As we did our best to document, the National Republican Congressional Committee was responsible for repetitive, often harrassing robo calls in more than two dozen districts across the country in the runup to the election.

In at least seven of those districts, the Democrat failed to unseat the incumbent by only a couple thousand votes. The NRCC's calls may have been the difference in those races.

Consider, for example, Florida's 13th District, where Christine Jennings is currently locked in a recount battle. The final tally shows her down 386 votes. In the last three weeks of the election, the NRCC spent $58,326.78 on robo calls against Jennings, according to FEC reports. At five to fifteen cents a call, the NRCC bought itself between 388,000 and 1.17 million calls in the district. Approximately 250,000 people voted in the 13th on Tuesday.

Voters there report being inundated with calls -- so much so that some decided not to vote for Jennings. From The Herald Tribune:

"We're just glad it's all over," said Betty Beatty...

"They bugged us with their phone calls something terrible," said Betty, who voted for Buchanan because "with all her calls, Jennings, Jennings, Jennings, I wouldn't have voted for that woman if she were the only one running."

The NRCC's calls, you'll remember, began by saying something like "Hi, I'm calling with information about [the Democratic candidate]," then continued to give negative information about the candidate. They did not identify the true source of the calls until the very end, when they informed the listener (if he/she bothered to stay on the line until the end of the call), that the NRCC had paid for it. Voters reported being called again and again. A number of Democratic campaigns reported receiving complaints from voters who thought that the calls were coming from the Democrat, because of the calls' lead-in. We catalogued a number of the calls here.

Democrats have asked the FEC, FCC and Justice Department to probe the calls. DCCC spokesman Bill Burton told me that the Dems are still "committed to pursuing the issue of these calls" and are "discussing the next steps.... We are absolutely not letting this drop."

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The Democrats swept into the majority in Congress vowing to fight the culture of corruption. Bad news for the muckraking biz, right? Thankfully, less-than-squeaky pasts don't appear to be a factor in the Dems' reasoning as they divvy up leadership posts and committee chairs. Here are our favorite Democrats poised to take key positions:

Rep. Alan Mollohan (WV): He's set to take the chair of the very appropriations panel in whose purse strings he has already entangled himself. (He has helped steer nearly $500 million in taxpayer money to his rural district, half of which has gone to five organizations Mollohan created with friends.) As a result, he's under FBI investigation. Enough said.

Rep. John Murtha (PA): Likely to chair the Defense Appropriations subcommittee. Murtha's been tagged as a shameless earmarker, spending tens of millions on projects nobody wants to benefit his friends and his district. He's already been caught on tape by the FBI explaining how he works scams, so at least if the Feds pick up his trail again, they'll know what to look for. With massive classified budgets and a long history of wasteful spending, this post is ripe for abuse. The FBI probe into its former chairman, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), attests to that. Murtha's also making a play for Majority Leader.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (FL): Tapped to chair the House Permanent Standing Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Without a serious intel/national security background, Hastings is said to have gotten up to speed on the material since joining the committee. Still, there's a congressional impeachment in his background, and charges of a $150,000 bribe from his days as a judge. In the wake of major corruption scandals in the intel world, is it so hard to find a little less complicated candidate to oversee them?

Rep. Steny Hoyer (MD): Hoyer, an appropriator, hopes to be House Majority Leader. Unfortunately, he has an addiction to special interest money, and eagerly courts K Street donors. Does that matter? He broke ranks with his party last year to vote in favor of a draconian bankruptcy bill that would bar many Americans from getting out from under debt, regardless of the circumstances which landed them there. Hoyer has taken around $120,000 from lending institutions this cycle. It's okay to slow-dance with 'em, Steny; but don't let them take you home.

Here's another thing to keep in mind as Michael Steele makes his bid for Chairman of the RNC, a position that requires frequent contact with the press -- not to mention loyalty to the party.

Back in July, Michael Steele granted a briefing to reporters, during which, under the cover of anonymity, he spoke of the burden of running as a Republican this election, famously referring to "R" as "the scarlet letter" and saying that he wouldn't want Bush campaigning with him. Dana Milbank wrote about Steele's remarks in his column, dropping a few clues about the identity of the speaker. A fury of speculation followed, and Steele was finally unmasked.

But instead of owning his remarks, Steele furiously backpedalled (saying that Bush, in fact, was his "homeboy"), even lying about the nature of the briefing, accusing Milbank of printing "off the record" remarks. But as an email to Milbank from Steele's spokesman made clear, the remarks had been "on background" -- meaning they could be used anonymously.

Just a foreshadowing of the straight-dealing one can expect from Steele as the spokesman for the Republican Party. (I wonder how he handled that "scarlet letter" comment in his job interview?)

Michael Steele, Maryland's lieutenant governor and a failed GOP Senate hopeful, has been asked to take the helm of the Republican National Committee, the Washington Times reports this morning.

Steele's Senate campaign, you may recall, has twice bamboozled homeless people to campaign for him. The first time the "volunteers" never got paid; the second time they were told to hand out literature so misleading, the men were verbally assaulted by the voters they interacted with.

