False Robocalls That Wreaked Havoc On Chicago Elections Linked To GOP Activists

Voters were still lined up to vote at 1 a.m. on
Wednesday, November 5 at a Chicago polling place
 that allowed same-day registration

Chicago election judges received misleading and factually incorrect robocalls before the midterm, causing close to 2,000 of them to not show up on Election Day. As a criminal investigation gets underway, the Chicago Sun-Times has tied the calls to two Republican activists while the Republican Party has denied involvement and distanced itself from the party members who it claims acted alone.

An unknown number of election judges received one or more automated phone calls that informed them about an additional required training session or told them they needed to vote a certain way in order to keep their position. As a result, polling places across the city were understaffed and lines reached seven hours in some precincts. A smaller number of voters were turned away from certain locations.

The city was forced to dispatch standby election judges when some polling places had just one or no election judges present at 6 a.m. when polls were scheduled to open. At the time, the Chicago Board of Elections said it didn’t know who made the calls or why they were sent out. The Cook County State’s Attorney has launched a criminal investigation and Mayor Rahm Emanuel called for hearings on the robocalls.

“There’s nothing more important than the integrity of the democratic electoral process,” Emanuel said when he and the City Council passed a resolution calling for hearings. “Somebody called with the intent to create confusion.”

While the city hasn’t revealed any additional information, the Sun Times reported that one of the callers identified himself as Jim Parrilli, a Republican committeeman for the 19th Ward who was defeated in his run for a seat on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. In one call, he identified himself as the Cook County Election Judge Coordinator and told the election judges that voting is required and “part of being a Republican judge means supporting our Republican ticket.”

Another call was made by Sharon Maroni, coordinator for the Chicago election judge program. Sources told the Sun-Times that Parrilli and Maroni were working together, but neither have been accused of any wrongdoing.

Cook County Republican Chairman Aaron Del Mar told the Sun-Times the party was not involved in the robocalls or the fraudulent activities. “Anything they did, they acted alone,” he said.

The state’s attorney’s office told ThinkProgress that an investigation is ongoing, but declined to comment on any details. Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen also said he is not commenting on the pending investigation.

Two election judges also told CBS Chicago that they were removed from their positionsas committeemen with the Republican Party because they questioned the validity of the phone calls and whether election judges should be pressured to vote for a particular party.

Other issues including confusion over a new state program allowing same day registration at some polling places also contributed to the long lines that drove voters away. Lower turnout in Chicago favored Republican governor Bruce Rauner, who ended the night with a nearly five-point lead over incumbent Governor Pat Quinn.

American Family Association Blatantly Ignores IRS Laws In Promoting Conservative Candidates

Every election season, religious groups flirt with the line between political action allowed under IRS non-profit guidelines and outright endorsing candidates, which is prohibited by the 501(c)(3) guidelines. This year, the American Family Association, which is a well-known right-wing conservative religious group, has apparently blatantly violated those laws.

My friend Lamar from CenLamar.com has forwarded an email to me that was sent to him by a friend. In it, the American Family Association not only violates non-profit rules as set forth by the IRS, it also encourages pastors to endorse specific candidates to their congregations. While this isn’t the first time that conservative religious organizations have flaunted the law governing what they can and cannot do as a non-profit, this may be one of the most flagrant violations yet.

The email was sent out to an unknown number of recipients, requesting that they use the resources provided by the American Family Association to persuade their congregations to vote for candidates picked by the AFA. Below is a screenshot of the email itself dated October 28th, 2014 which was sent from the email address pastors@afasv.net with the “reply to” email of contact@afa.net, and the subject line “Pastors, are you ready to lead?”

Screenshot of email from American Family Association. Click thumbnail to view full size.

It also includes a link to this .pdf flyer that states positions to take on issues that don’t fall under the usual opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

DIRTY POLITICS: Koch-Allied Group Urges Young Voters to Support Weed Candidate

Thom Tillis

A Republican group connected to the billionaire Koch brothers is making a last-ditch effort to push the GOP Senate candidate in North Carolina across the finish line by urging young voters to get behind the marijuana-supporting libertarian in the race.

The American Future Fund, which is running the online ad campaign, touts third-party contender Sean Haugh as the only one in the Senate contest who supports legalizing marijuana and opposes war.

The move aims to siphon liberal support from Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan, who is locked in one of the country's tightest Senate races again Republican challenger Thom Tillis. (The ad might also persuade conservatives, many of whom generally wouldn't support the ads' message, to stop supporting Haugh.)

It appears to have been launched in secret. The group's website and Twitter feed, which contain news releases about other ad campaigns, does not mention the efforts to help Haugh. 

A spokesman for the group says the digital buy is for $225,000, and the group could increase the buy later. The ad appeared to one reporter while watching Hulu, and the group has built a makeshift website that includes several different online spots.

