Unexpected trip up to DE for a few days to visit my sister. Probably won't have much chance to check email or post here until I get back. Though I am going to try to get to the Charcoal Pit if I can manage it. Luckily Georg is able to cover my show this Sunday so I didn't have to worry about finding a sub. Thank goodness it wasn't next week, when I have the show with my dad. That would have been a disaster.
May 12 movie: The Seventh Cross. Spencer Tracy stars as one of seven escapees from a concentration camp, who are recaptured and killed one by one, except Tracy, because he's the star. That makes it sound grim, and it kind of is. It's also a pretty inspiring story about the innate goodness of ordinary people.
Things I didn't love about this movie:
-I could really, really have done without the plot device of narration from the ghost of the first escapee to die. The ghost sort of hovers over the story mumbling platitudes about the strength of the human spirit. Ugh.
-Tracy was a terrific actor, but no acting could make his stocky build any less ridiculous as a recent inmate of a concentration camp. He looked like someone who should lay off the ham sandwiches, not someone who had been starved by the Nazis for three years. It required a suspension of disbelief that I wasn't able to muster.
Things I did love about this movie:
-Tracy's acting was genuinely tremendous. He conveys a character who starts out embittered, desperate and half-dead, and ends up inspired and inspiring. And he does it without dialogue for the first part of the movie.
-The surprise joy of the movie was Hume Cronyn as a likeable joe who shows unexpected heroism. I just looked up this movie on IMDB and found out that Cronyn's wife was played by Jessica Tandy, who was his wife in real-life!
May 12 movie: The Great Lie. I love this movie. Mary Astor is the perfect foil to Bette Davis. Oh yeah, and George Brent is in it too. And Hattie McDaniel, as the maid in some strange alternate universe where 1930s Maryland is exactly the same as the antebellum deep South (down to the live oaks and Spanish moss). Was McDaniel ever in a movie where she didn't play the maid? She was a great actress and someday I would like to see her get to do something besides wait on the stars.
My cake for Saturday night turned out well if I do say so. I had been asked to make something chocolate, so I had found the richest, most chocolately dessert I could. Two whole boxes of Scharffenberger chocolate. I had to go to the store three times: Friday night to get the ingredients, then Saturday morning when I discovered we were out of sugar, then again Saturday afternoon when I discovered we were out of vanilla. Seems like that's always the way, especially when I haven't baked in a long time.
The cake had three layers: a nearly flourless cake on the bottom, a mousse in the middle, and whipped cream and fruit (strawberries and raspberries) on top, and I had some time while the cake cooled. So I mowed the lawn. The cake was done just in time, and the mouse set before we cut it, and I couldn't ask for more. For my taste, I would have preferred the cake layer to be a little more cake-like and a little less like a fudge brownie. But it was a hit at the party. They did a cookout with hamburgers and brats and I wore my diabolical hot dog shirt for the occasion. and the weather was perfect for sitting outside. Warm enough but no mosquitos yet. It won't be like this for long.
I had my meeting with the WWII vet and it went really well. He was a charming man, full of interesting stories and excited about getting to tell them. I think my favorite story was about a Nazi sub which surrendered to his destroyer in the North Atlantic, at the end of the war. The German officers came over to their ship to surrender, and they sent a crew of officers to command the sub. (Interestingly, he said that was called the "prize crew" just like in the Aubrey-Maturin novels.) He said the Germans spoke English well enough to get along, but not well enough to understand everything. And at that time, because the war was over, they were allowed to listen to swing music on the PA system. So the sailors had a little joke on the Germans by requesting the song "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin" over and over. He said they must have played that song ten times a day while the Germans were on board. They would also play "Schickelgruber," a Kurt Weill song about Hitler. I'm kind of surprised the Germans didn't figure that one out.
Yesterday I did my Irving Berlin tribute show, which came together surprisingly well considering how little time I had to prepare. I should have done it Saturday night after the cookout but I was so tired that I waited until Sunday morning. And then overslept until 8 and then only had a couple of hours to prepare. Also I had brunch with D. and S., who as it turned out had a bet over whether I hate eggs. (I do; D won.)
