A Maryland jury on Tuesday convicted Paul E. Schurick, the 2010 campaign manager for Republican ex-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., of four counts of election law violations stemming from an Election Day decision to make thousands of recorded telephone calls into African-American homes telling likely voters that the Democratic candidate was on his way to winning -- implying there was no need for them to vote. The gambit came after exit polls showed Ehrlich losing.
The election law violations concerned trying to influence votes through fraud, failing to identify the source of the call, and conspiring to commit those crimes. The charges and convictions are rare in the arcane world of election law; usually last-minute dirty tricks are not caught or prosecuted. The Maryland convictions could send a message to Wisconsin, where an AlterNet investigation reported on Monday about similar deceptive messaging from Republican opponents of a statewide recall petition drive to unseat Gov. Scott Walker. Read more
READ MORE
Another sober & informative blog
ReplyDelete