In that literature and elsewhere, Steele has repeatedly portrayed himself as a Democrat. Not by adopting Democratic stances -- but by literally labeling himself "Democrat" in the material. That's a curious habit for a guy who's set to run the Republican party, don't you think?

He's Out, But Some Still Want Rumsfeld to Face War Crimes Charges
"Though he is now the former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld is expected to be accused of war crimes in a lawsuit to be filed next week in Germany.

"The Center for Constitutional Rights will file the suit on behalf of a group of Iraqi detainees as well as the so-called 20th hijacker, who is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay.

"'The former secretary actually authorized a series of interrogation techniques,' said Michael Ratner, President of CCR. 'They included the use of dogs, stripping, hooding, stressed positions, chaining to the floor, sexual humiliation and those types of activities.'

"Those techniques, he says, amount to torture and violate the Geneva Conventions." (The Blotter)

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Observers have been shocked and outraged by two Maryland Republicans' use of homeless and poor Philadelphians to pass out misleading campaign material at the polls on Election Day. Now it turns out the duo had tried this sort of thing before.

This past Tuesday, for $100 and the promise of three meals, the GOP candidates for governor and senator recruited dozens of the least fortunate from Philadelphia's shelters -- all or most of whom were black -- to come to Maryland for the day and pass out fliers portraying the two hopefuls as "our choice" for African-American voters. (Steele is black; Ehrlich most definitely is not.)

The tactic was brazenly amoral, but also logistically curious. Why did the candidates go all the way to Philadelphia for homeless people, when there are thousands in Baltimore and nearby Washington, D.C.? If they wanted deniability, why did Ehrlich's wife -- Maryland's current first lady -- meet the buses and pass out hats?

It turns out the duo pulled a very similar stunt at least once before, in 2002, according to the New Republic. Then, they pulled homeless people from D.C. shelters, and black students from nearby Bowie State, and the candidates kept their distance from the operation. Instead of telling them to distribute literature, the campaign instructed the recruits to go door-to-door in predominantly black neighborhoods, telling residents that they were "volunteers" trying to get Maryland to elect its first black lieutenant governor.

It was a debacle:

About 250 recruits, drawn by the promise of free meals and a day's pay, participated in what one recruit later called a "scam from the start." The students didn't get their meals, and they didn't get paid. The homeless recruits also weren't paid, and, that night, the van that had taken them at dawn to Prince George's County and was supposed to transport them back to Washington, D.C. never showed up.

Some of the homeless workers reportedly staged a protest that night in front of the Democrats for Ehrlich headquarters in New Carrollton, Maryland. The next day, they enlisted legal help from the homeless center to get the money they had been promised. But the protest had alerted the state prosecutor, and when one of Ehrlich's campaign workers finally showed up with the money, investigators were on hand to witness the homeless recruits being paid.

For the last few months Paul has tracked the partisan profligacy of Bob Perry, the millionaire Texas Republican behind 2004's massively successful "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" attack.

In the 2006 midterms Perry spent about $9 million on robo calls, mailers, and TV and radio ads attacking 20 Democratic House and Senate candidates. Highlights included Montana's gay-baiting TV ad "Brokebank Democrats," and his impish habit of putting the home phone telephone numbers of Democratic challengers in his ads.

Perry even took the trouble to funnel his meddling millions through three separate, generically-named "527" groups. But none of his sleight-of-hand amounted to much of anything this time around: In 14 of the 20 races, his GOP candidate lost. Four of his candidates won; they're still puzzling over the ballots in two.

For about $2 million per win, Perry annoyed the hell out of hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of Americans with prerecorded mudslinging phone calls, angry mailers and the like.

If, as Al Pacino's character in the movie "City Hall" observed, a man's stature is measured not by the number of his friends but by the number of his enemies, I'd say Mr. Perry is a legend in his own time, wouldn't you?

More on that recount mess in Florida's 13th. The local election supervisor -- who had earlier expressed skepticism about the likelihood of voting discrepancies in the district's congressional race -- has now changed course and is asking the state to conduct an audit. From The Herald Tribune:

Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent has asked the Florida Department of State to audit Tuesday's election after the recounts are completed....

"Because of the hullabaloo and the focus on this race, I just think it's a good idea to have this audit," Dent said. "They would look at everything ... soup to nuts."

Of course, the Secretary of State has refused to investigate the reported problems. Let's see if that changes now.

A Philadelphia Daily News columnist tracked down one of the unfortunate locals who had been tricked by the Michael Steele for Senate campaign to hand out deceptive pamphlets outside Maryland voting places. The result: a refreshingly candid indictment of the failed GOP candidate Steele, who now hopes to head up the Republican National Committee.

"I might not have a home," an outraged Yusuf El-Bedawi told the Daily News' Ronnie Polaneczky, "but that doesn't mean I don't care about right and wrong. No one has the right to use me that way."