And I seem to have gotten a cold. I thought over the weekend that I was exhausted all the time because I was doing so much. But looking back, I didn't do that much. I think it's more likely that I was starting to feel sick and so normal activity seemed like an extreme exertion.
I listened to the whole interview this morning. It sounds really good. Lots of material -- about 75 minutes! -- and a good mix of light, funny stories with more serious material. I was a little concerned that a show about the war would be depressing but I think the tone will be just right. And it was really nice to talk on the anniversary of V-E day.
I'm glad we did so much planning in advance. First, my dad wrote up his stories in a script and sent it to me. Then I wrote lead-ins and follow-up questions for each segment. Then we talked a week ago about some minor changes: adding a couple of things and moving one paragraph to another place. Last night on the call, we had some good extemporaneous conversations from the follow-up questions, and we still had the script to keep us from wandering too far afield. My dad was really good at not sounding like he was reading. At times I think he sounded more spontaneous than I did! And I'm supposed to be the radio person and all.
I want to start work on editing right! now! but I can't. I have the Irving Berlin tribute show on Sunday and I'm so deeply unprepared. I have a Berlin biography that I've only read a little bit of. I meant to read it during the slow times at the primary. That worked out so well! I guess I'll have to find shorter biographies online and then flip through the book the follow up on anything I want to know more about. Good thing Berlin wrote so many, many songs that I won't have to do much hunting to find two hours worth. On the contrary, it will be hard to narrow it down to two hours.
And then I have another radio related thing to do tomorrow: a coworker is introducing me to her father-in-law who was in the Navy during WWII, and might be willing to be interviewed on the air for Veteran's Day. I'm going to meet him tomorrow night and find out what he wants to talk about. I want to ask him if they were able to listen to music on the ship, and if he ever went to the Hollywood Canteen, which was founded by Bette Davis and which they made a movie about. The show won't be until November, but the father-in-law will be in town this weekend so we're meeting tomorrow.
I am seriously in awe of people who do weekly talk/interview shows. How do they do it?
My dad and I recorded the interview tonight for the Memorial Day show. I think it went really well! It sounded really spontaneous; I don't think people will know we started out with a script. My dad did a really good job of riffing on the script, adding extra thoughts off the cuff, and still staying basically on track. He's getting to be an old hand at this!
I listened to a few minutes and the audio sounded great. I'm going to listen to the whole thing tomorrow morning to make sure there aren't any problems, and then my dad will be free to do some computer maintenance he's been holding off on in case it messed up his Skype installation.
It's looking like I'm going to have to do this show in two parts. Because tonight's interview was just over an hour, and the Italian audio is also an hour, before translating and of course I'll have to add at least some audio to lead in and out and so forth. And so I'd have to make cuts to get down to a two-hour show with no music. And that would be a really dry show. I'd rather have two shows with music that will be easier to listen to, than try to cram everything into one marathon show of all dialogue. And this has the added benefit of giving me an extra week to do half of it.
I haven't decided yet whether to do all of my dad's interview in the first episode, and then all of Signor Bucca's interview, or to mix them together. I have to hear the translation first and decide how it best fits together.
I was chatting online a couple of days ago with an Italian friend who has been a poll worker in her community too. In Italy the job is randomly assigned, like jury duty. She told me that they have a big problem with people selling their votes and photographing their completed ballots as proof. And so the poll workers have to check voters for cameras or even cell phones with cameras!
I just heard recently that it's illegal in North Carolina for a voter to photograph their own completed ballot, and I thought that sounded like a silly law. I guess there's a good reason for it.
So as you might have guessed from yesterday's post, I was one of the people taking names and handing out ATV (Authorization to Vote) forms yesterday. We have books with the names of all registered voters in the precinct, and each name has a sticker next to it. We would verify the person's identity by asking them to state their name and street address, then put their sticker on an ATV, have them sign the form and direct them to the ballot table. Where they would turn in the ATV and be given a blank ballot.
