CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – A former telemarketer has agreed to plead guilty to his role in a Republican phone jamming plot against state Democrats four years ago.

Shaun Hansen, of Spokane, Wash., is pleading guilty to two federal counts of conspiracy to commit interstate telephone harassment, stemming from the Election Day 2002 jamming of get-out-the-vote and ride-to-the-polls phone lines run by state Democrats and a nonpartisan firefighters union. In exchange, prosecutors agree not to oppose his request for a sentence reduction, according to U.S. District Court papers dated Nov. 6.

No sentencing date was posted. The charges carry a total maximum sentence of seven years in prison and $500,000 fine.

A trial had been scheduled to begin next month.

In 2002, Hansen was owner of Idaho-based Mylo Enterprises, a telemarketing company prosecutors say received $2,500 to place hundreds of hang-up telephone calls to Democratic ride-to-the-polls phone lines on Election Day 2002, the year of a hotly contested U.S. Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.

Three former Republican officials were convicted in the phone jamming plot.

Two others

Former state Republican Committee Executive Director Chuck McGee served seven months in federal prison after admitting to devising the scheme, which tied up phone lines in Manchester, Nashua, Rochester and Claremont for about two hours before it was called off.

Allen Raymond, former president of the northern Virginia company GOP Marketplace LLC pleaded guilty to executing the plan and served a three-month sentence. Prosecutors say it was Raymond who hired Hansen’s company to make the calls.

Raymond and McGee both testified against James Tobin, the former New England chairman of President Bush’s re-election campaign, who was convicted on telephone harassment charges last December and sentenced to 10 months in prison. Tobin, of Bangor, Maine, remains free while his appeal is decided.

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