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By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
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SDNY COURTHOUSE, Oct 31 – A Michigan campaign of robo-calls to discourage voting by mail has arrived before U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Victor Marrero, who held a proceeding on October 30 which Inner City Press covered. 

  The plaintiffs said the robo-calls had been "for the purpose of intimidating them, or attempting to intimidate them, from voting by mail."   

Judge Marrero ordered a series of counter- or corrective-robocalls. On the morning of October 30 there was discussion of the language of the counter-calls, if particular names of defendants had to be included.

   But by the end of October 30, only 29,000 of the original 85,000 recipients of the robocalls can gotten the corrective. Judge Marrero asked for an update by October 31 at 3 pm.

  And, hot off the presses, Inner City Press publishes from it: "Dear Judge Marrero: We write on behalf of Defendants to address the concerns referenced in Your Honor’s October 31, 2020 Order filed at approximately 7:00 p.m. last night (the “Order”). As will be described in further detail herein, substantially all of the original “recipients” have now received the Court's Corrective Message. ... We implemented three rounds of automated calls. Each round of calls consisted of three automated call attempts. Once an automated call reached a “recipient,” that individual did not receive any additional calls. Thus, if a transmission was ultimately unsuccessful at the end of all three rounds, a total of nine automated call attempts had been effectuated. The first robocall was made to all 29,117 “recipients” of the August 26 Robocall. Of these automated calls, there were 27,222 “recipients” who received the transmission successfully. See Broadcast 1 Summary, annexed hereto as Exhibits A, and Broadcast 1 Excel Data, annexed hereto as Exhibit B. The second robocall was made approximately one hour later to the remaining 1,895 “recipients” of the August 26 Robocall who had not successfully received the call during the first round. The second transmission yielded another 373 “recipients” who received the transmission successfully. See Broadcast 2 Summary, annexed hereto as Exhibits C, and Broadcast 2 Excel Data, annexed hereto as Exhibit D. The third robocall was made approximately two hours later to the remaining 1,522 “recipients” of the August 26 Robocall who had not successfully received the calls during the first and second rounds. The third transmission yielded another 165 “recipients” who received the transmission successfully. See Broadcast 3 Summary, annexed hereto as Exhibits E, and Broadcast 3 Excel Data, annexed hereto as Exhibit F. Therefore, after three rounds of automated calls (i.e., a maximum total of nine potential phone calls per number), we successfully reached 27,760 out of the 29,117 total “recipients” of the August 26 Robocall. This equates to a success rate of 95.34%.

After three rounds of automated calls, we concluded that those calls which failed to reach a “recipient” were either no longer in service or simply unreachable. See Exhibits A-F, supra; see also Robocall Confirmations, annexed hereto as Exhibits G-I. Accordingly, Defendants are in full compliance with the Court’s October 30 Order." Watch this site.

 The case is National Coalition on Black Civic Participation et al v. Wohl et al, 20-cv-8668 (Marrero)

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