bob Smith flays
the GOP for its actions:
I personally witnessed Mel Thomson, a Republican, ill and in
severe pain, force himself up from his seat to shake hands with
then recently elected Democrat Gov. Jeanne Shaheen. He did it
because he was a gentleman, but he also did it to show respect for
the governor and for the people who elected her in a fair election
a few months before.
That was yesterday.
Today we hear news that Charles McGee, the former executive
director of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, and
Allen Raymond, a GOP consultant, pleaded guilty to federal charges
stemming from their involvement in the jamming of telephones on
Election Day, Nov. 5, 2002. Democrats' computer-generated calls to
get out the vote were blocked and thus voters did not receive the
intended message due to illegal action by some in the Republican
Party [...]
This is a far cry from the party of Lincoln that proudly and
correctly stood on principle to outlaw slavery. It is a far cry
from the party of great and principled statesmen like Mel Thomson,
Norris Cotton, Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower and Teddy
Roosevelt. What a contrast between those great Republicans and
current party leaders, who refuse to speak out against this
despicable action by pathetic political hacks.
James Tobin, President Bush's 2004 New England campaign
chairman and the Northeast political director of the Republican
Senatorial Committee in 2002, said, "These allegations date
back to years and have absolutely nothing to do with the present
campaign."
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
Mr. Tobin, these allegations have everything to do with the
present campaign because the people must feel confident that the
2002 election fraud will not be repeated. The best way to restore
confidence is for all those involved to tell the truth now.
Both parties have a right to expect a fair election result even
if it is not always a favorable one. Tobin also said, "It is
disappointing, indeed, to see the opposition party (Democrats)
manipulate the court system in a blatant attempt to influence the
election."
What a mind-numbing hypocritical answer that is! Who is trying
to influence elections, Mr. Tobin? Please do not insult us
further.
New Hampshire Democrat Party Chair Kathy Sullivan said,
"The public should know Tobin's role in this, along with the
roles of any other high-level GOP officials."
Kathy and I have not agreed very often, but she is absolutely
correct. We need the truth now to restore confidence in the coming
election. She has a right to be angry. Can you imagine the
Republican outrage if the Democrats had been guilty of similar
conduct? Does a party that refuses to tell the truth before
Election Day deserve our vote on election day?
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