Posted on 01/13/2008 10:21:43 AM PST by mnehring
Jennifer Call's eyes searched the office for nothing in particular. Her arms waved and her fear spilled out.
"This is where I grew up," Sutton's town clerk said yesterday. "This is my hometown, this is where my family is, and all of sudden, my name is being splashed across the internet as this horrible person. And the frightening part is, I don't know these people and they don't know me."
Call wants the nationwide army of boisterous Ron Paul supporters, believers in more conspiracy theories than Oliver Stone, to know that she's committed no crime.
Not treason, as the dozens of phone callers screamed. Not fraud, as the dozens of e-mails charged. Nothing.
Human error, by someone unknown, caused Call's office to claim Paul received zero votes from the town during Tuesday's first-in-the-nation primary.
Paul actually got a whopping 31 votes.
Out of 920 cast.
Launch an investigation. Alert the media.
The mistake was corrected early the next morning, but that hardly mattered. The Paul machine, upon reading the number in print, quickly went into counteroffensive mode.
This is luck at its worst. Screw up Rudy Giuliani's vote total. Or John McCain's. Or John Edwards's. Or Bill Richardson's.
But never, ever get anything wrong when it comes to Paul and his voting tally. If you do, fans who shouted from the rooftops through the primary season will track you down and chew you out.
"Most of the these people are not rational," Call said.
Call, 35, arrived at the Pillsbury Memorial Hall Tuesday morning at 7 for the start of a marathon day. About a dozen or so staffers coordinated the effort, guiding voters, counting votes, rechecking totals.
Paul's 31 votes got lost in the shuffle, lost in translation between moderator Greg Hill's voice and Call's pen.
The slot next to Paul's name on the original return sheet said 31, but a space on Call's return, next to Paul's name, remained blank.
"He's (Gill) reading off his results, I'm writing them down on the return," Call said. "I don't know why it was blank. I don't know if he skipped over it or if someone interrupted him to repeat the last name and it got skipped, or maybe I missed it. It was that simple."
No it wasn't.
Call was met by town officials the next morning at 9:30. They told her the mistake had been rectified. Call, her jacket still on, was confused.
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
She was told someone had come in and said he'd voted for Paul. The voter noticed the "0" in the local newspaper and wanted an explanation. When he got it, he left, satisfied.
Call phoned the Secretary of State's office and re-faxed the form, the one with a circled "31" next to Paul's name. Just to make sure.
Then it hit, like one of those snowstorms last month. Call got a call from someone named Bob. No last name. She remembers the man identifying himself as a reporter for the Associated Press, looking for the story on voter fraud.
She said she'd fetch the details, then call him back, thinking the media would need a strict timeline and every tidbit available.
"I'm thinking he's legitimate," Call said. "I call Bob back and it's a fax machine. I called AP and asked for Bob. They told me a reporter would have given a last name."
Others in the office received calls and e-mails. But Call was the name out front, the town clerk as well as the tax collector. She was labeled the brains behind the plot. She had the biggest target on her back.
The assault picked up after lunch. Paul supporters phoning Call claimed to be from the media. Others just yelled, saying she had committed treason, fraud. One person said she should be shot. She received as many as 40 calls that day.
"One person said he was on a nationally syndicated radio station," Call said, "and he has given out my phone number and they need to call the town of Sutton to find out why there's voter fraud."
The voices came from everywhere. California. Ohio. Florida. Michigan. Very few were from New Hampshire.
A man from Texas e-mailed that he was "contacting, by certified mail, the Attorney General of New Hampshire . . . and requesting a complete investigation and prosecution of any and all parties involved."
A police dispatcher in New London said yesterday she'd received inquiries about the clerk's office phone.
Call got a handful of calls that night at home, refusing to pick up whenever an out-of-state number appeared on her screen.
She got about five more the next day in her office. She tried to get work done. She called the Massachusetts company that makes the licenses for dog owners in her area. The guy had heard of her.
"Wow," the man said. "This is the second time this week I've seen your name."
"Where?" Call asked.
"I've gotten a dozen e-mails about how you've destroyed the New Hampshire primary."
"Why?"
"We make voting machines."
"The problem is," Call said yesterday, "we don't use voting machines."
She went home and locked her doors. She called her mother in North Carolina. She cried. The calls kept coming. She unhooked her answering machine and requested an unlisted number.
"I was drained emotionally and physically," Call said. "That's when I really started to freak out. Thursday it hit me, that most of these people are not rational. That's when I became scared."
It's calmer now. The calls and e-mails had stopped as of yesterday afternoon. Call had the day off, but she went into her office to retrieve some paperwork.
