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."
Y’know...if she doesn’t want to take her job seriously, she ought to do something else.
I know these people can be nuts...but this is important stuff.
Pentagon that is. L:)
It’s the namecalling and infighting, typified by your posts, which gives FR a bad rep.
Clean up your own house before spouting off, newbie. You called 2CAVTrooper and me "troll" on separate occasions the other day simply because we are not Ron Paul worshipers. As I have seen no retraction of those remarks, I suspect you have no remorse.
So don't go around chiding others for calling you a troll when you've been slinging that insult around at people who are far less deserving of it than you are.
I have yet to see a legitimate source say the Pentagon admits to this, only forums, blogs and conspiracy websites. Even Google News turns up no results.
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=Philippino+Monkey&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Getting your news from David Icke, Alex Jones or Lew Rockwell again
Never mind.. I do see if you change the spelling, you’ll find that Huffington Post and Iranian news sites do make this claim.
” Clean up your own house before spouting off, newbie. You called 2CAVTrooper and me “troll” on separate occasions the other day simply because we are not Ron Paul worshipers. As I have seen no retraction of those remarks, I suspect you have no remorse.”
No, it’s because 2cav posted things that were demonstrably not true, then kept avoiding that point.
Rather than address the boston.com article in which Fred is quoted as saying he represented Aristide for free, 2 weeks after Aristide publicly talked about the sweet smell of necklacing opponents, he kept pointing back to some article he tied by 3 degrees of separation to an antiwar.com writer who I said I think is a whackjob.
To make matters worse, 2cav never acknowledged it - instead he said its OK, they were necklacing people from the Tonton Macoutes. Who cares? Aristide was the allegedly democratically elected leader, also an avowed marxist and voodoo nut, and Fred represented him for free - even though Aristide had just advocated extrajudicial justice. SO much for the rule of law, eh?
That’s trolling if I ever heard of it!
Now you’re misrepresenting the entire exchange on this thread. You have yet to condemn one person for namecalling, except me, and there is not one post of my doing that on this thread.
I don’t appreciate you stalking me from thread to thread, though.
“I have yet to see a legitimate source say the Pentagon admits to this, only forums, blogs and conspiracy websites. Even Google News turns up no results.”
Actually I read it right here on FR!!!
Iranian Boats May Not Have Made Radio Threat, Pentagon Says
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1951977/posts
“Getting your news from David Icke, Alex Jones or Lew Rockwell again”
Before you smear me again, learn to use search, OK?
Go back to the beginning of this thread. I was on this thread before you showed up here with your drama-queen act, troll, so get over your delusions of grandeur.
I'm not misrepresenting anything; you called me a troll the other day and have yet to apologize for it. You can't even explain it, so you try a lame smoke-and-mirrors act. Nobody's buying it.
If I see you drama-queening out over someone calling you a troll after the behavior you have demonstrated, I'm going to call you out on it, so stop your whining.
When you make your snide little posts, you'd better be ready to accept the consequences. Get it?
“They don’t sound much different from the LaRouche lunatics.”
That was my comment months ago. Lyndon always started out with reasonable ideas, but 15 minutes into his infomercials you new he was nuts.
Ron Paul has a few ideas I like — notably the idea that government needs to be limited — but his stance on Iran and Iraq alone disqualify him for serious consideration.
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.
There is a big difference between may and your comment. The original source article in the washington post even says this is speculation, not a definate accusation and most of the WPs evidence comes from Iranian sources. Basically, the navy never said it did come from the Philippino Monkey, it say it may have, along with other sources.
Maybe you think that this was all staged by the CIA and NeoCons for a Gulf of Tonkin type incident?
Paulvestites seem to like to attack those on the front lines don’t they?
It looks to me like Ron Paul got caught napping and then tried to cover for it by disingenuously focusing on the menacing jokes rather than the fact that all the other candidates agreed with the passive reaction.
Or maybe it's much worse than that? Maybe he was not capable of absorbing the information thrown at him and truncated the most important bits about their agreement with the decision to be passive?
I'm not seeing any positive rescue for him in this exchange.
I was relieved, however, to hear him officially claim to have abandoned the 911 truther stuff. I'd like to know when he changed his mind and I'd like to know for how long he was captivated by this thinking.
Yes, while sniveling behind their monitors in their parents' basements, wearing their Star Trek uniforms and bemoaning the fact that their Taco Bell shifts are coming up all too soon. ;-)
Which "folks" refer to FR as "lunatic fringe" (other than the committed lib/Dem crowd)?
“There is a big difference between may and your comment. The original source article in the washington post even says this is speculation, not a definate accusation and most of the WPs evidence comes from Iranian sources. Basically, the navy never said it did come from the Philippino Monkey, it say it may have, along with other sources.”
Lots of FReepers who have been on ships in the gulf are familiar with the Monkey Man. On that and another thread linked to in that one they say it sounded like him.
The pentagon said they also never claimed the threats were from the Iranian boats, but the other candidates in the debate did. I guess you can take it up with them, after accusing me of being an Icke and ROckwell supporter.
I wish you had as strict guidelines for evidence of what you read as what you accuse others of supporting or doing. If so our conversations might be productive. :)
Here are all the insults from your previous post to me. It’s the Paul supporters who are unhinged, though! You’re always good for a laugh.
Drama queen act
Troll
Delusions of grandeur
Smoke and mirrors act
Drama queening
Troll
Whining
Snide little posts
You seem to completely miss the point that when you behave the way you do towards people, they do not accord you any respect because you have not earned it.
I notice you are getting very little respect on this thread.
That's no accident, but you're too self-absorbed to realize how rude you are.
Oh, well...you're not really worth any more of my time. You get tiresome rather quickly. Just stop the drama-queening and whining. If someone calls you a troll, remember your recent past and deal with it.
“Yes, while sniveling behind their monitors in their parents’ basements, wearing their Star Trek uniforms and bemoaning the fact that their Taco Bell shifts are coming up all too soon. ;-)”
The paul supporters are insulting jerks, right?
I’m an entrepreneur in my mid 30s who started a business 2 years ago, and hasn’t earned less than 6 figures in the last 4 years.
I bough a house 5 years ago, It’s a really cool house, built in 1928 and on the National Historic Register. I don’t live in my parent’s basement.
I’ve also been putting my fiancee through school - she graduates in May with a Biochemistry degree (Summa Cum Laude) from a private Christian college, even though we’re Jews. ASU, the local large university, is infested by commies, and the science departments are mostly run by jihadi sympathizing Arabs.
You’re having a hard time coloring inside the lines with that broad brush, Allegra. ;)
Great one! Keep up the good work. Here are the gems from your last post.
You don’t warrant anything better.
little respect
rude
self absorbed
tiresome
drama queening
whining
troll
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