Gov. Robert Ehrlich aide found guilty of conspiring to suppress black voter turnout

The calls told these voters that they didn't need to to vote because, "Governor O'Malley and President Obama have been successful.".....the calls were intended "to mobilize crossover Democrats, not keep people from going to the polls."

That's a defense? "You misunderstood?" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Looks like we know where the real voter fraud is.

That excuse sounds an awful lot like it belongs in the same phylum as TEApublican "apologies".

This aide's blatantly reaching excuse is to "explanation" as an apology is to blaming a lack of humor in those you're apologizing to.

One more Republican trick of the trade in their efforts to suppress the vote. I know this has been done many times before, but it is heinous every time it happens.

When you can't win an election outright - cheat, steal, whatever it takes!

In order for it to be conspiracy there have to be others involved. I wonder why it's just this guy and not his co-conspirators. Is legal action still pending on this?

There is no low the christian cults will not reach to further the theocracy.

Vote GOP is you want bone hard pew poisoned ignorance, anything else you will have to try and get elsewhere.

Another voter suppression case lost by the Democracy hating monocrats?

Say it an’t so!

Is legal action still pending on this?

Yep, from the HuffPo article this quotes:

Schurick testified that he rejected campaign consultant Julius Henson's black voter suppression strategy dubbed "The Schurick Doctrine" but later approved the robocall script. ... Henson, whose trial on similar charges is set to begin in February, has said he did not believe the calls were illegal and that they weren't meant to suppress the vote.

Astonishing, 'I didn't know that telling Democrats to stay home would be considered an attempt to suppress voting!'

Give complete immunity and reward $$ to anyone who can testify that orders like these came from the RNC / GOP National, State and or Local Committees. Or any of the many corporate campaign financial contributers. Is the United States really going to allow these lawbreakers to act like they are above the law? Are our politicians really the tin-horn pussies they portray to the whole World? Everyone knows these are types of orders the GOP has issued to their subordinates have and are used time and time again since Tricky Dicky. To ratfukk anyone who's not a Goddamnable NaziNeocon. Especially the ratfukking that goes on against the Democrat Party.

Once again people, the Republicans speak in opposites. So, with the voter suppression,I mean protection laws, popping up in all the RED STATES, the objective is to cheat to obtain the desired outcome. The target is voter turnout. Limit the turnout by any means possible, especially those that may vote other than, for Republicans.

As has been noted before, 2010 is the perfect example! Low voter turnout, equals big Republican victories. Not because they have better ideas or policies, but because their rabid fans, mostly RETIREES, are more likely to exercise the franchise. Usually lead, like sheeple to the water trout, by fake leaders like Falin Palin,Michele Bachmann and Dabbling Witches and encouraged by lunatics like Beck,Limbaugh and Faux News bobble heads, to take their country back.

The problem is, Democracy requires the vast majority of the population vote, so as the winners of these elections can formulate LAWS AND POLICIES that accommodates, as close as possible, THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE. Not just the winners agenda! Otherwise, what you get, is what we have, PEOPLE IN THE STREETS; with angst toward all. Whereas, the whole country suffers...Voter suppession should be viewed as an attack on the U S Constitution-PERIOD...

And this coming election, we must all be on guard for similar and even more heinous acts to be used by the Tpubs. They will do or say, anything , anything to cheat voters out of their Constituaional right to vote, the DOJ should be notified at the smallest hint of these kinds of activies. Be on high alert people, we all need to watch them.

I have said all along, the ONLY way the GOP know how to win is to Cheat. I wonder how many more will come to light.

GOOD! These clowns need to go to jail for messing with the election system. It should be a very serious offense.

It should be an example to others that would try to do the same thing.

I still wonder about Rick Perry and his statement about 18 yr olds and Nov 12. Most 18 yr olds are smarter than that and smarter than Perry.

So the defence was, we were using a "Reverse Psychology Robo-Call" to motivate Black Democrats who wanted to vote for a Republican.