The content of the ads is likely to get as much attention as the campaign itself: In one, it features a young woman who says Hagan "doesn't share our values" because she supports war and opposes legalizing marijuana.

"Vote Sean Haugh," she says. "He supports our progressive values. Pro-legalization, pro-environment. More weed, less war."

The spot finishes with an image of a single cannabis leaf. Another ad features a young man wearing a shirt with a picture of Bob Marley smoking a joint.

Haugh, who still works as a pizza delivery-man while running for the Senate seat, has received a lot of coverage for drawing an unusually large amount of support for an underfunded candidacy. Interestingly though, his presence is seen as a bigger problem for the Republican Tillis, who has trialed in most public surveys of the race.

AFF appears to be trying to make Haugh a dilemma for Hagan as well, although it's unclear how effective a digital ad campaign will be in a race that has already featured more than $100 million in TV ad buys alone.

New Charges Filed Against National Organization for Marriage (NOM) in California

The nation’s most virulently anti-LGBT political organization, the Washington, DC based National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has run afoul of election laws from Hawaii to Maine. Now it appears they have once again broken state law during their ill-fated attempt to quality a referendum in California earlier this year.

NOM antagonist, Fred Karger, president of Rights Equal Rights, today filed a 35 page sworn complaint against Brian Brown and his NOM with the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), the state’s campaign ethics enforcement agency.

 

CLICK HERE TO READ FULL COMPLAINT

Mormon Church Abused Tax Status with Anti-Gay Campaign, New Docs May Prove

Towards the end of the exhausting battle over California’s anti-gay marriage initiative Proposition 8 in 2008,documents came to light suggesting the Utah-based Church of Latter Day Saints abused and exceeded the limits of their tax-exempt status. The documents showed that the Mormon Church had been calculating a California referendum as early as 1997. But now, in preparation for a challenge to the church’s status with the IRS, gay activist Fred Karger (pictured)—former candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination—is revealing a document-based smoking gun showing the referendum the Mormons were actually shooting for was California’s Proposition 22 in 2000.

Karger went public with a batch of the leaked documents at a news conference in Salt Lake City in February 2009, calling the church’s secret political machinations “Mormongate” and challenging the church’s claim that it fully disclosed its financial involvement in the Prop. 8 campaign. After all, LDS spokesperson Don Eaton told KGO-TV in San Francisco, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints put zero money in this.” 

LDS spokesperson Michael Otterson concurred, showing (Mormon-owned) KSL TV a copy of a filing indicating $190,000 worth of “in kind” contributions but no actual cash donations. Otterson called Karger’s news conference “grandstanding” and a “publicity stunt” that “confuses” the conversation about traditional marriage, KSL reported.

In June 2010, however, the California Fair Political Practices Commission found the church guilty on 13 counts of late campaign reporting connected to Prop. 8 and reached an agreement whereby the church admitted to spending $2,078 in an amended filing and had to pay $5,538 in fines. Some have estimated that the church raised $30 million from Mormon families for the Prop. 8 fight, along with “in kind” services such as phone banking, direct mail and more.

But, as the leaked documents show, the church learned how to raise and hide money in the run-up to successfully passing Prop. 22, which became a blueprint for other anti-gay marriage initiative battles.

Church spokesperson Scott Trotter would not say whether the documents were real, valid or leaked. “We are unconcerned about these documents,” Trotter told the Salt Lake City Tribune in March 2009. “The church’s position on the importance of traditional marriage has been consistent over the years.”

The church has not yet responded to a recent request for comment from Frontiers. (Update: a Church spokesperson did call back but well after the story was filed.)

Karger says the new documents are even “juicier” than the ones he released over Prop. 8, showing a highly adept, political organization within the church’s complicated, authoritarian hierarchy and vast business holdings. Karger contends the documents prove the Mormons exceeded the percentage of time and money allowed by the IRS for a nonprofit such as a religious organization to participate in politics.

“These documents show how the Mormon Church is such a political machine that they singlehandedly wrote and orchestrated this initiative,” says Karger. “Prop. 22— they made it happen. And that’s what’s so revealing. I was aghast at how much influence they had.”

In 1996, the California Family Code already limited civil marriage between a man and a woman, but anti-gay conservative Republican Sen. Pete Knight of Palmdale proposed legislation to close a “loophole” permitting recognition of gay marriages from other states, such as Hawaii, where the issue was hotly working its way through the courts.

As early as Aug. 20, 1996—a month before President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act—ElderLoren C. Dunn took a lead on the marriage issue as President of the North American West Area and as a new member of the First Quorum of the Seventy in the LDS hierarchy. He wrote a memo, “Re: Status Update on California HLM [Homosexual Legal Marriage] Legislation,” on Church stationary to Elder Neal A. Maxwell, a member of the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy.

