Just a short diary to flag something that occurred just within the last hour. I will be brief:
I am a registered Democrat in Virginia. I received a robocall the early afternoon of August 26 at home (I telework). Caller ID showed the call as being from a name I didn’t recognize. Thinking this to be one of the usual irritating but otherwise harmless solicitation calls we all get from time to time, I was tempted to ignore it, but on a whim picked it up.
What I got instead was a robocall, in a woman’s voice. The call lasted about thirty seconds and was a laundry list of all the bad things that can happen to people if they request a mail-in ballot. I can’t remember everything exactly, but it included things like “the police can track you down if you have an outstanding warrant” and “the IRS can find you to collect back taxes” and ended with words to the effect of “Don’t let The Man have your information!” The voice affected an African-American accent and the use of slang like “The Man” made me think this was a call intended particularly to frighten African American voters from requesting mail-in ballots. There was some kind of organizational name given which I didn’t catch, but it was nothing recognizable, and the robocall didn’t have any call-back or other tracking information (naturally).
I went ahead and called the Democratic Party of Virginia HQ, and was connected to their Ballot Protection section. I gave them all the information I could remember.
I encourage anyone else who gets calls like this to call their local Democratic Party, especially if you live in Virginia (in case this was Virginia-specific — the call didn’t indicate it was targeted to any particular location). I hope you are better at technical issues than I, and can save and record the robocall itself and pass it on.
I had never gotten a call like this before. But it shows something we already knew, which was that the other side, which has a decades (if not centuries) long record of minority vote denial/suppression, will pull out all the stops.
