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Wis Voters Get Fake "Emergency Alert" Text During a Tornado Watch. It Was GOTV for a RW Candidate [1]

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Date: 2023-04-01  

This is what I got on my cell phone

As we sat under a Tornado Watch in most of southern Wisconsin, cell phones chimed with an emergency alert. It didn’t have anything to do with the weather which we were watching like hawks (we did have tornadoes and severe storms a few hours later). It was sent to scare voters by the Republican Party of Wisconsin in the most expensive and high profile Wisconsin State Supreme Court election in decades.

It looked just like a real alert.

As southern Wisconsin braced for a tornado watch Friday afternoon, conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Dan Kelly and the Republican Party of Wisconsin issued its own emergency alert warning voters not to elect liberal Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz on Tuesday. The text message included a video that used alert tones and a scratchy radio voice found on official emergency alerts aired on television and radio. The screen read, "*** Emergency Alert System ***" and "Wisconsin Voter Alert" on the backdrop of differently colored bars that sometimes appears on screen when TV programming is interrupted. After three beeps, a voice says, "This is a State of Wisconsin voter alert. Attention citizens: our Second Amendment rights are under attack by Judge Janet Protasiewicz."

Sounds illegal — right?

According to the FCC rules, people and groups are barred from using emergency alert system codes or signals in "advertisements, promotional announcements, or other programming," if the sounds are being used not in connection with an actual emergency, an emergency system test, or a public service announcement authorized to use such sounds.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the worthless FCC to take action.

When confronted with the public outrage at the abuse of the alert system, The Republican Party of Wisconsin dismissed the concern as “fake outrage” and used the opportunity to attack Dan Kelly’s opponent for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, Janet Protaseiwicz.

The election is April 4th and Janet Protaseiwicz is running a vigorous campaign. If she's elected, it will change the balance of the State Supreme Court to the Democrats - something that hasn't happened in decades. Such a reversal could be the end of extreme Republican policies in Wisconsin such as the 1849 anti-abortion law and former Governor Scott Walkers' extremist laws.

I always expected the GOP to use dirty tricks the last weekend before the election and it seems they're pulling out all the stops.

Stay tuned.

* * * *

As an old Boomer with a brain stuffed full of other stuff and a black thumb for technology, it took me over an hour to figure out how to get an image from my cell phone (originally a video with scrolling instructions to vote for Dan Kelly) into my pictures for upload and use here. I couldn’t capture the one associated with the Journal Sentinel article.

I feel a great sense of accomplishment.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/1/2161485/-Wis-Voters-Get-Fake-Emergency-Alert-Text-During-a-Tornado-Watch-It-Was-GOTV-for-a-RW-Candidate

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