It's great that Rahm Emmanuel is talking about filing civil lawsuits against the GOP for its robocall dirty tricks.
But the Democrats should be LOUDLY talking about pursuing criminal charges.
[more after the flip]
Telephone harassment is a crime under federal law, namely 18 U.S.C. Sect. 371 and 47 U.S.C. Sect. 223, Conspiracy to Engage in Interstate Telephone Communications with Intent to Annoy or Harass. Depriving people of their right to vote can also be a federal crime.
In the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming case, Republican operatives were convicted of telephone harassment, and other federal charges, including the Republican National Committee's New England regional director.
The Republicans are saying that the Democrats also had robocalls. But the key seems to be the fact that the GOP intentionally programmed their calls to repeatedly call the same person up to 10 times. That was the dirty trick--it was intended to make the voter think the Democrat was calling them over and over, and make them not want to vote for that candidate. But that repetition may also be what separates the Republican robocalls from the Democrats', and what makes it a federal crime. When you intentionally call a person 10 times in a day with the same phone message, that begins to look a lot like the legal definition of telephone harassment.
If the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee is fined after the election, they will regard it as simply a cost of doing business. If people go to jail over this, we'll be a lot less likely to see it in future elections.