The Steele campaign recruited six busloads of poor and homeless Philadelphians to hand out flyers to Maryland voters portraying Steele and his ticketmate, governor Bob Ehrlich, as Democrats. Steele is currently Maryland's lieutenant governor; Ehrlich is governor.

"People started screaming, at us, 'Do you think we're that stupid? What are you trying to pull?' " El-Bedawi told the writer. "I said, 'I didn't know it was a lie! I'm from Philly!' And they said, 'Then go back to Philly!' "

"I am so angry and upset, I don't know what to do," said El-Bedawi, who's particularly shattered that he and at least 200 other Philadelphians didn't get home from Maryland in time to vote here.

"These people think we're too stupid to understand the magnitude of what we did."

What they did, said El-Bedawi, was cheat an entire community of unsuspecting voters.

And just because they didn't know they were doing it doesn't mean it doesn't feel awful.

Florida's 13 District is fast turning into that recount battle that everyone knew would be coming in this, the year of the electronic voting machine. Despite a new analysis that shows the Democrat may have narrowly lost the official count due to glitches in the machines, the Floridia Secretary of State is refusing to investigate the issue.

As we noted yesterday, according to the official count Republican Vern Buchanan edged out Democrat Christine Jennings by only 368 votes -- but there seems to have been a huge voting problem in one county, where electronic machines registered no votes for the contentious congressional race from a large number of voters. That glitch apparently cost Jennings the race, and the fight seems sure to head to the courts (both sides have their legal teams in place).

As The Herald Tribune reports, there was a 13 percent "undervote" for the Buchanan-Jennings race in Sarasota County (meaning they registered 13 percent fewer votes for that race than for the other big races) -- far more than in other counties. And according to an analysis by the paper, "[i[f the missing votes had broken for Jennings by the same percentage as the counted votes in Sarasota County, the Democrat would have won the race by about 600 votes instead of losing by 368." Jennings won 53 percent of the counted votes in the county.

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This morning, most folks will read the majors' write-ups on Bob Gates, the friend-of-Bush-Senior's whom president Bush is now beckoning into public service to replace departing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The majors' profiles are all kind (sample headline: "Gates Lauded as Breaker of Barriers"), with nods to criticism of Gates, without really delving into why he twice faced heat from Congress. (Hint: Iran-Contra, twisting intelligence.)

To get the real backstory, I'm going to send you to Jeff Stein at Congressional Quarterly. The national security editor there, he put together a profile on Gates by yesterday evening that bests the major dailies for raking muck on the man Bush is hoping will rescue his legacy.

Go read it. The guy has an encyclopedic memory of spies and intelligence flaps built up from covering the classified world for about three decades. So he can report in an afternoon what would take me (and possibly, the majors) several days to find out.

Defeat Doesn't Spell End to Probes of Lawmakers
"Despite suffering electoral defeat at the ballot box Tuesday, several lawmakers still face the prospect that they will remain ensnared in ongoing criminal probes that could last well into their post-Congressional careers.

"Reps. Curt Weldon [R-PA] and Katherine Harris [R-FL] have been embroiled in separate federal investigations, with Weldon’s connections to a lobbying firm run by his daughter and a political adviser under scrutiny, while Harris has turned over documents to investigators examining her connections to a defense contractor.

"Both Weldon, who was seeking an 11th term, and Harris, who was hoping for a seat in the Senate, lost handily Tuesday." (Roll Call)

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More on the recount mess brewing in Katherine Harris' old seat.

From The Herald Tribune, shades of 2000:

A team of lawyers was said to be on the way to Sarasota early Wednesday morning. Kendall Coffey is the lead attorney for the Jennings campaign. Coffey was one of the Democrats' attorneys in the 2000 presidential recount in Florida, the former U.S. Attorney in Miami and a negotiator in the case of Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez.

The Jennings camp said a difficulty the campaign faces is that a manual recount is apparently impossible with Sarasota County's touchsreen machines, making a court challenge a more likely avenue.

In a statement this afternoon, Jennings would only say, "We are compiling information and putting the facts together and we will keep you updated. " But it looks like they're headed for court.

Well, the American people certainly gave a what-for to scandal-plagued incumbents last night, as their votes and the media's exit polls showed. At least nine mucked-up politicos from the Schemin' 109th got strapped to a raft, metaphorically speaking, and pushed out to sea by an angry electorate. For us rakers, it's a bittersweet moment.

Some we will miss: Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL), who lost her kamikaze bid for a Florida Senate seat, won't be around when we need her anymore. Also missed will be the Entertainer himself, Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), who lit up our days and spiced up our nights with paranoid conspiracies and FBI raids. It's true, Curt: not only are they all out to get you, they just got you.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), whose backers attempted literally every cheap or dirty trick in the book, will also leave a hole in our hearts. (It was sad to see his son crying on national television last night during his dad's concession speech, wasn't it?)

