Yesterday, the Daily Kos, along with liberal Wisconsin blogs WI Voices and Blue Cheddar, reported that the extra crazy conservatives at Wisconsin Right to Life were trying to keep liberals from voting in Wisconsin’s recall election. The alleged intimidation came in the form of out-of-state robocalls liberal voters in Wisconsin reported receiving from the Milwaukee-based organization, which is against not just abortion, but also stem cell research, premarital sex, and probably fun.
The calls reportedly told voters not to go to the polls because, “an absentee ballot is in the mail.” But there was a problem—no such ballots actually existed. Since it was the day of the election, voters actually needed to show up at the polls or hand-deliver their absentee ballots in order for them to be counted. If Wisconsin Right to Life is in fact behind these calls, it’s worth noting that while, yes, technically the robocalls don’t literally instruct people not to vote, at the very least they misled them into thinking they had more time to cast their ballots than they actually did.
Now Wisconsin Right to Life is denying claims of voter intimidation. A press release they sent to The Stranger yesterday quotes Barbara Lyons, executive director, as saying NOT AT ALL DEFENSIVELY, “Wisconsin Right to Life condemns bloggers who are falsely and viciously reporting that Wisconsin Right to Life is making calls telling people not to vote today. That is completely untrue. Wisconsin Right to Life has not ever and is not now making phone calls to suppress votes.”
In a piece published yesterday by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Lyons again denied that the calls were made to dissuade voters, but stated that the organization did make phone calls to voters. AND! Wisconsin Right to Life fielded fake Democratic candidates in an effort to prevent real Democrats from winning.
This is seems pretty suspicious to me, but also? Just not very smart, from a political standpoint. It seems like a lost cause—at best—for a blatantly anti-choice organization to try to target liberal voters. And maybe this is why, regardless of whether they actually tried to intimidate voters, the calls ultimately didn’t work: The Washington Post reported this morning that all projected winners of the recall election are actual Democrats.
Time to pay Megan Burbank! She is ready for prime time.
We may be disorganized, but thankfully we aren’t stupid.
So, are they saying they had nothing to do with these calls and don’t know where they came from? Or do they mean that that they were involved, but the calls were not, in their opinion, deceptive?
so their argument boils down to… we weren’t trying to ‘intimidate’ voters into not voting; we were just trying to ‘trick’ them into not voting. well, at least they are a-ok on the ethical side of things.
This stuff will continue forever until you criminalize it with actual police enforcement. Fines are meaningless.