Operation Chaos chronology

From Computers, Freedom, and Privacy

originally prepared by Jon Pincus for presentations at CFP08 on "elections 2.0" and " Activism and Education Using Social Networks Jon's “Election falsification” and other voting issues in Ohio contains excerpts and discussions of many of the initial sources here. Please help supplement with additional sources and links to discussions!

• initial discussions on conservative blogs, forums, email
  • Rush Limbaugh's call to action: “pimp yourself for a day and vote for Hillary”

• Ohio pre-election warnings of illegality from election officials
  • Crossover voting has baggage: Prosecution possible for mischief by Gregory Korte in The Cincinnati Enquirer'; discusses pre-election TV appearances by the Republican party chair of Cuyahoga County warning against the "siren song".

• post-election coverage on blogs, discussion forums, social network sites
  • “I have voted for the Demonicrat Hillary Clinton. may God have mercy on my soul” and two other confessions on a discussion forum** Election Fraud against Obama in Ohio: More comes out, by Scott Isaacs on Newsvines. This briefly went to #1 on the MSNBC community page. Extensive comments included one from OHJP, a presiding judge in Ohio.
    • Facebook discussion thread
  • “Election falsification” and other voting issues in Ohio by Jon Pincus on Liminal States. Comments include updates through late March, and excerpts and discussions of many of the sources here
  • Chattering felons for Clinton by Nezua on The Unapologetic Mexican
  • brief mention and link, by Brad Friedman on BradBlog
  • Steven Rosenfeld’s Alternet story
  • Did Limbaugh’s Crossover Voters Break Ohio Law? by Kim Zetter on Wired's THREAT LEVEL
  • [ http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=302317 Limbaugh’s Lying Voters Under Investigation] by Ari Melber in The Nation's Campaign Matters; at the time, this had the best set of links. See "Tracing the the thread" below.
    • Limbaugh's response. (Need link)
    • Facebook thread in the One Million Strong for Barack group

• estimates of the effect
  • The Limbaugh effect on Clinton's Texas Win by Susan Davis on the Wall Street Journal's WSJ.com
  • Republicans now influencing Democratic results on The Jed Report
  • Estimating the Limbau effect by poblano on Daily Kos
• Five delegates in Mississippi? on Daily Kos

• post-election stories in the mainstream press
  • Amanda Garrett's story in the Cleveland plain Dealer
    • Moms who think discussion
    • threads on dKos: 1, 2 (need better refs here)
  • Joe Gullen's Cuyahoga County Board of Elections begins investigation of primary crossover voters
  • Prosecution for Limbaugh unlikely, in The Columbus Dispatch: "lying through your teeth and being stupid isn’t a crime.”

[edit] Tracing the thread

A comment by Jon Pincus in Cognitive diversity and the 2008 US election discusses some of the information flow in some detail:

A great example of the not-so-hidden power of social networks: a 26-year-old from Butler County Ohio posted a story on Newsvines and then a link in a thread in the One Million Strong for Barack Facebook group. I did some research with the aid of a couple other Facebookers (including a college student in Florida whose Mom lived in Ohio) and wrote up a blog entry, updating it for a few days as new information came up. After I sent it to Kim, she did some more research and blogged about it on Wired’s THREAT LEVEL blog.

Ari saw it on Wired, talked about it on CSPAN, and after Rush attacked him did a nice piece on The Nation’s blog: Limbaugh’s Lying Voters Under Investigation. [The funny thing is, I actually know Ari via email — he did a long piece about Facebook for The Nation’s print edition in January that I saw on TPM; he quoted my response in his followup post and we’ve stayed in touch — but hadn’t thought of sending this to him.]

Ohio newspapers and TV stations had reported before the election that lying on crossover pledges was illegal; discussions all over the political blogosphere had discussed the effect of Limbaugh-inspired crossover votes. Nobody (outside of Ohio) put the two of them together.

It's interesting that Kim Zetter's story missed the excellent Cleveland Plain Dealer article, which included interviews with several voters and had come out the day before. Jon Pincus comments that he had also missed it: it wasn't mentioned in the Obama Facebook group, and he didn't see it until it was linked from dKos.