Two Republican election judges in Chicago were removed from their positions in the Republican Party on Tuesday, they say, over objecting to robocalls directing them to vote for GOP candidates.
Chicago election judges last weekend received mysterious automated phone calls telling them they either needed additional training or that they needed to vote a particular way to serve as a judge.
Jim Allen, a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections, told the Chicago Sun Times on Tuesday that he didn’t know how the phone calls went out. It was unclear who sent out the robocalls and why.
And now two judges told CBS Chicago that they were removed as GOP committeemen because they questioned the phone calls.
One judge told CBS that one of the robocalls told judges to attend training at a temporary campaign headquarters rented by the Republican Party.
Another judge, former GOP committeewoman Charon Bryson, told CBS that a call asked judges to come to a different address for training.
“They were calling election judges, telling them to come in so they could get specific orders to vote for the Republican Party,” Bryson said.
Though Bryson is a Republican, she didn’t think it was an appropriate way to treat election judges
“They should not be be pressured or coerced into voting for someone to get a job, or to get an appointment,” she said.
The Republican party has denied any involvement with the robocalls. But the Cook County Republican chairman said Bryson was removed over unethical conduct and a Demcoratic voting history.
The robocalls disrupted voting in Chicago on Tuesday because election judges didn’t show up for work on Tuesday. According to the Chicago Board of Elections, more than 2,000 election judges didn’t arrive at polling places,
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a Chicago alderman have called for an investigation into the automated calls.
“There’s nothing more important than the integrity of the democratic electoral process,” Emanuel said. “Somebody called with the intent to create confusion,” Emanuel said. “Who did it? How did they get the list? Who paid for it? We have to get to the bottom of it.”
H/t Raw Story
Holy crap, the GOP are some vindictive mother fuckers.
Well here’s the “Voter Fraud” that the Republicans have been claiming.
Yup, and then they stick it to two of their own for complaining about it. Unfreakingreal.
It’s only voter fraud if a brown person does it.
one thing you can be absolutely certain of is that if republicans are screeching about some democratic ‘misdeed’; they have already engaged in and perfected it…