The absence of others won't be so remarked-upon in the Muckraker office. Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC), an almost cartoonish embodiment of the perpetually cranky, self-interested banker, was never much fun -- except when he was trying to explain when a fundraiser isn't a fundraiser. Likewise the Abramoff-philiac Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), whose haircut and mustache were oftentimes more interesting than his ties to the disgraced lobbyist. Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), also a Friend of Jack, never really got our eyebrows wiggling, either. And Rep. Jim Ryun (R-KS), who made a play for our affections with a shady house deal, never really followed through.

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A recount battle is brewing, fittingly, in Katherine Harris' old seat, where a voting shortfall on buggy electronic voting machines is calling the election results into doubt.

From The Herald Tribune:

Republican Vern Buchanan was clinging to a 368-vote edge over Democrat Christine Jennings for the 13th Congressional District early this morning.

Although Buchanan declared victory just before 1 a.m., the razor-thin margin kept Jennings from conceding defeat and will generate an automatic recount....

The results were loaded with controversy as nearly 13 percent of all ballots cast in Sarasota didn’t include a choice for Congress. That difference, and scattered reports of difficulty finding the race on Sarasota’s touchscreen ballots, raised concerns about under votes in the race.

Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent couldn’t explain why 8,000 to 10,000 fewer people voted in the congressional race than in other high-profile races for governor, attorney general or U.S. Senate. But she said nothing mechanical went wrong with the county’s $4.7 million touchscreen voting machine system....

Throughout the day voters complained that touchscreen voting machines were not registering votes for Jennings properly. Jennings campaign held a midday press conference to warn the problem was widespread....

Already Democrats were calling in lawyers from the Democratic National Committee to weigh in on the potential voting issues....

In Sarasota County, with all but one precinct reporting, 87,797 people voted for Bill Nelson, Katherine Harris or another candidate for U.S. Senate. In the governor race between Charlie Crist and Jim Davis, 87,678 county resident voted.

Only 76,549 voted for Jennings or Buchanan. In comparison, about 3,000 more people voted in the Sarasota Public Hospital Board election.

But a similar undervote was not recorded in other counties that voted in the District 13 race.

Sherwood a Victim of His Own Circumstances
"The defeat of Rep. Don Sherwood [R-PA] will be lumped in with that of a dozen other Republican incumbents but the circumstances of his undoing are vastly different.

"Sherwood’s 10th district is heavily Republican, but that did not much matter once college professor and Navy reservist Chris Carney (D) began running ads reminding voters of the personal scandal that unfolded in Washington, D.C., involving Sherwood more than a year ago." (Roll Call)

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With a handful of votes counted in Florida, CNN is already calling Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) a loser in her Senate race.

She'll always be Pink Sugar to us.

From Roll Call:

In automated and live calls, Democrats allege, Latinos have been told that their ethnicity makes them ineligible to vote in today’s elections. The calls also threatened that Latinos would be arrested at polling places if they did attempt to vote, party sources said.

Although it remains unclear who is responsible for the calls — and how widespread the alleged intimidation is — aides to Democratic House candidate Angie Paccione said they have received two complaints today from Latinos in Weld County, which is part of the district held by GOP incumbent Rep. Marilyn Musgrave....

Oralia Ramirez, a 24-year-old resident of Gilcrest, Colo., said she received one of the automated calls, which began with a menu of party affiliations. When she pressed three for “you don’t know,” she was transferred to a person who asked her who she was voting for today and what her party affiliation was. When Sanchez responded that she was unsure, “He asked, ‘Are you Hispanic, Latino, black?’” and when she said she was a Latina, the caller said “‘Oh so you are Hispanic. You’re Hispanic, so you can’t vote. You aren’t even registered to vote, so don’t waste your time. Just by looking in my records you can’t vote.’ Then I just hung up.”

Salazar said the campaign has received at least one other complaint from a voter, who received a similar phone call two weeks ago in which a caller threatened the voter with arrest if he attempted to vote.

It's a mean season. From the Associated Press:

A northern Idaho man has been charged with aggravated assault after police say he pulled a knife and threatened to stab a co-worker while the two were arguing over politics.

Forty-year-old Duane Owens of Spirit Lake could face up to five years in prison if convicted.

Police say Owens and a co-worker regularly debated politics at the logging equipment sales office where they work.

But things got out of hand Friday when Owens, a Republican, remarked to his Democratic co-worker that "Democrats cheat and lie," to which the co-worker replied, "All politicians lie and cheat."

The argument escalated until Owens allegedly pulled a knife and held it below the coworker's waist. Owens fled when the co-worker grabbed a phone and called police.

More, after the jump.

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More robo harrassment, this time in Nebraska's 3rd District, where Dem Scott Kleeb is running against Adrian Smith. From Nebraska's Grand Island Independent:

Prerecorded telephone messages supposedly from Kleeb, a Third Congressional District candidate, have been repeatedly calling people in Central Nebraska, and Ben Lumpkin, Kleeb's communications director, is concerned about the effects...

However, Lumpkin said he has received numerous complaints about the prerecorded messages calling repeatedly -- as many as six times an hour.

"Our robocalls don't do that," he said.

Lumpkin hadn't heard the complaints about recordings as of Monday night but said it had been reported that the recordings were of low quality, prompting him to believe they may be recordings of actual Kleeb recordings.