In rare circumstances we would have to check ID, if the voter was marked "Inactive -- Verify Voter Information" in the book. Though a surprising number of people thought everyone had to show ID. Whenever they did I wouldn't look at it and would just say "I don't need to see that if you can state your name." Because first of all, I wanted to make it clear that ID wasn't necessary. And secondly, they're required by law to say their name and address out loud, and it seemed stupid for me to read their information off their ID and then ask them to say it anyway. I think the requirement to say names and addresses out loud is a fraud protection from the days when precincts were smaller and voters were likely to be known by either a poll worker or another voter who happened to be there. So if someone falsely gave John Smith's name and address, one of John's neighbors might hear it and realize that wasn't really him.
A few people expressed their opinion that we ought to check everyone's ID. One person even told me "that's horrible" that we don't. Personally I think this system is pretty good. As long as the BOE stays on top of removing people who die or move away, and marking people they can't verify "inactive" so their ID is checked, then there's no reason to hassle everyone with showing ID.
If people were unaffiliated then the process got more complicated. We had to tell them that they had a choice of ballot, and ask them to circle the name of the ballot they wanted on the ATV, and then initial in that box, in addition to signing the form like everyone. After about an hour the chief judge told us to start making people circle the ballot style in red. But, they still had to sign in black. Which made the process much more cumbersome and complicated: "Circle here in red, now initial here ... now if you can change pens and sign your name here in black." Asking unaffiliated voters to make three marks with two pens was kind of ridiculous, and I think I apologized to every single unaffiliated I dealt with.
If they didn't know which ballot they wanted, then they could go look at sample ballots posted on the wall. This also created a lot of confusion. It seemed pretty clear to me when I voted last week, but a lot of people didn't really know what the whole thing about choosing a ballot meant, and we spent a lot of time explaining it. A lot of people thought that because they were unaffiliated, they should circle "non-partisan" and then they'd get to vote in all the races. When actually the non-partisan ballot only had the non-partisan races like school board. We had been instructed not to steer people towards or away from any ballot style, but whenever we saw someone fixing to circle "non-partisan" we would urge them to go look at the sample ballots first. Other than that I was very careful not to say anything about the ballot styles. For instance when I told them they could choose their ballot style, if they said "I want the democratic ballot" I wouldn't say "well then circle DEM on the list" or even point to it. I would just say "if you know the one you want, circle it on this list." Maybe I was overly fastidious but I felt like it was better to err on the side of caution, than to inadvertently say something that sounded like I was advocating one party over another.
A couple of times people spouted off with political statements which we were all careful not to respond to. For instance one person asked me, "Are lots of Democrats voting?" I replied "Lots of everyone are voting!" One guy really pushed the woman next to me, asking her who she voted for in the presidential primary, lots of questions that are rude in any circumstance but incredibly inappropriate in that one. She put him off by saying she didn't like any candidate. I'm sure people don't realize they're putting a poll worker in a bad position by trying to engage in a political conversation.
One thing I will definitely remember next time is to take lozenges. I should have expected how hard it would be on the throat to have the same conversation over and over for thirteen hours. I did have the sense to bring lots of liquids -- a big sport cup of iced tea in the morning, a big bottle of water for when that ran out, and then around 5 Georg brought me a biggie sized iced tea from Wendy's. (Who by the way, make the most reliably good unsweet iced tea anywhere. I've been to expensive restaurants which charge more for a tiny glass of foul, undrinkable tea, than Wendy's biggie sized tea which is always at least decent, and usually quite good. But that's neither here nor there.) So anyway I had plenty to drink and that did help.
Closing down after the polls closed took less time than expected because there wasn't a line at the end. Just a couple of guys who made it in just before we locked the doors. Then the assistants (that included me) folded up the voting stations, cleaned the kitchen and put the tables and chairs away, while the judges counted the ballots and sent in the vote totals. The blank ballots had to be counted and compared to the number of votes cast, to make sure the numbers matched the number of ballots we had before the polls opened.
