It would take a real jerk to do something like this. Those of you who have done phone banks before know that they usually have a script for people to read to the individuals that are called, starting with “Hi, I’m a volunteer from the ______ Campaign” … If you were going to use a McCain email list and call for Obama, and start the call off with “Hi, I’m a volunteer with the Obama campaign,” you would make the campaign you were trying to help look worse if it got out.
Pollsters know that once a voter has been identified as “solidly voting for the opponent,” that person drops out of “Voter Universe” to use the campaign terminology – and that person becomes invisible to your campaign. Those people stop appearing on subsequent phone bank lists, canvassing lists, and even mailing lists.
In places like New Mexico, where the margin of victory was only 6,000 votes, this could have an effect.
Underhanded stuff like this has been done before, such as when the Republicans jammed the phones at the Dems’ office.
You know we talk about personal information security all the time, nowadays. 20 years ago the FBI used to be tipped off to possible malfeasance if you happened own a document shredder. Now you’re just stupid not to own one with all the identity theft going around.
But what about Campaign Information security? I’m curious if this subject came up in the Deval Patrick campaign’s unprecedented use of the internet to make campaigning easier, but exposed the data to hackers.
It’s essentially the same as malicious hacking and a a crime—probably a felony. As long as you use the lists and not damage anything then I guess it’s OK but percersely unorthodox.
<
p>Kinda like that State Reps kid from Tennessee hacking Palin’s Yahoo account. Now that kid is in serious trouble.
Twelve years ago, I received an invitation to Bill Clinton’s inauguration. Go figure.
Nobama begging e-mails. All they want is money.
to influence voters using another campaign’s phone system would be considered illegal. However any kind of coordinated campaign would certainly be illegal.
<
p>The simple act of front-paging this post could be construed as some sort of incitement.
<
p>Also, the intentional entry of inaccurate voter data on a campaign system would probably fall under various computer security/anti-hacking laws.
<
p>In other words, as fun as mischief might sound, it is not worth it.
This diary is raising a valid concern. It in no way invites anyone to to mishandle databases.
What happens if you get up in a crowded theater and shout, “Hey, what if there were a FIRE in here?”
I’m serious. Should, for example, people finding problems in the programming of the electronic voting machines have been quiet about it because their alarm raising might have given criminals an idea to do bad deeds? I think of such alarm raisers as the canary in the coal mine. Better to address these concerns now than mourn another stolen election after the fact.
Well, a little bit. But not it a critical way.
<
p>The same issue came up a few weeks ago when some MIT kids hacked the MBTA Charlie Cards and were going to speak about it at an e-security conference. The MBTA got a court order forbidding them to talk about it until they could fix the vulnerability.
<
p>It’s always a fine line. I don’t think this post is in any way an incitement for criminal activity and the moral and technical questions it raises make for an interesting discussion.
Sitting in a crowded theatre and shouting “What if those overloaded outlets spat out a spark that caused a FIRE?”
This message is meant to preclude injury to making an infernal machine.
<
p>Pretty sure there are already criminal cites on this matter.
It is not out of the question that a court could interpret the promotion of a moral dilemma question, where one of the options is obviously illegal, on a site that is very well connected to state party (although not officially), as part of a pattern of encouragement.
<
p>It does seem unlikely that a court would go so far, especially since the post does not contain the complete info necessary to hijack the McCain phone bank, but imagine what would happen if a handful of readers took it upon themselves to do just that. If the ordeal did end up before a judge, every little bit of why and how the defendants became involved would be considered.
since a fellow phone bank volunteer (for our state governor) and I were joking about this just the other day. We both shuddered at the thought, when it was clear how easy it chould be to mess things up.
<
p>If the phone bank coordinator isn’t totally stupid, they will send each person a unique login and password, and verify the identity of that individual. If someone that a phone bank hijacker calls gets suspicious and contacts the campaign, then the campaign should be able to identify the hijacker. So if the campaign is smart, there are the deterrent factors in place of potentially being able to identify the hijackers. But truthfully, I think it would be quite easy to avoid detection by just not calling people, but rather simply entering fake information into the db.
<
p>And then the question remains, is it illegal to go off-script or otherwise sabotage the database like this?
Bubble lists are those telephone lists with little circles to color in for yes-no-maybe.