“If the legislation dies on the floor of the California Senate, one alternative would be to organize an initiative to bring the issue before the people of California in a general election,” Dunn writes. “Judging from past initiatives, it would take about $1 million to get the necessary signatures to get the initiative on the ballot and another $2-3 million to help insure its passage.”

READ MORE!

Tea Party Official Gets Locked Inside of Empty Courthouse – on Election Night with All the Ballots

Straight from the “this isn’t suspicious at all” file, a Tea Party official with very close times toChris McDaniel somehow wound up in a locked and empty Mississippi courthouse after the election results had come in.

Janis Lane is the president of the Central Mississippi Tea Party; at 2:00 am she had to call Hinds County Republican executive chairman Pete Perry because she’d somehow wound up locked in the same building where the circuit clerk, election commission offices, and primary election ballots are at. Perry told TPM that the incident mystified him. Before the intrusion, the ballots had been secured, according to local authorities. Perry said that:

I don’t know. I know I wouldn’t walk into a courthouse at 2 o’clock in the morning by myself or with somebody else and just walk around inside the building. I’m not going to go into a public building just because somehow or another I happened to find a door that was unlocked.

Especially if it’s going down to where a bunch of election materials were and I’d been deeply involved in a campaign. I am 64. I was involved in politics when I was real young, and I remember people breaking into a hotel in the middle of the night.

Thad Cochran’s sister-in-law, Connie Cochran, was the last person to leave the courthouse. An election commissioner, Connie Cochran left the building at 11:30, more than two hours before Perry received the call from Lane. Lane said that she and a friend wanted to see the election process first hand, and were escorted to an unlocked door by a police officer. It’s not clear how much time they spent in the building or when they entered, but somehow, the door locked behind them.

Perry, a supporter of Thad Cochran, is suspicious of her story.

“It just didn’t make sense. It didn’t compute,” Perry said. “Now what she was doing, I have no idea. I couldn’t say. But I am skeptical.” Perry said that Lane had called him earlier in the night to ask about the election results, and he said that she appeared to either be at a campaign for McDaniel or the headquarters.

Connie Cochran told authorities that, to her knowledge, no materials were disturbed or removed from the building. The Central Mississippi Tea Party has endorsed McDaniel in his fight to unseat Cochran, which is going to lead to a June 24 run-off election for both candidates. The group has been in hot water before after one of its members, Mark Mayfield, was arrested following evidence that connected him to the May break-in of the nursing home where Thad Cochran’s wife is currently living.

Perry contacted the sheriff, and by 3:30 in the morning, they’d let Lane free. The police to not have an ongoing investigation into the matter.

Multiple Subpoenas, Search Warrants Issued in New Probe of Gov Scott Walker’s Recall Election

Trouble is brewing for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.  The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Walker is the target of probe conducted by Milwaukee County, issuing dozens of subpoenas requesting documents related to the 2011 and 2012 campaign to recall Walker and other state lawmakers.

“Copies of two subpoenas we’ve seen demand all memoranda, email […] correspondence, and communications” both internally and between the subpoena target and some 29 conservative groups, including Wisconsin and national nonprofits, political vendors and party committees,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “The groups include the League of American Voters, Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Americans for Prosperity — Wisconsin, American Crossroads, the Republican Governors Association, Friends of Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.”

The Journal report goes on to say that the subpoenas are demanding “all records of income received, including fundraising information and the identity of persons contributing to the corporation.”

According to Madison.com:

According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, spending in the 2011 and 2012 recall elections by groups mentioned in the article include:

• Right Direction Wisconsin PAC (Republican Governors Association): $9.4 million
• Club for Growth Wisconsin: $9.1 million
• Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce: $4.7 million

Americans for Prosperity/MacIver Institute for Public Policy: $4.5 million

The liberal Center for Media and Democracy has tracked millions of dollars that has flowed among these groups in Wisconsin.

In an interview Saturday, the group’s general counsel, Brendan Fischer, described it as a “dark money shell game” in which thousands and in some cases millions of dollars from anonymous donors are moved from one organization to another with the goal of influencing elections.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Unmentioned in the editorial is that R.J. Johnson is an adviser to both Walker’s campaign and the Wisconsin Club for Growth.

The newspaper said the subpoenas sought records and fundraising information and were related to the 2011 and 2012 recall efforts against the Republican governor and state senators. The subpoenas come out of a second, secret John Doe investigation of Walker aides or allies. The first investigation was closed in February, but the second one is ongoing. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported on both investigations.

John Doe probes give prosecutors the power to compel people to testify and bar them from speaking about their involvement in the investigations. The Wall Street Journal editorial page reported O’Keefe was willing to discuss his subpoena, saying he “realizes the personal risk but wants the public to know what is going on.”