She's hurt and nervous, but she's got a job.
"I've got a school board meeting Saturday," Call said. "I've got to be ready."
Mrs. Call is the person that made the mistake.
The caller had Ron Paul's numbers correct on his tally sheet. Mrs. Call did not. It's pretty clear who's mistake it was.
An honest mistake was made and swiftly corrected, and this woman gets harrassed for it? Who does that kind of behavior help?
Bald faced liars give the Freep a bad rep too.
First of all,I responded to a statement you made referencing Paul's answer to the question posed by Brit Hume. Your comment is italicized in my response to you. In my reply,I pointed out that Paul was ridiculed despite the fact that Hume had changed the question and I found that quite dishonest.
Then you reply with a copy of the transcript and tell me I was making much out of nothing despite the fact that the transcript clearly shows the question was changed which was what I said. Furthermore,please remember that you were the person who brought up the whole incident in question,not me.
How you can state that Ron Paul was either napping or covering or not capable of absorbing information. It looks to me like you may be unable to comprehend what you have heard or what you have read.
Whaddaya mean??
Fred shoulda been ahead of Mike, Mitt, Ron, and John!!!
<}B^)
“To be fair, every candidate has partisans who are this deranged. Some people get their entire identities wrapped up in a campaign and go bananas when they think somebody is sabotaging their guy.”
Really?
Other than those on the left (and that’s including ron paul), I have yet to see supporters of a single Republican act like that.
“They seem to behave with a threatening, pack mentality”
Yep.
I was personally called a traitor who should be shot by a paultard because I refuse to support that village idiot.
Then the other day there was their attack on Sean Hannity.
And their constant attacks against Fox News (despite Fox giving the village idiot the most air time with exception to alex jones)
“Seems rational to me that if you know you voted for someone, but the clerk says there were no votes for that guy, you’d get pretty angry.”
Go read the article again.
One local (who voted for paul) did go and ask about it, and upon the situation being explained to him he went away happy.
What the rest of the supporters did was uncalled for.
“I was personally called a traitor who should be shot by a paultard because I refuse to support that village idiot.”
On this forum? Who? Link?
Other posters have been told that their son is a traitor who should burn in hell for supporting Paul. On the Hannity thread no less!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1949837/posts?page=209
To: furquhart
Regardless, that makes your son a traitor and he, like all other traitors, ought to burn in hell.
What exactly is he a traitor for? Personally I think leaving the borders why open is more of a traitor than wanting to pull out of Iraq (although both are stupid).
227 posted on 01/07/2008 7:47:27 PM PST by rb22982
“Then the other day there was their attack on Sean Hannity.”
Hannity was not attacked. The video is linked to in the link above.
If Hannity was attacked, why did he have a woman walking right behind him?
Was he hiding behind her?
No, he wasn’t attacked. There was a crowd walking behind him, asking for an interview, chanting fox news sucks, which it does, and saying that sean isn’t a great American, which he isn’t.
Figures that you’d show up to start making excuses.
Another string of excuses.
Havn’t see you condemn a single action of the paultards yet.
“Figures that you’d show up to start making excuses.”
If someone can’t do their job right as an election official, they need to get a new job.
There are few more important to our Republic.
Can you quantify the “excuse?” I made?
There were 40 some calls that petered out after a day.
The only pack mentality I see on FR is the pile-on of frothy Paul haters on these threads.
The whole article indicates that the election officials never double checked the results before reporting them. That’s OK with you?
More excuses and attacks on the victim.
He’ll never do it.
“Another string of excuses.
Havn’t see you condemn a single action of the paultards yet.”
You’re beginning to sound like a broken record.
Right here, buddy.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1953046/posts?page=43#43
“He’ll never do it.”
I did it several posts before hers.
Don’t blame me - work on your reading comprehension.
“The error was corrected with the first inquiry. Nobody has the right to call and harass that woman at home as Ron Paul’s ruffian minions did.”
Facts are irrelevant to him.
He has defended the thuggish actions of other paul supporters.
“Not only that, the next day the Pantagon said that the warning didn’t come from the Iranian ships - it came from the ‘Philippino Monkey,’ some mysterious nutjob with a shortwave who has harassed Gulf shipping for years.”
Got a link?
“Got a link?”
I linked to it in post #87
Iranian Boats May Not Have Made Radio Threat, Pentagon Says
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1951977/posts
FReepers who did duty in the Gulf mention him, and on another thread linked to in that one.
“He’ll never do it.”
Like I said - I did 2 posts before NautiNurse challenged me to.
I have seen neither of you apologize yet for smearing me.
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