Adams County Democratic Party Chairwoman Deb Quirk, who also volunteers with the county's phone bank, said she and other volunteers had called people who were irritated at the Democratic party because of the Kleeb calls.

The Kleeb campaign doesn't know who is behind the calls, but we can make a good guess: last week, the NRCC paid GOP political firm Direct Strategies for approximately $3,500 for phone banking in Kleeb's district, according to FEC filings.

Misleading flyers were handed out at several Maryland polling places by men and women recruited by the GOP governor's campaign from out-of-state homeless shelters, the Washington Post reports. The flyers, given to voters in a heavily Democratic area, showed GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Ehrlich as a Democrat:

Erik Markle, one of the people handing out literature for Ehrlich, who is seeking reelection, and Steele, the current lieutenant governor who is campaigning to replace retiring Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D), said he was recruited at a homeless shelter in Philadelphia.

After a two-hour bus ride to Maryland, Markle said the workers were greeted early this morning by first lady Kendel Ehrlich, who thanked them as they were outfitted in T-shirts and hats with the logo for Ehrlich's reelection campaign. Nearly all of those recruited, Markle said, are poor and black. Workers traveled to Maryland in at least seven large buses.

Ehrlich's GOP ticketmate, Senate candidate Michael Steele, is also listed as a Democrat on the flyer.

Update: Maryland's Gazette newspapers have more. "We’re just down here trying to make some money," one Philadelphia homeless man tells a reporter. Then, pointing to a picture of Ehrlich: "I don’t even know if this cat’s a Democrat or Republican."

There's been ample concern from civil rights organizations that recently passed voter ID laws would serve to suppress minority turnout. But what about the rights of Republican politicians?

In South Carolina, Republican Gov. Mark Sanford was turned away from a polling location because he didn't have his ID. Thankfully, he was able to return 90 minutes later, ID in hand.

And in Ohio, Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH) had some problems:

Chabot went into the polling place at Westwood First Presbyterian Church about 9:30 a.m. and pulled out his Ohio driver’s license to show the poll workers. They looked at his license, and told the congressman that, even though they know perfectly well who he is, his driver’s license was issued to his business office, not his home, which is his voting address.

Somewhat sheepishly, Chabot went back out into the parking lot, jumped in his 1993 Buick - the one he talked about on his campaign commercials - and started heading back to his home a few blocks away to find a proper ID.

“I guess I’ll see if I can find a utility bill,” Chabot said. “That’s the law. You have to have proper ID.”

Chabot returned about 10 minutes later with a bank statement and a Social Security Administration statement in hand.

Of course, civil rights groups aren't worried about Republican lawmakers. They aren't technically a minority. Yet.

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I just spoke with a Latino election monitor in Arizona who said that a trio of men, one with a handgun visible, is harrassing Latino voters as they go to the polls in Tucson, Ariz.

Nina Perales, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), said that three men are approaching Latino voters and videotaping them on their way to vote at a polling place in Tucson's Iglesia Bautista precinct.

"As voters are coming out of their cars and walking up towards their polls, one person is videotaping the voter as he walks towards the polling place," she said. Then another person, wearing an American flag bandana and a shirt with the image of a badge ironed or embroidered on it, approaches with a clipboard to talk to the voter. "While the clipboard person is. . .talking to [the voter], the cameraperson comes up and starts videotaping their face," Perales said.

As this happens, the third man -- with a gun visible in a sideholster -- stands next to the voter. According to Perales, he is wearing a shirt with an American flag on it, and camouflage shorts.

The men only approach Latino voters, she said, and noted they have been doing so since early this morning.

Perales' group has contacted the Department of Justice and the FBI. The Feds have asked her group to keep an eye on the situation.

Perales said her group has been monitoring other polling places in the city and throughout Arizona, and this was the only instance of voter intimidation she was aware of.

Update: An earlier version of this story said Ms. Perales was in Tucson at the time of our conversation. She was actually in Yuma.

In Pennsylvania's 10th District, there seems to be a variation on the NRCC's nationwide robo-calling annoyance effort.

According to the campaign for Democratic challenger Chris Carney, voters are receiving calls telling them to "Vote for Chris Carney" -- if they want higher taxes, and other unpleasant results.

The Carney campaign says voters have called their office to complain of receiving the calls during dinner time, in the late evening and even in the middle of the night. A number of constituents have been upset by the calls, thinking they were coming from the Carney campaign.

The Carney camp has not heard the call, only scattered accounts from its recipients, so they can't say who's responsible for it -- other than it's not theirs. However, the NRCC did pay a firm called Direct Strategies for $4,000 worth of phone banks last week.

From the Louisville Courier-Journal:

A poll worker at the United Auto Workers hall on Fern Valley Road was arrested after he was accused of assaulting a voter, said Lt. Col. Carl Yates, a spokesman for the Jefferson County Sheriffs’ Office.

The worker, whose name has not been released, has been charged with interfering with an election and fourth-degree assault, said Yates, who had not other details.