Search warrants were executed based on affidavits filed by Dean Nickel, according to the newspaper. Nickel served as the special agent in charge for the state Department of Justice’s public integrity unit, and the newspaper reported he has served as an investigator for the state Government Accountability Board.

It’s clear that the groups listed in the subpoena were not exercising their free speech rights when they intentionally and illegally misinformed voters.

Although coincidence and incompetence may be an admissible defense in a limited number of cases, most investigators do not give credence to coincidence. The new investigation of the conservative groups that have invaded Wisconsin since the days before the 2010 election is a long time coming.

Wisconsin GOP pushes new voting restrictions

President Obama may have won Wisconsin with relative ease last year, but when it comes to state government, the Badger State looks pretty “red”: Republican Gov. Scott Walker is currently working with Republican majorities in the state Assembly and state Senate.

 

And like most states where GOP officials control the levers of in-state power, voting restrictions appear to be a top goal in Wisconsin. This started in earnest back in March, as my colleague Laura Conaway reported at the time, and the efforts intensified yesterday.

Voters in Wisconsin would have less time to cast early ballots under a proposed bill that passed the Wisconsin Assembly on Thursday, the latest move in a nationwide string of Republican-led efforts to tighten voting rules.

 

The measure would require county clerks to limit early voting to 40 hours per week, between 7:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. It would end weekend early voting hours, which Democrats have used to turn out the vote in heavily urban areas such as Milwaukee and Madison.

Remember, while Republicans generally rely on the ridiculous “voter fraud” canard to rationalize voter suppression, the argument has no use in cases like these – the only reason to shrink the amount of time voters have to cast a ballot is if you want fewer votes cast.

 

Of the 54 Republicans in the Assembly, 53 voted for the measure, which was more than enough to pass the bill and send it to the state Senate.

Virginia defies Democratic Party lawsuit and purges 40,000 voters before election

The Virginia Board of Elections said this week that it had purged nearly 40,000 names from the voter rolls before a U.S. District judge could rule on a lawsuit filed by the Democratic Party. 

Earlier this month, the Democratic Party of Virginia had filed the lawsuit after learning that the state planned to purge 57,923 names from the voter rolls, according to The Associated Press. 

But before a judge could rule on the injunction on Friday, the Board of Elections said in a Tuesday court filing that it had already purged 38,870 names. Another 11,138 were left on the rolls based on the recommendations of county registrars.

The Washington Post reported that the state would designate 7,300 names as “inactive,” forcing those voters to cast a provisional ballot on election day in November. 

Virginia Democratic Party spokesperson Brian Coy told the Post that red flags were raised by the fact that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) was serving as a the Board of Elections’ legal adviser and was also on the ballot as the Republican Party’s nominee for governor.

Chesterfield County Registrar Lawrence C. Haake III said that he had defied the state and refused to purge any voters because he determined that nearly 10 percent of the names being removed from the rolls were eligible to vote. 

AHT: If all else fails cheat! The modern GOP!

A big victory for openly gay former Republican presidential candidate Fred Karger, who has been pushing for this for several months: the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board voted unanimously this week to investigate the National Organization for Marriage, or NOM, whom Karger accuses of flaunting state law by refusing to disclose its donors during the fight to unseat several Iowa Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of marriage equality.

From the Des Moines Register:

Karger said the D.C.-based group spent $635,000 in 2010 and about $100,000 in 2012 to try to oust four of the justices who were part of a unanimous 2009 decision that allowed same-sex marriage in Iowa.

“We caught them,” Karger told reporters after today’s meeting. “I’m so grateful to the ethics commission.”

Karger, who is openly gay, said it’s important to send a message to the National Organization for Marriage to follow the law because it will likely be a player in Iowa again, seeking to oust Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, a champion of same-sex marriage rights, and the other three justices who authored the marriage ruling four years ago.

According to the Register, Karger supplied an email from September 2012 in which NOM solicited cash donations to oust the high court justices.  NOM has said that donors’ names do not have to be disclosed if donations were solicited via phone or email.  Megan Tooker, the executive director of the state ethics board, said that NOM’s claim was “absolutely wrong.”

“To be clear, we haven’t found that NOM did anything wrong,” Tooker told the Register. “All we did today is find that it warranted further investigation, so the board will be able to use its subpoena power and get enough information to decide whether or not donors should have been disclosed.”

In 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court voted unanimously to establish marriage equality in the state through a case known as Varnum v. Brien, making Iowa the first non-coastal state to allow same-sex couples to wed.  In 2010, anti-marriage equality advocates, supported by NOM, successfully recalled three of the judges from the Varnum majority during their retention elections.  In 2012, another of the judges, David Wiggins, won his retention vote.

Despite continuous pressure from anti-LGBT forces, Democrats in the state, led in large part by Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, have held fast in support of marriage equality in Iowa.