All the judges and assistants were great. All really hardworking and knowledgeable and professional, and all willing to help a newbie like me. Our chief judge was especially impressive. She ran the exceptions table (the help desk) and it seemed like no matter what happened, she knew what to do. It would have run a lesser person ragged but she never seemed tired or short-tempered. At one point I needed to ask her what to do with a spoiled ATV and I decided I'd wait until she wasn't busy at the exceptions table -- it took an hour and a half before there was a free moment when I could ask her! She had been busy dealing with voter problems non stop all that time. And it was like that most of the day.
We reported 1677 votes today. The others said this was very high turnout for a primary. (In comparison they had 2500 votes in the 2004 general election.) There were a couple of people waiting already when I got there just before 6 am! It was crazy busy until about 11:00, then slowed down through lunch, then we had a steady flow of people until 4:30 when it picked up again until about 6:30. No rush at the end though, which was kind of a surprise. We left just before 8:30 pm.
I was trying to keep count of the voters I personally processed but unfortunately my stack of blank forms got combined with someone else's stack at one point. Still, I estimate that about a quarter of those people came to my station. And since we had 5 people checking names, that should tell you how busy I was. Somehow I managed to randomly sit at the station which had 2 big books; one other station had 2 books, one of which was small, and the rest had 1 book. (It's the same talent that allows me to unerringly pick the slowest line at the bank drive-through.) Actually I was glad to be busy because it kept things moving. The slow times made me feel tired.
The poll workers were a really good group of people. Everyone helped each other out -- like for instance whenever I had a line (which was often) one of the others would take one of my books and process anyone they could from my line. And I did the same for the other person who had two books. Everyone seemed to really care about helping the voters and fixing whatever problems came up. I was glad to know them and I'm looking forward to working with them again in the fall. Overall it was an amazing experience and I encourage others to do it. All you have to do is call the board of elections in your county and tell them you want to be a poll worker.
More later, right now I am completely exhausted. And losing my voice. I'm going to be saying "Sign here and then take this form to the ballot table at the end, thank you!" in my sleep tonight.
Setting up the polling location took about an hour and a half. Everyone was really nice. There are eight of us, and one other is new like me. When I first got there we were setting up the voting booths. They pop open and the legs are folded up inside. Then I helped one of the other poll worker put together the yard signs ("Vote Here," "No Campaigning Beyond This Point" etc), and hang signs inside.
Then I helped check off people who already voted. We got a big list of everyone who already voted, and we had to put a big red "A" (for Absentee) over their name in the book. I only encountered one irregularity: a person whose first and last name and ID number matched, but the middle name did not match. They said not to put the A over that person's name because it might not be the same person, although probably it is.
While a few of us checked off names, the others set up the rest of the voting area. Almost everything is set up and left in place the night before. Just not the actual ballots and the tabulating machine. For obvious reasons they can't be left unattended overnight. And the chief judge has a grey bag containing an emergency kit. In case something crazy happened tomorrow morning like the key broke off in the lock and we couldn't get into the building, we could use the emergency kit to let people vote in the parking lot.
Also I filled out my tax forms -- we get paid to do this! I had to bring a photocopy of my driver's license and social security card. Lucky I was able to find the latter.
We have a full kitchen in back, which is nice, although one of the others warned me that we might not have much time to use it. They all said this is an active precinct with a lot of voters. They said that in 2004, when they arrived at 6 am to open up, there was already a line of voters down to the street! And it never let up all day. They said it won't be that insane tomorrow, but it probably will this coming November. And here I had a book all ready to fill the down time.