Paula McCraney, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Clerk, said the poll worker was accused of choking and pushing the voter out of the door. Election officials called the police and when an officer arrived, the voter wanted to file charges, McCraney said.

“That about tops off the day,” McCraney said.

"The FBI is looking into possible voter intimidation in Virginia's hard-fought U.S. Senate contest between Republican incumbent George Allen and Democrat Jim Webb," reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The intimidation -- including threats of arrest -- appeared to be concentrated in heavily Democratic areas. MSNBC has more, available at ThinkProgress.

Update: Here's a recording of an alleged suppression call, via Tapped.

From MSNBC this morning, a report about how those blogs have a bee in their bonnet about these robo calls:

Over at TPM, Reader DK pointed to a real-time database that tracks election problem reports from around the country. I've used it myself, and it's a terrific tool.

Unfortunately, due to the intense focus on election day problems, the database -- run by a coalition headed up by People for the American Way -- has been hit with extraordinary traffic. As a result, the database is down.

The Election Incident Reporting System database (EIRS) includes information on reports gathered by a number of major pollwatching groups and hotlines. "Our call centers are still able to enter data on the backend," a staffer for the Election Protection coalition told me.

"We’re looking into DOS [denial-of-service attacks] and such but so far it seems to just be a tremendous amount of legitimate traffic," he said.

Update: It's now working sporadically.

From TPM Reader DG in California's 4th District, where the NRCC robo calls have been hitting:

We were calling Dems today to GOTV. Phone Bankers are getting yelled at by Dems who have been getting the Robo Calls and blame Brown. Another aspect to this is that the phone banker volunteers get discouraged after being yelled at so much, you hear "Is this really doing any good calling these people?"

Update: We're trying to get as many examples of the NRCC's robo calls together that we can. We're collecting them here.

From TPM Reader JN:

just got a call in CT from a Mr. Gallo of the, i think, CT State Central Republican Committee. It was something like that. It was from the republican state senate scommitte i think. I think gallo said he was some kind of leader. The poll identified itself pretty quickly as being from a republican group, and then it went on to promise that if you vote republicans then they would stop the robocalls.

I just put in a call to the Connecticut GOP, and yes, there is a call going out with state GOP Chairman George D. Gallo about robo calls. I was promised that my message would be forwarded to the Chairman -- so we await a call back.

N.H. Makes GOP Stop Some Automated Calls
"A Republican organization agreed to stop making automated phone calls to New Hampshire residents on the federal do-not-call list. But the Democrats said Monday that the calls still violate federal rules.

"The National Republican Congressional Committee agreed on Sunday to stop calling homes on the registry after a citizen complained to the state attorney general. Under New Hampshire law, political campaigns can contact people on the do-not-call list, but cannot use automated recordings." (AP)

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Two high-ranking Democrats are asking the Justice Department, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission to investigate harrassing GOP robo calls we've been reporting on.

In a letter dated Nov. 6, Michigan Reps. John Conyers and John Dingell ask attorney general Alberto Gonzales, FCC chairman Kevin Martin and FEC chairman Michael Toner to probe whether a sudden rash of last-minute phone calls paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee violated any of a number of federal and state laws and requirements.

Conyers is the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, while Dingell is the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. You can read the full letter after the jump.

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In a cease-and-desist letter, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told told the National Republican Congressional Committee to quit making those harrassing phone calls. They don't meet FCC regulations, the Dems said.

You can read the letter here.

Indianapolis Star reports that the Indiana Republican party has cut ties to one of the firms responsible for harrassing GOP-sponsored robocalls. The state GOP fired Conquest Communications not because the firm's calls were necessarily harrassing, but because they were automated -- a violation of Indiana state law:

State GOP spokesman Robert Vane said Monday that Virginia-based Conquest Communications Group used recorded messages in calls for Brizzi and several candidates around Indiana.

“That is not what we contracted for,” Vane said, so the party fired Conquest and is refusing to pay the company. Vane declined to say how much the party still owes.

The Republicans intended for all campaign calls to be conducted “100 percent live,” Vane said, but instead Conquest used a live introduction followed by a recording.

Under Indiana law, a recorded message can be delivered over the phone only if it is first introduced by a person who seeks and gets permission to play it.

Earlier today, Paul connected harrassing "false-flag" robo calls in a number of congressional districts to the National Republican Congressional Committee, via the firm they appear to have paid to carry out the calls. That firm, Conquest Communications Group, was responsible for NRCC-backed calls in 20 House races.

Now, Paul has found a second firm calling voters in another 10 House districts on behalf of the NRCC. Some of those calls have been similar to the harrassing "false-flag" robocalls we've been covering all day.

"I know these guys," White House political guru Karl Rove boasts on the Web site of Feather, Larson & Syndhorst DCI, which has been making robocalls to voters on behalf of the NRCC -- many of them confirmed to be harrassing. "They work as hard to win your races as you do."