<
p>Sometimes, it’s fictional people, who cannot say yes or no, to measure honesty of the caller. Sometimes – esp. in early stages – it’s a real person who reports back on what’s said. Some of them deliberately say ‘no’ to the candidate caller to gauge how a volunteer responds, as nobody wants a loon yelling – You %^&#$*^@# BASTARD!!! – at those who demur.
<
p>I am not going to respond to your comment about jammed phone lines other than to say this is a bi-partisan crime, and it’s motly Democrats who have been found guilty to date. BOTH SIDES try this.
Otherwise I’m deleting your comment.
Let’s just see if PP can substantiate the claim.
if she gives David a zero for asking, as she does to me. I bet she’s more polite around the editors, though, than to “the least of these”.
Porcupine can’t support it, and just looks ridiculous since teh Republican effort to jam phone lines in Maine is well known — and wound up with a criminal convictions for the GOP miscreant.
<
p>Another Bush/McCain bellyflop. Hilarious.
Or did you mean New Hampshire (2002)?
Here is a link to the entire article – http://www.humanevents.com/art…
<
p>Two examples –
<
p>
<
p>
<
p>From the Texas Atty. General’s Office –
Former Port Lavaca Councilwoman Found Guilty Of Voter Fraud
Debra M. Briseno found guilty of illegal voting
<
p>EDNA – A Jackson County jury today returned a guilty verdict against former Port Lavaca councilwoman Debra Martinez Briseno, 51. The jury found her guilty on two counts of illegal voting during the March 2006 Democratic primary, a third-degree felony. The punishment phase of the trial begins Monday. A third-degree felony carries a range of punishment of from two to 10 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.
<
p>The Calhoun County District Attorney’s office received a complaint about Briseno’s activities then sought assistance from Attorney General Abbott. The resulting investigation with Calhoun County District Attorney Heard showed that Briseno, who was running for the office of county justice of the peace at the time, made it possible for noncitizens to falsely register to vote and then actually cast ballots in person during the primary, based on her advice…she visited local residents who were noncitizens and assisted them with voter registration. She represented to them that they needed only a valid driver’s license to become registered to vote as a U.S. citizen. She filled out the portion of the registration application inquiring of citizenship and affirmatively marked that these individuals were United States citizens.
<
p>David – TO RETURN WHAT I WAS SAYING – both parties have some guilt. To act as if either party has a monopoly on tempering and fraud is nonsense.
<
p>So go ahead – delete my comments. Hell, delete all of them.
In the Milwaukee example, I notice the “clear evidence of fraid” did not result in any indictments, never mind convictions. Same thing in the Forida case. In third example, it was an individual caught…not a state party and RNC connected officals. A very big difference. So your bold statement is backed up with barely any evidence. Not even a good try.
There were more, and again, I find it odd that I am the only commenter that must substantiate in detail every statement. Especially since all I was trying to do ws answer a question about bubble lists.
<
p>Unless you join Laurel in her premise that all election fraud is unknown to Democrats?
Yes, there were more Google hits.
<
p>That doesn’t mean there’s any evidence there to back up your point of equivalence. Take an hour or so to find evidence of the Democratic Party doing anything like the phonejamming or the voter caging on a large level.
<
p>After that hour of not finding a serious number of indictments or convictions, ask yourself if Human Events and Karl Rove and the other Republicans who spread that idea of equivalence have played you for a fool.
Can you provide a link to where I asserted such a thing? Of course not – that’s your MO – throw stink bombs then run whining that little Timmy did it. Keep it up – you make the MA-GOP look really petty.
So when you said that both parties have jammed phone lines, but that the Democratic party did it more, you were just outright lying? What does voter fraud have to do with phone jamming? They are completely different crimes.
Please listen – BOTH parties engage in questionable election practices. THAT is all I said. If phone jamming is the only thing you consider wrong, well, I guess the cavailling about 2000 is moot now, as telephones weren’t involved.
<
p>And I would also suggest that calling somebody a liar because you cannot read their comments carefully enough to understand what they are saying is a personal attack. As if that mattered here any more.