He should get extra years on his sentece for wasteing the courts time.

Republican operatives may have traded their white sheets and hoods for suits and ties, but their goals are exactly the same as the goals of racists from the end of Reconstruction: keep black people from voting by any means necessary.

I hope we all watch the upcoming Presidential election very, very, very closely...as it stands now, none of the Republican candidates really has a snowball's chance in hell of winning the moderate vote, so I'm very worried that they will resort to trying to steal it.

Most 18 yr olds are smarter than that and smarter than Perry.

I think most fifth graders are smarter than Perry.

If you have to resort to these kind of tactics to win an election then you shouldn't be running. I'm a Republican. I've been around long enough to know that Corruption is on both sides of the aisle. Mind you some people have short memories and forget that they are part of the Party of Blagojevich, Edwards, and Dixon.

"to revolutionize northern sentiment by a presentation of history that would transform every man in my audience into a good Democrat" Thomas Dixon Jr. on The Birth of a Nation

My question is... Are you trying to transform me into a good Democrat?

Vote GOP is you want bone hard pew poisoned ignorance, anything else you will have to try and get elsewhere.

Got Hate?

I see more hate messages on here than I ever heard from a Republican mouth. Maybe some of you should be stepping back a bit.

Republican operatives may have traded their white sheets and hoods for suits and ties, but their goals are exactly the same as the goals of racists from the end of Reconstruction

You do understand that it was Republicans who were the reason that Reconstruction even happened? I don't think many people understand that the Republican Party is the reason that so many black people enjoy the freedoms that they do. The KKK is and always shall be a large part of Democratic History.

Give complete immunity and reward $$ to anyone who can testify that orders like these came from the RNC / GOP National, State and or Local Committees

But if it's the Democratic Party let's keep it hush hush. How about just do the right thing.

GOOD! These clowns need to go to jail for messing with the election system

A message I can agree with. One that isn't filled with partisan hate.

That excuse sounds an awful lot like it belongs in the same phylum as TEApublican "apologies"

I didn't know they had anything to apologize about.

Republicans have always been hostile to the African American vote since they coddled up to
conservatives, what an affront to the republican party's radical, liberal progressive inception;

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats

Nixon Political strategist Kevin Philips

The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right.

Dr. Martin Luther King jr., biography 1966 chapter 23

The WHOLE Republican National Convention, under court order since 1981 till right now, to stop caging voters in minority districts

When they show you who they are ...believe them

I don't think I've been hostile to any of my black friends... I'll be back on this tomorrow. Could clarify what you are saying here for me please. I would appreciate it.

I don't think many people understand that the Republican Party is the reason that so many black people enjoy the freedoms that they do.

I understand the history of the "OLD Republican Party" who did vote for the freedoms of black people it is the republicans of today that refuse to admit that the republican's that voted for civil rights then are the same republicans in "name" only of today. The republicans of today haven't quit practicing the southern strategy and for the most part taken it to a national level. If the republicans were sincere in their so called desire to help minorities there would be more willing to accept the republican message but that hasn't occured yet after 40 years. The republican message hasn't been in the best interest of black americans and IMO it has gotten progressively worse today with the republican politicians that we have presently. Will it change one day....remains to be seen but on past history I doubt it.

The KKK is and always shall be a large part of Democratic History.

Yes they originated with the racist democratic party pre civil rights and for the most part left because they identify with the republican message of today.

I don't think I've been hostile to any of my black friends...

Jason the problem is not with you as an individual it is with the overall message of the republican party. Maybe you can explain from your point of view why more blacks don't vote republican? Do you understand the hidden message that conservative politicians say and conservative voters (not quite most but close) don't understand and for the most part deny? ex. Newt's poor children's comment

You do understand that it was Republicans who were the reason that Reconstruction even happened?