I'm going to be one of the people checking off names, which I'm happy about. The only complicated thing is that unaffiliated voters get to pick which ballot they want: the democratic, republican or nonpartisan (which only has nonpartisan races). The chief judge instructed us not to say the party names, but instead tell unaffiliated voters they can choose "either party or unaffiliated." I don't know why she doesn't want us to say party names, but whatever, she's the chief judge. Then the voter has to circle which ballot they want on their ATV form. Which I'm pretty sure I was not asked to do, when I voted last week. Well it's a new rule and so maybe the guy at early voting forgot.
The only thing that was less than ideal was the temperature. It was hot! And that was with only 8 people in the room. I'm a little concerned about tomorrow, when it's going to be warmer outside and the room will be crowded with people all day. I thought they'd have the a/c cranked and wore a light sweater, but I think tomorrow I'll wear short sleeves. We're required to wear "business casual" which doesn't describe many of my clothes, but I came up with something.
At the very end when we were walking out the door a car pulled up and a guy leaned out and asked us if this was the place for early voting! One of the other ladies told him, "Tomorrow morning at 6:30!" He missed early voting by a couple of days.
I have to be there at 6 am tomorrow, and we can't leave (I mean that literally: we legally cannot leave the premises) until the votes are counted, which they said might optimistically be by 8:30. I've got a lunch & snack to pack tonight, and Georg promised to come by after work tomorrow and bring me an iced tea. Wish me luck!
Just now I decided it would be a good idea to review my poll worker training book before tomorrow. Flipped open to a random page and read these notes from the training session, which I had written at the bottom of the page:
No instructions on what to do with a scary crazy person with cookies. Or a candidate with a gun.
Tune in tonight at 10 pm for an hour of songs from the 1930s and 1940s that are too racy, raunchy, druggie, or dirty to be played during my regular daytime show. 88.7 fm if you're local; wxdu.org if you're not. A live playlist will be online at 10.
May 1 movie: Dancing Lady. Fred Astaire's first movie! He plays himself and is only in it for a few minutes. The stars of the movie are Joan Crawford as the titular dancing lady, and Clark Gable and Franchot Tone as two guys vying for her.
The plot is that Crawford gets a job starring in a Broadway show, and it's kind of ridiculous to have everyone falling all over themselves about what a brilliant dancer she is (for one thing, she looks at her own feet almost continually), but it allows her to do two numbers with "Freddy" Astaire, who costars in her show. Unfortunately Astaire doesn't get to do much; like Eleanor Powell dancing with Jimmy Stewart in Born to Dance, he has to tone it way down so Crawford can keep up. The best part is they do a dance number where they ride a magic carpet to Bavaria and sing about beer. Fred Astaire seems like the unlikeliest person in show business to sing a song about beer: he's better suited to evening jackets and champagne cocktails. And yet, I always love the beer songs. The one in The Bandwagon has Oscar Levant bellowing "More beer!" and somehow pronouncing "more" with four syllables, but this one has Astaire wearing lederhosen. That's a tough call.
May 1 movie: Tunnel of Love. This movie, starring Doris Day and Richard Widmark as a young couple trying to adopt a baby, was a seething mass of ugly gender stereotypes. Ten minutes in I was so offended I wanted to put my foot through the screen. After half an hour it was just hilarious.
I recommend this movie if you're a huge Doris Day fan, you're intrigued by the sheer weirdness of Richard Widmark as a neurotic, weak-spirited husband, or if you're amused by the ugly gender stereotypes of the late 50s.
April 30 movie: Born to Dance. Another outing for Eleanor Powell and Buddy Ebsen. This one costars Jimmy Stewart, Virginia Bruce, Una Merkel and Sid Silvers, and includes music by Cole Porter and a really ridiculous plot. Stewart, Ebsen and Silvers play Navy men, which leads to a scene where Virginia Bruce's pomeranian dog falls over the side of a battleship, then two hundred sailors leap in after it, and somehow it isn't hurt.