Indeed, the firm is said to enjoy close ties to Rove and the Bush White House. They've been in the annoying phone call business for a long time, as Josh will attest. This time around, they have made harrassing phone calls to defeat Democrats Harry Mitchell (in AZ-05), Eric Massa (in NY-29) and Francine Busby (in CA-50).

"They start out sounding like they're from Francine Busby -- most people get so annoyed they don't listen to the end. . . some people have been called 6, 7, 8 or 9 times," said a staffer at Busby's campaign.

"We've been getting reports [about harrassing calls] from voters for better than a week," Massa's spokesman, Mike Williams, told Paul today. "We're not sure where they're coming from," said Mitchell's flack, Seth Scott.

In addition to calls against those candidates, Feather Larson was contracted by the NRCC to deploy robo calls against the following Democratic House campaigns:

Tom Hayhurst (IN-03)
Jason Altmire (PA-04)
Nick Lampson (TX-22)
Bruce Braley (IA-01)
Patricia Madrid (NM-01)
Angie Paccione (CO-04)
Joe Courtney (CT-02)

Has anyone experienced harrassing phone calls in those districts? Let us know.

Paul reported that Conquest Communicatons, a GOP firm specializing in outbound calling for campaigns, picked up a massive chunk of work from the NRCC, to make calls in 20 House races on the eve of the election.

A few minutes later, we got an email from a guy, let's call him "Jim," who claimed to have worked as a phone bank worker at Conquest in 2001 and 2002. "They specialize in push polls," he wrote. "Nasty push polls. . . . The general office atmosphere is 'anything goes.'"

Jim didn't want his real name used ("I was fairly friendly with management, I feel sort of bad throwing them under the bus"), but he agreed to speak with me briefly by telephone.

"I did calls for them as a job for a couple summers," Jim recalled, noting that the pay was "decent" for a college kid. Since Jim left, the firm appears to have shifted away from using employees to make calls, favoring instead computer dialers and recorded messages. But the types of calls may not have changed much. "All they did was push polls, no legitimate polling," Jim said of his time there. He remembered that a number of calls he worked on "were kind of sketchy" and involved gay marriage.

There were about 50 people making calls at any one time, mostly "crazy people and college kids" without much direction. "It was pretty 'anything goes,'" Jim said. The managers told callers "to tell people you're calling from anywhere you want to."

As an example of how lax the workplace was, Jim -- a Democrat -- explained how he'd handle liberals who became irate when hearing Jim follow his negative script. "I'd read a message and a caller might get angry, so I'd say, 'well listen, I'm a Democrat, so let's just forget it.'"

A high point, he said, was being able to use fake accents when calling strangers. Jim had perfected a deep, Elvis-like drawl, which made his calls to Tennessee voters particularly successful, he said. "I had a high response rate" there, recalled Jim.

After his second summer, Jim said, he didn't return to the company. "Doing this stuff for the Republicans was, it gets distasteful after a while," he said. "Some of the scripts were pretty ridiculous."

Irony of ironies.

Since we posted this morning on Conquest Communications, the company that's been conducting hundreds of thousands of often harrassing calls on behalf of the National Republican Congressional Committee, they've taken down their "Contact Us" and "About" pages.

The pages included the company's phone number and bios of the company's executives. Maybe they were getting too many phone calls?

The woman who answered the phone couldn't tell me why the pages were down, only offering, “maybe we’re getting a lot of traffic." When I asked if I could speak to someone who might know why, I was put through to the voicemail of one of the partners. That call, along with an earlier one to the company, has yet to be returned.

The company works exclusively with Republican clients, of which there is a long, long list. One of the founding partners, David Johnson, is a veteran operative of the NRCC and the former Executive Director of the Republican Party of Virginia.

Update: For those of you who've sent us the google cached version of the pages, thanks. We have it.

Later Update: Actually, since posting this morning, Conquest seems to have stripped their website down to everything but its index page.

The biggest right-wing group backing "push poll" calls says it's targeting calls to "core supporters" on Election Day.

But there's reason to believe that the group might also use their mighty calling operation for voter suppression efforts, as well.

This morning, The New York Times checked in on Common Sense Ohio, the conservative nonprofit that's been polling millions of voters in the closest Senate races with questions that lead hard to the right ("do you support medical research experiments on unborn babies?").

In it, Gabriel Joseph, the proprietor of ccAdvertising, the calling firm hired to make these nasty calls, admits that "his company had tried to reach every home in Maryland." As the Times points out, there are over two million households in Maryland. The group has also been inundating voters in Montana, Tennessee, Missouri, and Ohio with its poll -- targeting the closest Senate races.

Voters in those states can expect to just keep getting similar calls through tomorrow. Zeke Swift, the Executive Director of Common Sense, told the Times that the polls "had identified core supporters, who will receive a reminder call on Election Day."

ccAdvertising has done more than just help Common Sense identify "core supporters," of course -- they also have a good idea of unfriendly voters, information that ccAdvertising has not hesitated to use in the past, as detailed last month by Mother Jones:

an investigation of a state GOP official by Alaska's attorney general in 2003 revealed another glimpse of [ccAdvertising's] playbook. "If they support our candidate, the candidate comes on with a 20-second GOTV thanking them for their vote and asking them to get their friends and family to vote as well," Joseph wrote in an email to Alaska Republican Party chairman Randy Ruedrich, according to the Anchorage Daily News. "If they support the opponent, we deliver a voter suppression message."