In a discussion about calling people, you claimed
<
p>
<
p>When asked for evidence, you responded with unrelated claims about voter fraud. You have still said absolutely nothing to support your original claim. There is a well-known instance of the Republican party jamming phones to hurt a Democratic campaign. I am unaware of any instances of Democratic phone-jamming. You were asked to provide evidence and have failed to do so. As such, I am going to make the entirely reasonable assumption that you were lying in your original claim. Feel free to prove me wrong by providing evidence of Democratic phone-jamming. Until you do so, the evidence suggests that you made a claim that everyone here has recognized as being false and that we have no reason to believe that you thought was true. In other words, you are a liar. That isn’t a personal attack, it is a description of your actions. If you don’t wish to be called a liar, then don’t say things that aren’t true. Changing the subject doesn’t change what you said earlier.
… is there ANY evidence that this was part of a coordinated action on the part of the party? If not, then this IS NOT analogous, even if true.
This is what I was most interested in seeing supported. But then down thread it’s funny how PP changes tune and says “TO RETURN WHAT I WAS SAYING – both parties have some guilt.”
<
p>No kidding both parties have some guilt. But out from whose ass did you pull the “mostly Democrats have been found guilty” assertion? Hell, it may even be true, but the fact that you a.) don’t support this in the first comment and b.) change the focus of your argument to “there’s plenty of blame to go around” in your subordinate comments reflects poorly on your aility to argue constructively and make factual statements.
Republican president prosecutes a needless war that kills thousands of Americans and even more Iraqis;
Democratic president asks a woman to whom he is not wed to fellate him.
<
p>Both parties have done bad things.
<
p>Rep. Bill Jefferson is found with thousands of dollars in his freezer, and the voters of Louisiana re-elect him.
Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Ted Stevens, Tom Delay, Rick Renzi, Larry Craig join over a dozen Republicans who were elected to Congress in 2006 who have since been indicted for criminal acts.
<
p>Both parties have done bad things.
<
p>The New Hampshire Republican Party organized an operation to suppress turnout of the Democratic Party’s voters on Election Day, under the leadership of a man in close contact with the White House.
<
p>Individuals voted when they weren’t supposed to in areas with more Democrats than Republicans.
<
p>Both…no, I can’t even play this time. The Democrats are not responsible for the actions of their voters. This is ridiculous. Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have done bad things. Both Pol Pot and Mother Teresa sinned.
<
p>Doesn’t make them equal.
… that they have started to believe their own BS. This line of thinking started as a media strategy to work the refs and get them to hide the relative weight of things. I think they’ve repeated it so often they now believe it, just like they believe that the MSM is liberal. Occasionally, some like Kristol know better and let the truth slip out, but at this point I think most of them really believe this.
shouldn’t we be better than this?
The question is, is the McCain campaign, and what can we do to prevent these potential abuses? It is an excellent question.
embarrassing to humiliating to blindly back a morally bankrupt party?
That the McCain campaign sent asking you to phone bank Deval Patrick’s list?
<
p>nolantreadway (at) gmail.com
We use the Nobama list that was posted on BMG to make calls for McCain. If I get one phone call from a Nobama supporter, I will retaliate and make your life a living hell. That is why most phone bank calls are from out of state.
Otherwise I can assure you from experience that phone banks are conducted by volunteers, mostly in-state, though federal races certainly impact everyone so out-of-state is just fine. The Shaheen people, for example, make absolutely no secret of the fact that they are using out-of-staters. I’m not terribly concerned about your “retaliation” BTW. It’s pretty clear you weren’t voting for Obama anyway.
A Nobama volunteer uses their cell phone to call me, I will do it. I’m sane, why would I ever want to vote for Nobama. He has not done anything. I do agree with him on one point though. “Change is good”. Lets start here in MA. Jeff Beatty for US Senate!
but works in another, are they “out of staters”? What about the many people who live in MA but still have cell numbers from their former state (because cell numbers are transferable)? And finally, will you make the life of an out-of-state beatty or mccain volunteer a living hell too?
<
p>just wondering what the parameters of your living hell decision making are, if any.
With that caller. I may just volunteer to work for Jeff Beatty. Jeff is that good and Kerry is that despicable. Where is Kerry these days? Likely hiding from Beatty.
Hiding on YouTube. You definitely should volunteer for him if you support him, as he needs all the help he can. Has he hit you up for money yet?