Ebsen doesn't have any dance numbers as inspired as "Sing Before Breakfast," but he does get some nice moves in this ensemble number to a very, very lesser Cole Porter song:
Skip to about 2:30 to see Ebsen sing to and dance with Frances Langford, or watch the whole thing to see Eleanor Powell dancing (sort of -- she has to tone it way down so Stewart can keep up) and some charmingly terrible singing by Stewart. In the intro Robert Osborne said this movie was painful for Stewart to watch because of his singing voice. I'd probably also be horrified if I had to sing in public, much less in a movie, and my singing voice can't be as bad as his was. I really felt for him doing "Easy to Love." Not an easy song even for a talented singer. They had intended to dub his singing, as was commonly done at the time -- Powell is dubbed by Marjorie Lane in this movie. But the dubbing sounded really fake because Stewart's speaking voice is so distinctive. So they had Stewart do his own singing.
You can really tell Powell had ballet training by some of her dance moves. She does this one thing (in another number not on Youtube) where she kicks up until her foot touches her head -- ankle actually, she had long legs -- and then she bends over backward with her foot still in the air. Simply amazing.
April 28 movie: Wife vs. Secretary. Myrna Loy is married to Clark Gable and consumed by jealousy over his secretary, Jean Harlow. That description makes Loy sound like a shrew. Actually her jealousy is unfounded but completely reasonable. Because Gable is an oblivious oaf who constantly behaves suspiciously and then gets all indignant when Loy is suspicious. He's a "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" kind of guy. Except that the movie vindicates Gable by making Loy's eyes actually lie to her. It's kind of painful to watch her crumble under her insecurities.
For me the most sympathetic character is Harlow. In too many movies her characters are grasping and tawdry. Here she's a talented professional woman who handles a difficult situation with maturity and clarity. It's tragic that she died so soon after making this movie. Also nice work by a very young Jimmy Stewart as Harlow's boyfriend.
We had a bit of an adventure this morning: I was out front working in the yard when I heard a car honking as it drove by. Looked up and saw a dog in the road. (I should mention at this point that I live on a busy road with a 45 mph speed limit.) He had a collar with a tag, and though he seemed scared, he let me approach and acted really happy to meet me.
He was a big puppy, very sweet and so squirmy that I couldn't get a look at his collar. So I carried him back to our yard and looked at the tag. Which gave his address as the house across the street. D'oh! I got the leash out and took him back across the street. (Much to the confusion of poor Jane, who thought she was going to go out when she saw the leash.)
No one answered at the door even though there were two cars out front, so I took the puppy back across the street to our yard, got the phone number off the tag and called the neighbor. Then Georg and I spent the next half-hour or so trying to manage Puppy Fun Time! The puppy was frantically excited about being in a new place! with new people!! and another dog!!!
Jane, on the other hand, was none too happy about all this. She acted excited and played with the puppy for about half a minute. Then she realized that this was a strange dog in her yard, jumping on her, playing with her people and wearing her leash no less. After that she parked herself right in front of me and barked at the puppy if he tried to get attention from either me or her. I spent my time scratching Jane's head and telling her "I love you best," and distracting the puppy when he tried to play with her.
The problem was the puppy didn't understand Jane's signals at all. She would bark a quick "back off!" at him, and he would half-crouch down right in front of her and yelp his head off. I guess he thought, "wow, she's making noise! I can do that too! Hey! Hey! Hey!"
The funniest part was every time the puppy would pee, Jane would go right over and pee in the same spot. Like she was saying, "No way, this is my yard! And it smells like me! Not you!"
Keeping an eye on the dogs meant no more yardwork for the moment, so Georg went out to get lunch. A few minutes later the puppy's owner came home and got the dog. He said they had the puppy in an outdoor pen with a flimsy barrier, and it had never tried to break through it before. To his credit, the neighbor seemed horrified and I feel pretty confident that it won't happen again.
After the neighbor and puppy left, I took Jane for a quick ride as a reward. She really was good about the whole thing. Extremely tolerant of a bouncy, jumping puppy in her space who did not understand her communications. I was in my filthy gardening clothes and shoes so I didn't take her out of the car. I did stumble onto another entrance to the Eno Park which I'd never seen before. Maybe tomorrow morning we'll go walking there.
