Was it a prank, or something more?

On Wednesday, Democracy for America organized a conference call for Debra and hundreds of DFA activists across California to talk about her campaign for Secretary of State and the latest re-certification of Diebold voting machines.

Tha call started out great, with Debra spending 15 minutes talking about why she’s running for Secretary of State and why we must work to restore the public’s confidence in California elections.

But when the call was opened to Q&A from the 100 participants, things got really strange. Someone on the line decided to play a loud recording of something that can only be described as “inappropriate noises” — let’s just leave it at that.

So the question is, was this just someone’s poor idea of a funny campaign prank, or was it an effort to stop people from learning about ways they can act to stop Secretary McPherson’s terrible decision to re-certify Diebold voting machines?

We may never know the answer to that question. But you can still take action: Email Secretary McPherson and tell him to reverse his decision to approve Diebold machines for the 2006 elections!

– Brent

162 Responses to “Was it a prank, or something more?”

  1. John Lopresti Says:

    The CA HAVA upgrade decision process is important to lots of states as well as to equipment vendors; CA is expected to set the pace. Without excessive conjecture, I list the following which are all about the infamous 2002 campaign dirty trick whereby a VA campaign publicity firm eventually was caught using electronics consultants to jam get-out-the-vote telephone banks in NH. Looking at the current posts on the subject by Joshua Marshall at his various websites, and reviewing the news articles at the time, I would suggest Sen. Bowen connect with some tech cognoscenti who have the means of tracing the call. Certainly a conference call is costly and the telephone company with which the Bowen organization arranged the patched call will have a record still pretty close to the most recent archive to trace the cause of the mischief.

    Now reviewing the infamous NH telephone jamming tactics, and the actual court documents and the published verdict which convicted the leader in the partisan organization who brainstormed the jamming strategy but exonerating that leader from the specifically most serious federal indictment (i.e., not saying he was the one who actually implemented the interstate jamming); all these are about the NH case exclusively; no ostensible connection to Sen. Bowen’s jamming episode:

    US federal prosecutor’s indictment court papers, the final “superseding” version dated May 18, 2005 as filed in federal court in NH: http://www.conmon.com/documents/tobin%20indictment.pdf

    Joshua Marshall August 11, 2005 on Tobin New Hampshire GOP phone jamming case. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006270.php and more current update at http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/000625.php

    The ‘new’TPM http://concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051216/REPOSITORY/512160355/1037/NEWS04 discusses a NJ case with similar m.o.

    Rep. Waxman’s site Truthout December 15, 2005 on federal court split decision convicting Tobin of part of the telephone jamming but not all; AP article reprinted http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121605O.shtml

    Professor Hasen http://electionlawblog.org/archives/004637.html notes Christian Science Monitor news of NH federal court December 15, 2005 verdict: http://concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051216/REPOSITORY/512160355/1037/NEWS04

    NB: I have put these longform instead of as HTML because I believe the senator’s website has HTML features set off.

    It seems there is a time factor here, and the senator has had a schedule and organized event disrupted, so there is damage and expense; one wonders if the event is attempted to be repeated if that, too, would be jammed; and whether an appropriate trace could be placed on the telephone conference call to find the hacker if it was indeed that kind of prank. It might be a prank that was worth $multimillion contracts and other tangible results to its organizers. I think gone are the days of the partyline when the neighbor could cause havoc by picking up the line at the same time you are talking. Certainly there was a trail of evidence to help solve the mystery in NH. And one of the articles above at TMP depicts some similar shenanigans in another state.

  2. Bababooey Says:

    The prankster was either a Republican dirty trickster or one of those nutcase Howard Stern fans. There should be a law against both!

  3. Tom Courbat Says:

    Brent,

    You will recall we had exactly the same problem on the DFA - Temecula Valley call with Debra. It got so bad people couldn’t even ask questions, and we had to terminate the call a bit earlier than planned.

    I think the solution is to use a pay-service like GoToMeeting.com (no, I don’t work for them or own any stock!) and then the moderator will have more control over individual lines and can block them if they become intrusive.

    I hope you will continue these conference calls through November, and I look forward to hearing Debra on Al Frankin on Friday!

  4. Garth Says:

    By far, the most important pressing issues facing California and the nation is the accuracy of the vote, which is severly in question today because of mounting evidence from FL, OH and vast amounts of other research.
    Not the least of which is in the current issue of Rolling Stone Magazines—an artticle by Robert F Kennedy Jr about how the OH election was stolen in 2004, which means that John Kerry was reightfully elected President then, as was Al Gore in 2000.
    My key question is why does the mainstream media avoid the issue like a plague? Well at least we have Greg Palast, US citizen, who is a correspondent for BBC because the US press doesn’t like his democratic message to returning honesty in government—especially re voting. His new book on this subject comes out tomorrow Tue June 6th.
    I have just used Deborah Bowen’s web site to fwd my protest message to MacPhearson to correct the electronic voting machine mess, but have a question for someone, anyone, (since I can’t find a “contact us” eMail from the Bowen campaign) the reply site to MacPhearson is not working—I sent the mail “as is” since the editing function does not work—neigher could I insert my edits/comments, nor could I add my name and city at the bottom.
    Help, anyone, also get this message to the Bowen campaign ASAP.
    Thanks
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