Ron Paul’s supporters would FREAK-Out Anyone!
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."
“The Ronulan Empire will fall”
So will our nation if we keep electing dems and leftist Republicans.
Just yesterday there was a thread here on FR worried that Fred would lose Florida because he’s last on the primary ballot.
How dare they use alphabetical order!
“And the paulistinians on FR are making excuses for the brownshirts. Shameless.”
What brownshirts?
THey reported the wrong numbers.
People called them. When you screw up big like this, expect people to call you on it.
ONE person called and made a threat. Who knows, maybe it was a Paul hater who is now posting on this thread, to make him look bad? Who knows? Whomever did that was totally out of line, I condemn that kind of threat totally.
Still, we’re talking about 40 calls one day, and a handful over following days. But for those who are scared of the idea of limited government, Paul is a threat.
Every other candidate in the GOP debate talked about some other program they would initiate. Particularly in the area of job retraining and education. Why is this federal responsibility? Ask the self described federalists. Who knows!
I have and no thanks. His wacky 9-11 beliefs among others; disqualify him from serious consideration
That woman was so frightened, she changed her telephone number.
We'll wait patiently for your info.
Well, tbh, I kind of found this harmless. It almost seemed like they performed something of a freep. What got my attention was watching them mob and stalk the talk show host while shouting "intellectual" soundbites about how he "sucks".
What really scares me about Ron Paul is the extremists and truther morons that he's deliberately trying to flatter and win over. He goes on their shows to woo their audiences with his "America is Evil" platform and he's acquiring a lot of followers from this mindset.
I'm not saying that he's some evil genius, though, because he doesn't really seem to be very intelligent at all. Check out the last debate where he makes this wild assertion about the other folks' stance and then, when corrected, says he didn't actually hear what they said.
He's the perfect candidate for supremacists and truthers who refuse to let loose of their prejudices and conspiracies regardless of the available facts.
“How about this: Give us your home phone number, work number, email address—and a meager 40 of us will call you at home, work, and spam your email saying all sorts of things. Maybe one threat will get mentioned in the news report.”
Nice going but I’m not an election official who got vote totals wrong, and reported incorrect totals to the newspaper.
So much for checks and balances huh.
OK I accept your challenge. My cell number and other contact info are already on the Internet. It’s an Arizona number. Try calling all the 602 numbers you can find and ask for me.
“That woman was so frightened, she changed her telephone number.”
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.
When you become an election official, you have a responsibility to get it right.
THese guys screwed up bad - and FReepers are defending them.
“I’m not saying that he’s some evil genius, though, because he doesn’t really seem to be very intelligent at all. Check out the last debate where he makes this wild assertion about the other folks’ stance and then, when corrected, says he didn’t actually hear what they said.”
What a load of BS.
Huckabee threatened to send them to the ‘gates of hell’
Another candidate said they’d meet their 72 virgins.
Paul said, we don’t know who made the radio broadcast.
Guess what? The Pentagon the day later said it wasn’t the Iranian ships who made the broadcast - it was the Phillipino Monkey, a short-wave geek who harasses ships in the Gulf.
Other candidates made comments during the debate, that they didn’t hear that, btw.
Fox can’t even get audio mix to debate participants right? They are too busy reporting on car chases, natalie holloway, and britney spears.
So the people who screamed that she was a traitor were perfectly acceptable to you? You need to admit that a lot of paul supporters are loons. Maybe not all, but a lot. I haven’t seen mobs of any other candidate’s supporters chasing pundits around throwing stuff at them, or breaking into studios.
You post your mob rule drivel under a pseudonym while defending terrorizing a woman who, by all accounts, made an honest error and corrected it immediately when alerted to the problem.
Put up, or shut up, troll.
Maybe all 31 Paultroons should be put behind bars - for safety’s sake...
See also 'Hitler' in the Kook Fringe Book of Overused Perjoratives.
“So the people who screamed that she was a traitor were perfectly acceptable to you? You need to admit that a lot of paul supporters are loons. Maybe not all, but a lot. I haven’t seen mobs of any other candidate’s supporters chasing pundits around throwing stuff at them, or breaking into studios.”
No one threw anything at Sean Vanity.
THey didn’t chase him - they followed him and yelled that he’s not a great American, and asked for an interview.
Sean had a woman walking behind him. If he was threatened, why didn’t he put himself between the “angry crowd” and her? Or did he hide behind her skirt? You can’t have it both ways.
I don’t know the breaking into studio reference, but your others are wrong, so who knows.
People on FR call other candidates, such as open borders supporters, traitors, day in and day out. Bush gets called a traitor for his open borders globalist positions on here every day.
I think the Daily Dose crowd is crazy. I think some of the Fred worshippers are a little nutty and have their head in the sand that he’s OK but has warts too. Some Paul supporters are over enthusiastic. Some are nuts. I have met many though who are just sick of the Republicrats and big government. I’ve met very few nuts personally, though my crowd tend to be professionals and entrepreneurs, socially speaking.
Prolly because a lot of them are dimmicrats, the party for whom the name barking moonbat was invented.
“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.”
So? And that information made it’s way around the world in mere moments?
The calls trailed off after a day.
“You post your mob rule drivel under a pseudonym while defending terrorizing a woman who, by all accounts, made an honest error and corrected it immediately when alerted to the problem.”
You’re posting under a pseudonym too. What’s your real name? You first. Then maybe I’ll tell mine, FReepmail is fine. Put up or shut up, right?
THe calls trailed off after a day.
So what? Anyone who made a threat, I condemned. What else do you want from me, a pint of blod?
I’m hardly a troll. You just don’t like what I said. The only people making personal insults on THIS thread are Paul haters. Think on that.
“Mistakes happen on a national level in every precinct. Fraud does exist but that does not seem to be the case here. Defending harassment and death threats against this woman is simply not right.”
I didn’t defend death threats, so no argument there.
Mistakes do happen, but election officials have a HUGE responsibility.... This is a molehill being made into a mountain.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.