robocalls

Taking advantage of high gas prices to mislead voters via robocalls:

“Hello. I’m calling from the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. Feeling the pain at the pump every time you fill up your tank? Well you should know that your congressman Brad Miller is supporting policies that could raise gas prices even more. Miller is still detached from the realities of all families in North Carolina forced to pay more than $3.50 a gallon.

If Congressional Republicans had half the intelligence and one tenth the integrity of Representative Miller, this recession wouldn't have happened in the first place.

The campaign of the candidate challenging a two-term congressman from North Carolina is raising eyebrows over questionable and possibly illegal tactics.

Poll workers associated with U.S. House District 13 candidate Bill Randall, a Republican businessman challenging incumbent Democrat Brad Miller, have taken actions at early voting sites that appear to cross the line from observing voters to intimidating them.

Randall is the politician who gained notoriety earlier this year when he suggested the BP oil disaster was a conspiracy between the company and the Obama administration who "[m]aybe wanted it to leak."

Over the last few days, residents of Wake County, N.C. -- the site of a nationally watched battle over its school diversity policy -- have been receiving calls from phone pollsters asking for their views on the county's education future.

Yesterday, Facing South editor Sue Sturgis received one of the automated poll calls. But the question of who's behind it is a mystery: The number traces back to a line in Conyers, Georgia that doesn't pick up, and at no time during the "robo-poll" was information provided about who was doing the survey.

Such anonymous automated calls are likely in violation of North Carolina consumer protection laws, which require that the "name and contact information" of the person or group making the call be clearly identified.

Dear (new) friends:

Per a request from Joyce McCloy, I am posting below a version of the diary I wrote today for Daily Kos.
Please note that in response, WVWV President Page Gardner posted her first-ever diary to provide documentation that the letter in question was faxed on Friday, April 25 (after the close of business) and the press release in question was sent via blast fax on Monday, April 28 (after the mysterious robocalls had gone out). She also issued another press release to attempt to give more details about her group's registration activities targeted at African Americans.

I believe there are still a huge number of questions to be answered with regard to all this. I maintain no doubt that a WVWV cover up is ongoing. I do not suppose that their actions are nefarious in intent, but I do believe that they have spent more time trying to cover their rear in the left blogosphere than actually rectifying the confusion they caused among voters. I also have serious doubts that the North Carolina press release was actually faxed on Monday morning, April 28. If, indeed, they thought it necessary to create a press release to explain away the confusion they were calling due to the registration deadlines, then why did they shop around a second press release to Colorado the next day? Also, why didn't they mention anything about the robocalls, which are the point of this whole controversy?

Mary Anne Baldwin, candidate for the Raleigh City Council, has taken a lot of heat for being too closely allied with development interests, heat she claims is unfair. Why then, I wonder, are her robocalls coming from 414-208-1097 a Milwaukee, Wisconsin number registered to "Mortgage Services."

Check it out below the break