We’ve all heard of dirty campaigning. But nothing I’ve ever heard comes close to this (via the following sites [1, 2, 3, 4]). Apparently the Republicans have been engaging in misleading robo-calling – mass automated phone calling – in an attempt to undermine the Democrats. In principle this doesn’t sound any worse than e-mail spamming – annoying, irritating, but ultimately quite benign. However, the GOP are going all out this time round. Here are some of the tactics they’ve been using:

• Strategically calling voters who are demographically likely to vote Democrat, posing as the electoral commission and providing them with false information on voting times so they miss voting.
• Doing the same as above but providing false information on how to vote so their vote is rendered invalid.
• Doing the same as above and advising the person that on grounds of some legality they are ineligible to vote and if they turn up to vote they will be criminally charged.
• Calling and pretending to be a representative of the Democratic candidate many times over and at inappropriate times like the middle of the night, so as to disgruntle the voter and turn them away from the Democratic nominee. Apparently the Democrat headquarters have received numerous complaints, demanding that they stop calling.

Here’s a video allegedly showing one such recording. No confirmation whether this one is authentic, but it’s certainly consistent with the articles from above.
Here’s another one on dirty campaign advertising.

In good news, the Democrats have taken the House in a landslide! Smoke that.