Update: Not discussed in the Times piece is the fact that Common Sense has not limited their activity to push polls. Mr. Swift told me last week that they've also bought radio spots in Maryland, Montana and Ohio, and sent mailers in Maryland, Montana and Tennessee. You can see their Tennessee mailer here; "Bob Corker and Harold Ford are separated by more than their school colors . . ." We're eager to see other examples of their work.

To all of you who've complained about spending your days fielding calls from robot voices attacking Democrats, it's time to get some perspective. These robot dialers are saving democracy -- or didn't you know that?

Courtesy of yesterday's Washington Post, we have a reminder from a political consultant (who happens to be a Democrat) of "the larger principles" behind the robo call. "Robo-dials have been known to dramatically increase voter turnout," he reminds us [though they're also useful for voter suppression], continuing...

Instead of hanging up on the call, realize that this is American democracy in action and that there is nothing wrong with an automated call requesting that you participate. After all, many sacrifices have been made over the course of American history to preserve our right to vote. A phone call or two reminding us to exercise that right is certainly something we can all live with.

I suppose we can even live with a phone call or two or six or seven. After all, Americans have died for your right to be robo called.

"I want a system that is biased in favor of declassification. I want some assurance that they aren't just picking the stuff that's garbage and releasing that. If we're only declassifying maps of Baghdad, I'm not going to be happy."

- Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), House intelligence committee chairman, last March. Hoekstra was frustrated that spy chief John Negroponte was resisting his call to release seized Iraqi documents that Hoekstra was convinced would justify the war in Iraq.

"It looks like they screwed up."

- Hoekstra chiding senior intelligence officials (including Negroponte) yesterday. It was revealed last week that sensitive nuclear secrets were among a batch of Iraqi documents released as part of Hoekstra's favorite declassification program. The documents, which predate the 1991 Persian Gulf War, "show that the Iraqi program may be much further along than anybody ever anticipated," Hoekstra said.

Over at TPM, we've been keeping tabs on the robo calls being done by the National Republican Congressional Committee all over the country.

In each case, the calls begin with "Hi, I'm calling with information about [insert local Democratic candidate here]," and then continues to provide negative information about the candidate. Counter to FCC rules, which require that the caller identify themselves early on in the call, the calls only reveal that they are paid for by the NRCC at the end of the call. You can listen to one of these calls (from New York's 19th district) here. There are more than a few reports of voters getting frustrated by repeated calls they believe to be from the Dem candidate. [Update: Here is a recording of someone's glutted answering machine in Tammy Duckworth's district.]

The firm conducting the calls is Conquest Communications, and reviewing the NRCC's independent expenditures filed with the FEC over the past week shows Conquest active in 20 different House races. The full list of expenditures, which includes the incredibly cheap price tags for these calls which reach hundreds of thousands of voters, is below the fold.

Late Update: Here is a version of the call in Georgia's 8th District, against Dem Jim Marshall, and here's a version of the call in New York's 25th District, against Jim Maffei.

Later Update: Here's a good story on the calls from Maffei's local news station.

Read more »

In New Mexico yesterday, the state Democratic Party accused its GOP counterpart of calling Democratic voters and falsely telling them their polling place has changed.

This morning, the AP reports, the Dems are asking a judge to immediately bar the GOP from calling any registered Democratic voters in the state.

In their defense, the New Mexico Republicans are saying it happened just once, and it was a mistake.

"It was one woman," New Mexico GOP director Marta Kramer told the AP yesterday. "There were three other people in the voter file with the same name. The volunteer said 'Hi' and identified herself and left a phone number. She (the voter) called back and said this is who I am and gave her address and we gave her the correct information." An account of one call obtained by TPMmuckraker indicates that the GOP volunteer identified herself as calling from the Republican party.

But in a conversation with me this morning, New Mexico Democratic Party director Matt Farrauto said the GOP had given incorrect information to more than just one Democrat.

"I am standing in front of four people who had it happen to them, and there's a fifth woman who contacted me this morning," Farrauto told me. The group was standing in the courthouse lobby, he said, waiting to meet with a judge who could order the GOP's calls to stop.

Contacted by phone last night, the judge had verbally agreed to issue the injunction, but she had not yet signed the paperwork, Farrauto told me.

GOP Rep. Faults White House on Iraq Site
"House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra [R-MI] criticized the Bush administration on Sunday for its handling of a trove of once-secret documents from Saddam Hussein's covert nuclear program disclosed on a federal Web site.

"Hoekstra...complained the U.S. intelligence community hadn't properly declassified the documents....

"President Bush's director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, ordered the documents posted on the site last March, at the request of Republicans in Congress who wanted to show Saddam was a real threat." (AP)

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