Also, I drove by the home of the chief judge at my precinct! I know it was her house because there was a (temporary) sign out front with her name and an arrow pointing to the house. The sign kind of looked like the signage at the polling place, and I wonder if it's there so the board of elections can find her to deliver supplies and equipment before Tuesday. Although I thought the chief judges had to pick everything up. Maybe the sign was just a coincidence.
My dad and I did a trial run sort of pre-interview this evening for the Memorial Day show. It went really well. Skype and Audio Hijack worked perfectly. Which is no surprise but still, just wanted to make sure. The sound quality is so much better with Skype than with the telephone. Last time somebody called the station thinking my dad was there, because he sounded like he was right in the studio with me.
My dad had sent me detailed notes beforehand, basically a script. Tonight we talked about a few parts where we're going to elaborate & go into more depth. For instance tonight he told a great story which wasn't in the script, about meeting a homesick young GI who kept talking about his mother's home-baked cookies. And of course my dad didn't know what that meant because they don't use the word cookie in England. It was a sweet story that I definitely want to have on the show.
Also we made one minor structural change (moving one bit up to a place where it seemed to fit in better). We're going to do the interview on May 8, which coincidentally is V-E Day. It will be nice to talk about the spontaneous end-of-the-war celebrations on the anniversary of the day. And a nice parallel to Francesca's interview with her father, which they did on April 25 (Liberation Day in Italy).
I've listened to almost all the untranslated audio of Francesca's father and by stopping frequently and looking up words, I'm able to understand some of it. For instance they said Barcelona a lot, and at first I wondered why they were talking about Spain. Then I looked at a map and discovered that Barcellona is a town in Sicily. That must have been where he lived.
I found out from Francesca that I misunderstood part of her father's story. I thought he said that the fascists stole their farm animals and they had nothing but potatoes to eat. In fact he said that the fascists stole their farm animals and then forbade them from planting gardens, so there wouldn't be vegetables for the Nazis to steal. And so his family had no food at all. When I heard him say "patate" he was saying, "not even potatoes." I'm kind of at a loss for words. It's grim, but I think it's important to learn about what war is like for civilians. Especially now when our country is involved again in a protracted war on another continent.
[Update: Three months ago in Virginia, the same group did the same thing, and made the same excuses. I'm having a harder time believing this was all an innocent mistake.]
Talking Points Memo has a long comment thread including comments from Sarah Johnson,* representative of Women's Voices Women's Vote, the group making the robocalls. She basically chalks it up to incompetence: says their goal is to register voters for the general election and they wanted to get an early start and just couldn't be bothered to check the primary schedule. And it's just bad luck that in state after state, they've made the calls a few days before the primary, after the deadline for primary registration ended.
She also said that instead of identifying and contacting unregistered voters, they've been targeting neighborhoods with low rates of registration. And so it's just bad luck that they've been calling registered voters in black neighborhoods and implying that the people aren't currently eligible to vote.
Johnson said they're using robocalls with a male voice and an African-American sounding name (Lamont Williams) because the group has the dual goals of registering women and African Americans. Though the website says otherwise: "Women's Voices. Women Vote started with one goal in mind: Improving unmarried women's participation in the electorate and policy process." She said there's another robocall using a woman's voice and the name "Julie."
The NC attorney general (pdf) says it's illegal to make a robocall in NC with no identification. When asked about the lack of identification, the phony name and the blocked caller ID, Johnson said it was human error.
The TPM thread also points out that the group has ties to the Clinton campaign. Which is suspicious but not enough for me to accuse Clinton of involvement. Though it stretches credulity, I'd like to believe that Johnson is telling the truth and they're well-meaning idiots. Still, it's a sad day when we have to wonder whether a Democratic campaign is possibly using sleazy voter suppression tactics against its own party.
*It could of course be someone else claiming to be Sarah Johnson, but Josh Marshall seems to believe that it is her.