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."
No I quoted from an old FR post.
None of the comments deny the quotes. I think the original thread was removed. I can’t find it.
An honest mistake? I don't know that I agree with that.
The mistake was fixed because of the rapid response. It was NOT corrected from internal checks. It was corrected because of the rapid external response.
She has not accepted responsibility for her mistake - rather she is trying to cast blame on others.
Actually just the opposite, from a campaign press release:
I am convinced that vote fraud played no role in this result. Rumors of vote fraud were investigated, and in the end they proved to be the result of errors in early media reports that were not reflected in the official numbers. In one notable case, when a campaign staff member contacted an individual who had on the evening of January 8 claimed that his vote had not been counted, the person said that he had made a mistake and that the next morning the error in reporting on a newspaper website had been corrected both in the media and — most importantly — in the official tally.
It’s REALLY help you if you read the non-paulbots as well.
I have to say, it kinda freaks me out to see the namecalling and denigration going on here. Not every person that sees merit in some of Paul’s platform is a freak or conspiracy nutter. I don’t agree with ANY candidate 100%. Why should Ron Paul not be heard like anybody else?
“Lol, quoting from “The Moscow Times” now?
(sigh)
All together again...don’t point to bad behaviour to justify your own”
Moscow Times is Dutch owned.
It’s often critical of the Russian government.
I didn’t behave badly, I posted on this thread.
So how would you compare what was normal behavior in times past on FR to the 40 some odd phone calls?
40-50 calls and 1 threat, vs what’s in that article?
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b1e041722d3.htm#28
Here someone who falsely reported a health code violation, other posters suggesting bringing cockroaches to the restaurant.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b1e041722d3.htm#79
Here’s one complaining that FReepers were called “brownshirts” for “freeping” Mia Lawrence.
Familiar tactic? These days on FR, Paul supporters are called brownshirts.
I credit the admin mods for removing all the posts with her home address - but many posters seemed to think it was OK and even clever.
Probably Moscow, Idaho. What is wrong with it?
Dutch-owned NOT much better. They lost me when they referred to this site as a “hate site” and I know who “Mia”is.
I don’t care what happened here seven years ago, typical Paulbot tactics. Forget it, just go.
Wrong again, genius. Do your homework:
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2001/06/15/107.html
Ask Dr. Paul for permission if you need to, and you probably do.
“I don’t care what happened here seven years ago, typical Paulbot tactics. Forget it, just go.”
So why do you guys seem to care so much about newsletters from 20 some odd years ago?
That’s something else he’s still lying about. He wrote those letters and we both know that, too.
Another reason? Those FR posters aren’t running for POTUS under my party’s name, but the poster boy of stormfront is.
Right now.
I call it “blowback”.
Good catch. LOL
So I was wrong for the first time in my life.
However, I do remember that incident.
I don’t think anybody’s followers are as rabid as the Paulistas. There is no way he would ever get my vote.
The vote total was immediately corrected. It was an honest mistake. The lady didn’t deserve this kind of treatment.
“The vote total was immediately corrected. It was an honest mistake. The lady didn’t deserve this kind of treatment.”
It wasn’t immediately corrected - they released it to a newspaper, that’s how people found out about it.
An election who never double checks results before releasing them definitely deserves to be called on it.
She didn’t deserve the 1 death threat, but it was some crank from out of state so not really serious. Who knows who made the call? Maybe some dirty trickster or rabid Paul hater. Who knows?
” Nowhere in your post do I see the info that she had challenged you for IE home and work telephone number, E-Mail address.
Chalk that up as ANOTHER lie on your part.”
No lie, I said if she told me who she was, I’d maybe tell her whom I was. I mentioned my # is already on the internet.
Of course I'm not trying to fool anyone. Oh, and it's compliment. But I don't have any for you.
You epitomize what it is that draws disdain for Paul supporters from rational people.
I am convinced that vote fraud played no role in this result. Rumors of vote fraud were investigated, and in the end they proved to be the result of errors in early media reports that were not reflected in the official numbers. In one notable case, when a campaign staff member contacted an individual who had on the evening of January 8 claimed that his vote had not been counted, the person said that he had made a mistake and that the next morning the error in reporting on a newspaper website had been corrected both in the media and — most importantly — in the official tally.
Does Ron Paul know that his campaign has released this?
Or will he in a few months say that he never knew that anyone in, around, next to his campaign had released such a statement?
The paul campaign itself disagrees with your assessment.
Let the pile on begin!
Once again a Ron Paul supporter refuses to address the root issue of the posted article.
Once again a Ron Paul supporter deflects from the main issue because there is absolutely no logical defense of the indefensible.
Thank you for your consistency.
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