Update: Governor Scott Walker was victorious last night, winning 53 percent of the vote, and dealing a blow to Democrats and labor unions.Wisconsin’s turbulent recall election is underway, and incumbent governor Scott Walker’s lead has evidently evaporated—polls show the race is neck and neck, now well within the margin of error. And voters are flocking to the polls; so sayeth New York Times reporters, local TV, and Wisconsinite Reddit users.And perhaps the narrowing gap spooked the union-busting governor, because reports are coming in that pro-Walker forces are stooping to dirty automated tricks in the campaign’s twilight hours.Salon, MoveOn.com, and a number of local Reddit users all say that voters who signed the recall petition are receiving robo-calls telling them that their vote has already been counted. Josh Eidelson writes:“With both sides counting on dramatic turnout, Tom Barrett's campaign is charging Scott Walker supporters with dirty tricks. In an e-mail sent to supporters last night, Barrett for Wisconsin Finance Director Mary Urbina-McCarthy wrote, ‘Reports coming into our call center have confirmed that Walker's allies just launched a massive wave of voter suppression calls to recall petition signers.’ According to Urbina-McCarthy, the message of the calls was: ‘If you signed the recall petition, your job is done and you don't need to vote on Tuesday.’
“Last night I talked to a Wisconsin voter who says she received just such a robo-call. Carol Gibbons told me she picked up the phone and heard a male voice saying ‘thank you for taking this call,’ and that ‘if you signed the recall petition, you did not have to vote because that would be your vote.’”Pretty low. The Walker campaign denies direct responsibility for the calls, but pointedly did not refute their existence.Which makes sense—$60 million dollars has been sunk into the recall election, $30 million of which has gone to Walker’s campaign alone. Millions more have been sunk into political action committees supporting him. Evidently, pretty much every ad break on TV this week has been a deluge of droning political ads. And since we live in the era of deep moneyed Super PACs, those ads—or the robo-calls—aren’t officially “coordinated” with the campaigns. Which means the nasty, misleading robo-calls could be the work of anyone—the deep-pocketed Tea Party nerve center Americans for Prosperity have pulled similar stunts already_, for instance—and the Walker campaign can issue plausible deniability. After all, it’s against the rules to consort with any PAC men, and no campaign would dare breach protocol.So, given that possibility, I’d like to append my polemic on Super PACs may mostly feed an an onslaught of brain-deadening political ad spots, but they also help leave the door open for democracy-subverting operations like robo-trickery. Or rather, they prop it open with fat stacks of cash.
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