Of course I do (but they weren't the only reason). I even wrote an article about it. The republican party's founding mission and motivation was as noble as any party mission could be. The KKKers whose voter suppression activities republican operatives now embrace were indeed democrats which only lends a sense of irony to Schurick's illegal and racist actions. He provides just one more in a long list of clear examples of how the modern GOP has been urinating on the graves of its founders for the last 50 years.

As Lincoln weeps and Eisenhower spins in his grave, those who wish to smugly waive the GOP's noble origins in front of my face while they ignore the last half century of GOP Southern Strategy race-baiting can politely kiss my entire backside.

Every inch of it.

Beginning with whichever cheek they wish.

He provides just one more in a long list of clear examples of how the modern GOP has been urinating on the graves of its founders for the last 50 years.

Ha! spot on.... Thanks

Every few weeks someone brings up the "We're the Party of Lincoln!" canard. As if the long gone blessing of his past leadership could absolve them of the dreck they've come to stand by and for today. As they stand up for the states rights argument to determine polices of iniquity as democrats of another century did before.. they simultaneously seek to debase the primacy of a federal government which Lincoln once won an entire civil war to establish.

To pretend the value and worth of todays GOPbag should be determined by a name shared by a party long since dead and buried and it's heroic actions of a bygone era defies belief. Everyone, it's commanded, should ignore and discount the actions of THIS century and award today's version of what was once a Grand Old Party the dignity and esteme it manifestly no longer deserves.

Not until the GOPbag gets goes cold turkey off the TEAvangelical brew it's addicted into a drunken stupor with today will it deserve a single iota of the high respect and honor it was once imbued with.

While it's leadership is made up of liars, cheats, thieves, and charlatans beholden to an ideology that services racial, sexual, and gender dominance and iniquity that is overseen by an over-class of the most elite of an already elite upper-class it deserves nothing. It is entitled to nothing. The GOPbag is today, in fact, a mere shadow of the very vacuum that fills it's entire coldly calculating "heart" with anti-government greed and a sociopath's idolization of self-service and interest above any form of public minded social spirit.

Am I the only one here who remembers the voter intimidation suit against the New Black Panther party that was dropped by the Obama Admin? The Democrats have no more credibility in this regard than the Republicans do. If we're going after voting fraud (and we should), then we need to prosecute even black Democrats if the law requires it. Why do we pick and choose?

Plutocracy can't survive vote.

Ah, the means justify the "ends" that is one of the motto's of the Republican Party, it is about "winning" at any cost.... just ask Nixon in the Watergate scandal!

We see it here on the Vine too! Those who say, just don't vote, show your disgust of the system, and in doing so slant a race one way or another.

I believe that with the money being doled out by the Republican Party if they do have "plants" here on this Source, and their job is to twist, and to constantly use "Fox Talking Points" to argue against facts being presented. One other tactic is to ask those here to provide facts(other than the one they provide, being private blogs) and doing so make busy work for those who do argue with facts. And, after being presented with same facts from reliable sources, they continue to prod and state the facts presented are not enough...

The willingness of anyone, regardless of Party affiliation to win at any cost is sad at best, and a travesty to a system that once was built on honor. I guess there really is no honor among thieves!

kg,

Am I the only one here who remembers the voter intimidation suit against the New Black Panther party that was dropped by the Obama Admin? The Democrats have no more credibility in this regard than the Republicans do. If we're going after voting fraud (and we should), then we need to prosecute even black Democrats if the law requires it. Why do we pick and choose?

The problem with your premise is that there were only two count them two Black Panthers standing at a BLACK VOTING BOOTH, no other Black Panthers appeared at any other booth at any time during the election, and according to the DOJ who investigated the charges and the Panthers there were only those two men in the Panthers.

Mountains and Mole Hills.

Freedom is NEVER GIVEN. It is always taken...BACK. We are all born with FREE WILL. Which infers it is inalienable, which it is! The quickest and easieat way to RICHES, is to incorporate the 'fruits' of OTHERS' labor for ones personal gain; ie...Trickle Dowm Econ....which is a Republican thingy!

