Comments on: Allen Voter Intimidation?

By: finnegan

finnegan — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:45:07 +0000

I wonder if the voter turnout would be more or less with mail voting.

I want to know who organized the calls, and under who’s directive (also, how wide-spread was it? a few? hundreds? thousands?) but at this point, allegations that Allen’s people are doing it are unfounded. There is no mention of that in the Richmond Times-Dispatch article. A Democratic Party council member only said it was “Republicans.”

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By: zen

zen — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:17:10 +0000

finnegan makes an excellent point about unsponsored surrogates. However, now that the FBI is involved it should be pretty easy to uncover a link—if one exists—to a larger organization. Phone records should be easily tracable.

This is not only dirty, but highly illegal. We’ll never be able to prove exactly how many voters were discouraged, and so what will change. It seems like a risk some creeps are willing to take.
People convicted of these behaviors should be made an example of by imposing severe penalties.
Either that or reform the process nation wide to vote by mail.

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By: Gxeremio

Gxeremio — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 18:48:38 +0000

Well, it could be the result of some person or group in one campaign or the other looking at a list of subscribers to a certain magazine that leans right or left, or from some kind of catalog, and then dialing numbers with a Virginia area code with their fake message. The risk of doing this seems big, though, against pretty small results unless you were doing a lot of this kind of voter intimidation.

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By: finnegan

finnegan — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:42:20 +0000

Something’s fishy here. The Not Larry headline is misleading spin.

If there is/was voter intimidation in Arlington or Hampton (dem territory) I’m assuming it’s coming from Allen supporters. But Accomack? That’s Republican territory. Could it be coming from both sides?

It’s rare (but not unheard of) that this sort of activity would be sanctioned by the candidates or their campaign strategists. It’s like Stark — if some rogue supporter(s) does something weird, extreme, or illegal, the candidates themselves can’t be held responsible, just as Webb was not responsible for Stark’s actions.

I haven’t heard of any in the Valley (not yet anyways).

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