I would likely have a good debate with the democratic caller too. I do not listen to autocalls ever. Those annoyances tend to make me vote against their candidate if I’m undecided. As to “out of staters”: What special interest are you lobbying for in my voting area. If you dont have a vote in my voting area, your opinion is useless to me.
Remember legislative action is collective action. Take the US Senate for example. Kennedy and Kerry are great Democratic Senators for us, but if they are in the minority (or even in a less-than-60-vote majority) they can only get so far. So yes, I’m doing some volunteering for Jeanne Shaheen because I want that seat to be Democratic as well. There is absoutely nothing wrong with taking a big picture view of what a legislative chamber’s partisan composition is. We all have a stake in these bodies as a whole.
Even the political parties are special interests. They are looking for a forum to put forth their agenda. Whether you like the agenda or not. I like Ted, Kerry is useless. Remind me after the election to tell you all how little your vote means. I dont want to discourage people from voting.
But each of the two major parties includes millions of registered voters. The framers’ ideal of politics free of party went by the boards within their own generation. There is nothing wrong with coming together to pursue an agenda; that’s exactly what politics is. Are you really telling me that there is no organized interest whose goals you favor?
if you have a crappy candidate.
<
p>Otherwise you do your side more good spending your time working for your side rather than trying to futz up the opposition.
<
p>For sure there is a clear ethical dimension but there’s a pragmatic one too.
McCain supporters might have a pragmatic reason to do this… 😉
The first involves maliciously entering false data into someone else’s database, which is reprehensible and possibly illegal.
<
p>The second, if I’m reading your post correctly, involves using your opponent’s list to make calls for your candidate. I can’t honestly see the value in this for a couple of reasons.
<
p>First off, each campaign creates their voter universe based on their own criteria. McCain is going to be rallying voters who they are confident will support them and persuading those who they see as probable swing voters. They may categorize the voters based on past voting history, household income, demographic data, census info, credit history, magazine subscriptions, etc. (Targeting in national campaigns has gotten perversely complicated with the amount of data that is available.)
<
p>Obama is also going to have his own criteria. The campaigns spend ungodly sums of money coming up with these lists for a reason: it’s a waste of time to try to convince people to vote for you when they are clearly not your supporter or are highly unlikely to vote at all.
<
p>Also, if you were to use McCain’s list to call for Obama, there would be no way for the Obama campaign to get the info of who ended up being their supporter, which is very important to have on election day for GOTV operations.
<
p>So although one could use McCain’s phone list to make calls for Obama, I doubt it would be worth the effort. You’re much better off getting Obama’s lists and making official calls for their campaign. Aside from being legitimate, it’s also more likely to be effective.
If you want to find out what segment of the population your opponent is focusing on, getting hold of the phone bank lists might give you an idea of that. This may have nothing to do with futsing up someone else’s database, and everything to do with opposition research.
When you make your campaign info available to countless volunteers, there’s always the possibility that one will just be info-shopping for your opponent.
<
p>I guess for campaigns of this size the benefit of thousands of volunteer calls outweighs any downside.
<
p>Also, I imagine they limit the amount of info a volunteer is privy to at any given time. It’s not like they open up their entire database to you; they probably just feed you a few dozen names and when you get through those they give you a few dozen more.
the db I have access to allows me as much access as I want, albeit one name and number at a time. It wouldn’t take long to take a sample of a few hundred names, for example. If I had a partner in crime, we could easily get a sample of 1,000 if we wanted to.
<
p>Of course, not all campaigns use the same software.
…the Patrick campaign didn’t just open the list to anyone. They knew who were getting their lists, either directly, or by recommendation of someone known to the campaign.
Every delegate was given a list of names and numbers at the Democratic state convention…which was funny because a great many of us didn’t want him to win.
I had thought about this, too, and I haven’t really come up with any good answer. Another thing one could do, which might actually be more effective, is to actually pretend to be a McCain volunteer but make a very bad impression. For example,
<
p>Perhaps that’s a bit exaggerated, but I think it would be possible to push an undecided voter against McCain with this style of argument.
Even if it isn’t legally fraud, you should not be representing yourself as working on behalf of the McCain-Palin campaign if you are not. If you wish to make negative statements about McCain to people, you can do so without pretending that you support him.