No, kg, you are not the only one to remember the Black Panther voter intimidation case. I'm sure you aren't the only one who remembers it incorrectly either.

1. It was the Bush DOJ, not the Obama DOJ, that dropped criminal charges against the two Panther members at the scene, the then president of the organization and the organization itself.

2. Both Panther members at the scene were found guilty in abstentia as they did not show up for a hearing. The Panther organization and it's president were found not to be responsible as there were no incidents in any of the dozens of other precincts the Panthers were observing.

3. In assessing penalties, the Obama DOJ concluded that one of the Panthers involved was actually a credentialled poll watcher who lived in the building. Charges were dropped against him.

4. The charges were upheld against the other Panther and the DOJ imposed the limited sanctions available under the Voting Rights Act.

5. Interestingly, no voter in the precinct actually complained that they were being intimidated.

That your recollection of the incident would hew to the self-serving prevarications of the wing-nut bloviator set is of no surprise, kg, neither is the false equivalency of comparing the actions of two politically impotent loudmouth losers at one polling place to the organized voter suppression efforts that GOP operatives and public officials attempt on a consistent basis. I hope however, that you don't believe your arguments to be credible to anyone not willfully ignorant, morbidly obtuse or galactically stupid.

Am I the only one here who remembers the voter intimidation suit against the New Black Panther party

oh yea!

All two of them were just so sure fire all-over intimidating...

.. so much so that just about no-one voting at that location was intimidated in the least. Despite that fact J. Christian Adams, "conservative" activist and media darling of FOXbots and the Lush Rimbo-set everywhere tried to make a federal case out of it and failed. GOPbags make a lot out of the term "frivolous lawsuits" but when one of their activists creates another birtheristic piece of hilarious frivolity the right sure gathers up their skirts to indignantly flounce about.

while i would say that this is an unethical ploy, but this is far from voter fraud (or someone needs to explain voter fraud to me).

to me voter fraud is an individual voting who is not eligable or under someone elses name, or someone who doesnt count some of the votes.

this is just some dumbass hoping that people are stupid enough to not go to vote because they think their side is winning. i wonder how many of those people actually were dumb enough to accept this call at face value and not vote (who were intending to vote).

not to trivialize this, but i vote regardless if I think the person I am voting for is going to win or not.

In reading posts about the "southern democrats" above I feel the need to point out that conservatives in the south migrated to the Democratic party because they despised Lincoln and the northern Republicans. Ideologies shift over time, and the CRA completed the transition of southern "democrats" to the Repubcan party which more closely represented their ideological positions. This is high school American history. It bothers me that some either don't understand or choose to ignore historical fact. Anyway, enjoy the day!

Jason

But if it's the Democratic Party let's keep it hush hush. How about just do the right thing.

Nobody should want to keep any election or campaign hush hush. Less it be someone or some corporation that's got something to hide or to be gained by the controls of voter suppression. It isn't supposed to matter whether majority or minority as long as their right to vote isn't monkeyed with. Elections are supposed to be the most transparent of our governmental system. And I'm not going to give any Party or politician of any and all levels a free pass. I'm all for doing the right thing and to make sure everyone has the right to vote so their voice can be heard. That was, is and always has been the essence of We The People. Any time a Party focuses on any kind of voter suppression, their National, State and Local representatives should be held accountable and charged accordingly.

northtosouth

they choose to ignore it

cause as another poster stated, it used CONSTANTLY, and then you end up with 3-4 posts explaining the whole long history, just for someone to make the false claim again later on

D Luniz-1282741

It’s a pattern you can trace back to when the conservatives were Loyalist to the King in the American Revolution. Far-Right reactionaries don’t care what ideology or theology they use as a vehicle to gain absolute power.

You can see it in any country, past or present, where they are under a small government of wealthy elite or hereditary despotic rulers.

It’s as easy as knowing a tree by the fruit.

Glad to hear this...lets take the whole rightwing down...make them resign, demoralize them, indict them, put the in jail...its time for a revolution of truth and justice in this nation...let me say this...Rightwing your days are numbered.

Well, I hope they go to prison for a very long time. I also hope they have some cell mates who don't like what they did.

The purported law makers making sure they could win for themselves. But NO !!!! The racists aren't racist at all, they were just trying to save those poor people from having to expend some effort in a cause they shouldn't be involved with in their views !!! Yeah !!!!

Should these people even be allowed to remain in America ?? I mean after all they are trying to suppress what many people have died for freedom !!!!

Again they are not Americans they are Fascist Pig globalists !!! Vote out the liars and put some true moderates in office.

cause as another poster stated, it used CONSTANTLY, and then you end up with 3-4 posts explaining the whole long history, just for someone to make the false claim again later on

I've explained the history myself countless times....... to the same people. No use trying to convince a liar intent on vomiting forth deceptive talking points. But for every one of those, there are indeed others that might read it and say, "hmm, didn't know that, maybe I should reevaluate my conclusions on that topic."

But, that's just wishful thinking isn't it?

cause as another poster stated, it used CONSTANTLY, and then you end up with 3-4 posts explaining the whole long history, just for someone to make the false claim again later on

You're right, lol. No matter how many times the "The Party of Lincoln!!!" meme is deconstructed, they will never let it go. It's too attractive to them as a justification.

I've explained the history myself countless times....... to the same people.

So have I.

So have I.

And so it shall continue to be...

.. had to do it several times within a week or so of my first post on the vine. Every week or so it comes back like an aggressive malignancy.

If we had universal healthcare maybe there might be a cure for that malignancy, ONS. /sarc

While it's leadership is made up of liars, cheats, thieves, and charlatans beholden to an ideology that services racial, sexual, and gender dominance and iniquity that is overseen by an over-class of the most elite of an already elite upper-class it deserves nothing

Both Parties are that way. I don't think there should be special programs based on the color of your skin. To me if you treat a person differently from another based on color then that is racism. What I would rather see is this system of racial ethnicity changed to economic make up. I'm pretty tired and drugged up so I may not be stating this correctly. I don't think racism will ever end as long as we treat people differently all because the skin color is different. I'm not talking about forgetting our past either. If we don't teach the lessons of history then we are doomed to repeat it.

I am a part of the Party of Lincoln. Eventually those who have made the Party lack luster will be driven out. Each Party has a few bad apples and anybody can focus on them. I would rather look at the whole bunch. My beliefs do not line up well with the Democratic Party. I think many of those things the Democratic Party celebrates is harmful to society in the long run. Thus I am Republican. I will vote for the other Party though if my candidate beliefs do not coordinate my own. I am not beholden to the Party. It is the other way around. Some people have forgotten that. Hopefully enough of us will be able to remind the others who have forgotten of that fact. Good day.

conspiring to suppress voter turnout.

A Federal Crime!

One could surely hope, eh, northtosouth?

A Federal Crime!

Not just another non-story eh?

Jason... A FEW bad apples? Really??

a Republican operative being convicted

Operative and or "aide" being the key word.

In other words the "aide" fell on their sword, or was blamed by, their boss and or their Party. So that the "Governor" or "Party" couldn't be held accountable. How many times have we heard of the little guy / person take the hit instead of the real antagonizers of our system of Justice or in this case our election process?

I tend to agree with you proglib... but shades of Scooter Libby keep flitting through the more conspiracy shadowed corridors of my mind also. A fall guy more than a willing sacrifice, perhaps.

How many times have we heard of the little guy / person take the hit instead of the real antagonizers o

King Reagan had his knight take the blame for the Iran/Contra affair,, Bush had a slew loyal lackey's take the fall for outing a NOC agent, a treasonous offense, then Bush gives him a pardon. Nixion got a pardon from Ford...