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."
They were not looking for an interview.
Doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Another Ron Paul ruffian supports harassing phone calls to the woman's home. Have you no shame or conscience?
What we need is somebody with the domestic agenda of Ron Paul and the foreign policy agenda of Duncan Hunter.
You are a troll, pure and simple. We eat trolls here. Yum. Yum.
Well, I’m not really a Ron Paul guy. He’s not at the bottom of my list, but pretty close. This is the kind of stuff that happens everytime a politician, journalist, or other public figure does something dumb, screws up, or pulls a fast one. It’s just to be expected. Hardly news.
I don’t read any death threats there. It’s just a bunch of blabbermouths venting their disapproval. If there really were death threats, you’d think they’d take it a little more seriously than they did.
She got one dopey death threat from an out of state number and was frightened?
I hope she stays indoors during windy days. The poor dear might blow away.
*********
How cavalier of you.
“The only one smearing you is you.”
Hohum
“You never did tell us how many death threat phone calls your family would take before they wouldn’t be considered dopey.”
She got one from an out of state stranger and I condemned it.
If I got one call like that I’d disregard it.
“You support a mob chasing Sean Hannity for blocks, then attempt to smear him further by saying he was hiding behind a woman’s skirt.”
They were’nt “chasing” him. There was no running involved. If they wanted to “catch” him they could have.
If he and his Rudy supporting buddies were in danger, why was the woman walking BEHIND them all?
Either they felt there was no threat, or he hid behind the woman. Do you have another explanation?
It wasn’t a mob. It was a crowd. They weren’t chasing him, they were following and harassing him verbally.
The initial post said people threw rocks and glass at him.
Do you still assert that?
Even Hannity didn’t!
“They were not looking for an interview.”
What do you think they wanted to do, physically assault him?
That’s because nobody takes him or his supporters seriously, because they defend behaviour like this.
It might be okay by stormfront standards, but it doesn’t belong in the Grand Old Party. Take the brownshirt tactics elsewhere.
“It might be okay by stormfront standards, but it doesn’t belong in the Grand Old Party. Take the brownshirt tactics elsewhere.”
I just read a thread where pro-life protesters were haranguing Rudy - and cheered on.
What tactic do you disapprove of here? The one death threat? Everyone who likes Paul condemned it on this thread. For all I know it was made by a Paul hater to make him look bad. Who knows? Maybe a Dem looking to keep antiwar independents from supporting him? I have no idea.
Paul said of stormfront etc, to stop supporting him, they aren’t helping him.
I am a Jew and I have responded to Pauls message of limited government. I don’t think he’s a racist or antisemite. Being lumped in with Stormfront is pretty offensive, and really silly.
THere were about 50 some odd phone calls made, most in the first day.
The election officials published the results without ever double checking them.
They DID deserve to get called on it.
Will you agree with that point, if not the tactics used?
Who’s defending it? I’m just saying that she over-reacted.
You aren't fooling anyone but yourself.
The initial post said people threw rocks and glass at him. Do you still assert that?
Cite the source post where I asserted rocks and bottles were thrown.
Don't let facts get in the way of your smear campaign. The act of posting false messages is called trolling--you said it yourself. We eat trolls here.
Oh please! Give it a rest. Troll somewhere else.
Thanks for the ping, and I’m shocked. I would have expected them to be in front of her house in force. I sympathize with the town clerk. Mistakes happen. And fascists take advantage when they can. Off topic, according to some reports, Paul has been using the subscription lists from the racist newsletters he knew nothing about for fundraising. I’m sure that’s not true, probably a media conspiracy, we’ll see in a few days. I understand we have more newsletter releases to look forward to as well. I’m amazed the dems are holding fire this long.
They weren’t chasing Rudy down the streets, throwing things at him, now were they? Paulbots have been stalking Rudy for months, they try to destroy anybody in their way.
They didn’t “publish” anything - it was a clerical error which meant nothing, this reaction is non-defensible. He’s STILL the offical stormfront candidate, and the loon accepts from Neo-Nazis.
Please take your nutjob third party.
“You aren’t fooling anyone but yourself.”
If they were being chased, why didn’t Sean and his big burly male friends put themselves between the woman and the alleged mob?
“Cite the source post where I asserted rocks and bottles were thrown.”
THE INITIAL POST. You know, the actual story posted.
Not YOUR initial post.
Have you criticized the poster for being incorrect about what happened and trying to gin up hysteria?
“Don’t let facts get in the way of your smear campaign. The act of posting false messages is called trolling—you said it yourself. We eat trolls here.”
Go back to the thread. It’s in the actual post. I didn’t make anything up.
I initially did on that thread based on comments people who were chasing Hannity said. This was later confirmed by another radio host who was there and witnessed it. He didn't say rocks or bottles, but he did say things were being thrown.
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