The New Republic:

Calls are being made to some… voters in Toledo warning voters of long lines at the polls and if they wanted to vote over the phone by expressing their preference on the key pad they can.

The modern GOP at work.

In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast write about the tactics Republicans are using to deter new voters and disregard Democratic ballots. They explain what went into a staggering number of ballot dismissals during the primary season and wonders how it will impact the national election. Click below for the entire article.

• Block the Vote: Will the GOP Campaign to Deter New Voters and Discard Democratic Ballots Determine the Next President?

• Video Special: Behind the Story With Kennedy Jr. and Palast

Shades of Florida 2000 in an L.A. County voting debacle.

Somehow the GOP is stuck on 87 percent of precincts reporting in Washington as midnight West Coast approaches, with McCain and Huckabee within a couple hundred votes.

How long can it take to count a caucus?

Kansas is one thing. If McCain can’t carry Washington? That’s a stank nasty result.

UPDATE: Washington apparently stopped counting at 87 percent… but still declared John McCain the winner. I’m with Josh. This is fishy as hell.

UPDATE II: Huck is not conceding the state and has sent lawyers to Washington:

Huckabee statement:

The Huckabee campaign is deeply disturbed by the obvious irregularities in the Washington State Republican precinct caucuses. It is very unfortunate that the Washington State Party Chairman, Luke Esser, chose to call the race for John McCain after only 87 percent of the vote was counted. According to CNN, the difference between Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee is a mere 242 votes, out of more than 12,000 votes counted—with another 1500 or so votes, apparently, not counted. That is an outrage.

UPDATE III: This is unbelievable. This Esser dude did some back-of-the-envelope math and consulted his gut and just declared McCain the winner.

Esser said he declared McCain the winner after calculating what Huckabee would have to win in the remaining precincts in order to take the lead. And even with being generous with a forecast of Huckabee votes, and purposefully assuming McCain’s support dropped significantly in the late counts, McCain still looked like the winner…

“Maybe it would have been safer if I hadn’t said anything. But it was an exciting and historic day for the state and I thought if I was confident about what the outcome would be I should share that with the people who had gone out to their caucuses.”

NHPrimary.com:

Statewide, the recount has not changed anybody’s vote by more than a few hundredths of a percentage point so far.

Las Vegas Sun:

The Democratic Party has confirmed that some voters received calls deliberately providing false information about their caucus site and time. To be clear: Caucus meetings open at 9 a.m. for Republicans and 11 a.m. for Democrats. You can double-check your caucus site online or by phone. Republicans: (702) 258-9182. Democrats: (702) 737-VOTE (8683).

Accused in radio ads of condoning voter suppression, Hillary Clinton and her campaign are now attempting to turn the tables, hitting Barack Obama and his supporters with charges of voter intimidation.

The Clinton campaign held a conference call with reporters this afternoon to denounce Spanish-language ads that call Clinton “shameless” for her campaign’s tacit support of a lawsuit — since dismissed — that sought to block casino workers from participating in the at-large caucuses on the Vegas Strip this Saturday.

The dust-up over the ads was quickly obscured, however, when farm-worker heroine Dolores Huerta accused the Obama camp of intimidating voters. Speaking on behalf of the Clinton campaign, Huerta said:

These ads that they have, saying that Hillary is trying to deprive Culinary Workers of their vote? It’s just the opposite. It’s Obama supporters and organizers who are telling Hillary supporters that they cannot vote.

We keep hearing stories of intimidation by Obama supporters and Obama organizers that are out there telling workers that… if they vote for Hillary they could be fired.

Huerta — who repeatedly belittled Obama, referring to him with the epithet “¿Cómo-Se-Llama?” or “What’s-His-Name?,” saying he was unknown to Hispanics — provided few details to back up these explosive charges.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton called the intimidation charges “wild” and “sordid.”

We’re in the day before the caucus and we’re hearing sordid attacks that have no substantiation behind them. It’s a fairly typical political game to play in the last minute — to try to get people to believe something that isn’t true and hope that the election happens before it gets cleared up.

These sorts of wild charges have nothing to do with the substance of the campaign. And it also points up the fact that the Clinton campaign isn’t comfortable with its candidate or comfortable with the issues they’ve been advocating. They have to make up these charges.

Clinton spokesperson Fabiola Rodriguez, reached this evening for comment, clarified that Huerta did not intend to implicate organizers employed by the Obama campaign itself, rather Culinary Union supporters who organize on his behalf.

Asked whether any of the alleged dirty tricks were linked in any way to the Obama campaign, Rodriguez said, “These are people who have endorsed him and who are organizing workers to come vote for him. I would say there is some kind of connection there.”

The Clinton campaign put Rolling Stone in touch with two casino kitchen workers who claim to have either experienced or witnessed union intimidation to vote for Obama. While their stories make clear that the union — which endorsed Obama last week — has aggressively encouraged its members to close ranks behind Obama, their experiences are far less black-and-white than the charges levied by Huerta. In neither case was any worker threatened with termination.

The first instance involves a food server at the Luxor who is also a shop steward for the Culinary Union and disagreed with the union’s Obama endorsement; she asked that her name not be used for fear of reprisal. The worker says she was told by the union that she would not be given time off to caucus if she did not pledge to vote for Obama. Ultimately, she complained to Luxor management and was assured she would be allowed to attend.

In the second case, Matthew DeFalco, a kitchen runner at Paris casino, told Rolling Stone he saw a union field representative tell a co-worker that she could not caucus if she didn’t commit to supporting Obama. After DeFalco and his mother, a cook, intervened and argued with the union rep, the worker was eventually assured she could caucus. The worker in question, a woman named Silvia Atuna, told the Las Vegas Sun she believed a language barrier between she and the union rep may have led to “a miscommunication.”

Calls to the Culinary Union to discuss Huerta’s accusations were not immediately returned.

Phil Singer, national spokesman for the Clinton campaign said the campaign stands by Huerta: “We’ve been getting a lot of calls [from people being told] your job is on the line unless you sign a supporter card for Senator Obama, or you can’t take off work unless you support Senator Obama.”

As to the UNITE-HERE ads themselves, Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle called on Obama to “denounce” them. Asked why Clinton could plausibly disavow responsibility for the lawsuit filed by her union surrogates and then insist that the Obama campaign assume responsibility for ads produced by his union surrogates, Rodriguez said the ads were different.

“They’re using Senator Obama’s name,” she says. “The lawsuit did not have Senator Clinton’s name in it.”

More from today’s San Francisco event.

Here Obama discusses the impact of the federal judge’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit endorsed by Bill Clinton that would have blocked voting at at-large caucuses on the Vegas strip.

“Some of the people who set up the rules,” Obama said, “didn’t think we’d be as competitive as we [are,] and were trying to change them last minute. The judge was clear that you can’t change the rules six days before caucus and that any alteration would have disenfranchised maids, dishwashers, bell hops who work on the Strip… It was the right decision.”

EARLIER: Bill Clinton loses his cool with a reporter, denying a direct hand in the lawsuit while supporting its logic: