GOP "robo-call" scandal grows, now hitting Washington state as well

UPDATE: Add New Jersey to the growing list of states where the Republican party is trying to defraud voters with fake phone calls.

UPDATE: Fraudulent calls hitting Virginia voters too. In Virginia, Democratic voters are getting phone calls telling them they'll be arrested (Markos has the audio via the link above).

The fraudulent GOP voter-intimidation scam has now hit Washington state. Other states being targeted by the GOP calls, that we know of so far, include Pennsylvania, Kansas, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New York.

We are the point of needing an FBI investigation because this is now clearly happening across the country in a clearly coordinated way (across interstate lines, mind you).

The Republican party is engaging in a campaign to defraud the voters and Democratic congressional campaigns by making phone calls to voters, often late at night and repeated, and making the voters think that the calls are coming from the Democratic campaigns when in fact they're coming from the Republicans.

This is fraud. It an effort to steal the vote. It violates a number of consumer telemarketing laws, and more.

We already knew the GOP had decided to run racist and anti-semitic ads in the South and out West, which have they have done. But no one had any idea that the Republicans were willing to defraud voters in order to trick them out of their votes. If there isn't a felony here, there should be.

It's sad that the Republicans so don't want to talk about the issues, the war, the economy, health care, gas prices, and more, that they will do anything to stop you from voting. It's sick, and pathetic, and is a sign of how corrupt the Republican party has become in America. At the same time they've killed nearly 3,000 American troops in Iraq fighting for, we're told, "democracy," the Republican party slowly destroys that very same democracy at home.

This has turned into a national story.