Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Paul supporters 'freak out' town clerk
Concord Monitor ^

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."


TOPICS: Politics/Elections; US: New Hampshire
KEYWORDS: conspiracytheory; electronicvoting; nh2008; ronpaul
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 261-268 next last

1 posted on 01/13/2008 10:21:44 AM PST by mnehring
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: SJackson; Allegra; lormand; wideawake; ejonesie22
Ping
Fox needs a show, When Paultards Attack.
2 posted on 01/13/2008 10:22:43 AM PST by mnehring
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling
"Most of the these people are not rational," Call said.
3 posted on 01/13/2008 10:25:01 AM PST by kinoxi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling
"Most of the these people are not rational," Call said.
4 posted on 01/13/2008 10:25:29 AM PST by Allegra (AACCK! Back in Iraq...how'd that happen so fast??)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling
"Most of the these people are not rational," Call said.

That pretty much sums up the Ron Paul voters, and their candidate.

5 posted on 01/13/2008 10:25:31 AM PST by LouD
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: kinoxi

28 seconds apart. I’ll be danged. ;-)


6 posted on 01/13/2008 10:26:09 AM PST by Allegra (AACCK! Back in Iraq...how'd that happen so fast??)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling

Lucky for us their asinine antics are actually beginning to hurt ol’ phoney.


7 posted on 01/13/2008 10:28:21 AM PST by ontap (Just another backstabbing conservative)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling
Great little psychotic cult they've got going there.


8 posted on 01/13/2008 10:28:48 AM PST by Petronski (Reject the liberal superfecta: huckabee, romney, giuliani, mccain)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling

Yeah! Those are the people I want to identify with! / sarc


9 posted on 01/13/2008 10:28:55 AM PST by Duke Nukum (He burns at the center of time and he sees the turn of the Universe.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling
When Paultards Attack.


10 posted on 01/13/2008 10:30:04 AM PST by FormerACLUmember (When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Allegra; kinoxi; LouD; mnehrling

Three in a row from three different posters! That’s gotta be a first!


11 posted on 01/13/2008 10:30:12 AM PST by Grizzled Bear ("Does not play well with others.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling

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.


12 posted on 01/13/2008 10:30:39 AM PST by John Jorsett (scam never sleeps)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Allegra

They seem to behave with a threatening, pack mentality, similar to scientologists. That poor lady is their point of obsession for the moment.


13 posted on 01/13/2008 10:31:00 AM PST by kinoxi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling

What would it be like if every crazy person in America joined together for a common cause? Ron Paul for President!


14 posted on 01/13/2008 10:31:19 AM PST by ElkGroveDan (I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired of all the politics in politics.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling

Could have been avoided if the work was double-checked by someone else. Even the best writer needs an editor. Totals are too important to treat them with less respect than you would your checkbook.


15 posted on 01/13/2008 10:32:24 AM PST by Eastbound
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling
"Most of the these people are not rational," Call said.

Well yes, that's why they vote for Ron Paul.

16 posted on 01/13/2008 10:32:34 AM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Fred Head and proud of it! Fear the Fred!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling
Paul supporters think they can bully and intimidate their way to victory.

We don’t play by those rules in the United States. They think we are Czarist Russia and see their selves as the young Bolsheviks

17 posted on 01/13/2008 10:33:04 AM PST by HereInTheHeartland ("We have to drain the swamp" George Bush, September 2001)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: John Jorsett

Which begs the question, what is the exception and what is the rule..


18 posted on 01/13/2008 10:34:44 AM PST by mnehring
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: LouD; jan in Colorado
That pretty much sums up the Ron Paul voters, and their candidate.

Nothing like painting everyone with the same brush, is there?

I have served as a Judge of Elections, and it is scary how lax the "officials" can be with things. But as the passive-voice lefties would say, "[honest] screwups do occur..."

As in, what percent reporting...?!?


19 posted on 01/13/2008 10:34:58 AM PST by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: mnehrling
Anybody who walks a spot on a sidewalk weekend after weekend holding a Ron Paul sign when he has no way possible of getting elected dog catcher isn't rational.

I have a Paulbot at work, he pretty much has stopped talking to me because I have not been converted yet to his way of thinking, he basically accused me of being a traitor for not supporting his guy.

These folks have a cult like admiration for Paul.

I actually think Paul is correct on several constitutional issues, but his many other positions such as terrorism makes him a loon in my book

20 posted on 01/13/2008 10:35:32 AM PST by Popman (Gold Standard: Trying to squeeze a 50 lb economy back into a 5 lb bag)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 261-268 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson