Continued Dirty Tricks

This NRCC "false flag" robocall project, designed to annoy voters and make it look like it was coming from the Democrat, is now certainly a key component of the Republican re-election strategy in the House. It's being used in literally dozens of races. The first campaign I heard crying foul on this was the Charlie Brown campaign, who sent out a press release about it on October 20th. So this was happening at least since then. Maybe they were the pilot program.

Here's an excerpt from their press release:

Today, Republicans for Charlie Brown called on the John Doolittle campaign to cease deceptive automated phone calls to voters that are initially represented as if they are coming from the Brown campaign--before going on to smear Brown.

The calls are being made to registered voters from all political parties in the 4th District-many have received numerous such phone calls in the past 10 days.

Brown's campaign office has received numerous complaints from constituents who thought the robo-dials were coming from the Brown campaign. Most people said they hung up on the message in disgust, and before they hear the call's closing disclaimer stating it was paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee-which has pumped more than $114,000 into the 4th CD race in recent weeks in support of Doolittle.

And this technique has been exported across the country. Meanwhile, in New Mexico Democrats are getting phone calls telling voters their polling place has changed - when it hasn't.

This is a strategy of voter suppression. The right to vote is inexplicably not enshrined in the Constitution, and until it is, or until a meaningful Voter's Bill Of Rights is passed along the lines of the one in Debra Bowen's platform, we will continue to see dirty tricks like this from campaigns that have nothing positive to offer their constituents.