The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.

Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.

Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002.

Besides the conviction of Tobin, the Republicans' New England regional director, prosecutors negotiated two plea bargains: one with a New Hampshire Republican Party official and another with the owner of a telemarketing firm involved in the scheme. The owner of the subcontractor firm whose employees made the hang-up calls is under indictment.

The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became President Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004. Other calls from New Hampshire senatorial campaign offices to the White House could have been made by a number of people.

A GOP campaign consultant in 2002, Jayne Millerick, made a 17-minute call to the White House on Election Day, but said in an interview she did not recall the subject. Millerick, who later became the New Hampshire GOP chairwoman, said in an interview she did not learn of the jamming until after the election.

A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at Tobin's criminal trial show he made 115 outgoing calls - mostly to the same number in the White House political affairs office - between Sept. 17 and Nov. 22, 2002. Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting.

There also were other calls between Republican officials during the period that the scheme was hatched and canceled.

Prosecutors did not need the White House calls to convict Tobin and negotiate the two guilty pleas.

Whatever the reason for not using the White House records, prosecutors "tried a very narrow case," said Paul Twomey, who represented the Democratic Party in the criminal and civil cases. The Justice Department did not say why the White House records were not used.

The Democrats said in their civil case motion that they were entitled to know the purpose of the calls to government offices "at the time of the planning and implementation of the phone-jamming conspiracy ... and the timing of the phone calls made by Mr. Tobin on Election Day."

While national Republican officials have said they deplore such operations, the
Republican National Committee said it paid for Tobin's defense because he is a longtime supporter and told officials he had committed no crime.

By Nov. 4, 2002, the Monday before the election, an Idaho firm was hired to make the hang-up calls. The Republican state chairman at the time, John Dowd, said in an interview he learned of the scheme that day and tried to stop it.

Dowd, who blamed an aide for devising the scheme without his knowledge, contended that the jamming began on Election Day despite his efforts. A police report confirmed the Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association reported the hang-up calls began about 7:15 a.m. and continued for about two hours. The association was offering rides to the polls.

Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, White House political affairs was led by now-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman. The White House declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.

"As policy, we don't discuss ongoing legal proceedings within the courts," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said.

Robert Kelner, a Washington lawyer representing the Republican National Committee in the civil litigation, said there was no connection between the phone jamming operation and the calls to the White House and party officials.

"On Election Day, as anybody involved in politics knows, there's a tremendous volume of calls between political operatives in the field and political operatives in Washington," Kelner said.

"If all you're pointing out is calls between Republican National Committee regional political officials and the White House political office on Election Day, you're pointing out nothing that hasn't been true on every Election Day," he said.

The problems could first affect a small number of local elections starting this month, including a special congressional election on Tuesday in San Diego County.

The registration database, run by Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, was mandated by the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA). The law requires that each state establish a centralized voter registration database.

In an e-mail response to questions, a spokeswoman for McPherson wouldn't provide technical details of the system, nor would she talk about the nature of the problems. She did note that 74% of voter registrations are cleared on the first try. The rest, she said, require manual validation by county elections workers.

Elaine Ginnold, registrar of voters for Alameda County, said the rejection rate there hovers around 10%, a total that would be expected with any new system. However, she also noted that the new system could kick out eligible voters.

County election officials said the new registration system requires that potential voters provide a driver's license number or other identifying information to a county registrar. The data is keyed into a local database and periodically uploaded to the new centralized system, which matches it with information from the California Department of Motor Vehicles and other agencies to verify that it's authentic

Levee repairs are typically done in the summer, when water behind them is at its low point, but state water officials fear the heavy rain could weaken some levees to the point of failure. They took advantage of a weekend lull in the storms to patch some weak spots in the system but were still concerned.

"We saw in New Orleans the storm was coming in, it was known days ahead, and we're not sure they took all the steps that they could have," said Rodney Mayer, acting chief of the California division of flood management.

Schwarzenegger had already declared a state of emergency for California's levee system in February, a step that freed up about $103 million for repairs to 24 flood-prone sites.

His new declaration Monday didn't specify an amount of aid but directed "all agencies of the state" to dispatch staff, equipment and facilities.

In the declaration, Schwarzenegger wrote that "extreme peril to the safety of persons and property" afflicted the counties of Amador, Calaveras, Fresno, Merced, San Joaquin, San Mateo and Stanislaus.

The move will accelerate the flow of state dollars to local and county agencies that have been straining to cope with the flooding and storms, said Eric Lamoureux, spokesman for the California Office of Emergency Services.

The levee work on Sunday had included reinforcing levees, building a berm and adding rocks to protect a river bank from eroding in San Joaquin County near the confluence of the San Joaquin and Stanislaus rivers. In Fresno County, crews worked on raising a levee that protects the town of Firebaugh, population 7,000.

The storms have triggered scattered levee breaks in recent weeks, washing out roads, depositing tons of debris and forcing hundreds of residents from their homes.

They marched for hours in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and in at least 50 other cities across the continental United States, while in Washington an estimated 250,000 people surrounded the Capitol building, waving placards and chanting.

It was clearly one of the biggest protests in U.S. history.

"We are America," one poster said. "We love this country," said another, while some posters said "Immigrant values are family values" or "Legalize. Don't criminalize."

Most of the marchers were Hispanics who were marching for the right to become U.S. citizens and to remain in their adopted country.

The protest leaders claim there are 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Most of them entered the country without permission or overstayed their visas.

They are in the United States illegally, but say they serve a vital economic function. They work in low-wage, low-profile jobs in construction, farming and as domestics. They say they do the jobs that Americans don't want, at salaries that Americans won't take.

But Republican leaders say the millions of illegals should be deported under tough new laws because they pull down average wages for low-income Americans and they take away low-income jobs.

"We love this country," said Florentino Cruz, 32, an illegal worker from Mexico who has been in the United States since 1992. "This country was made by immigrants."

"I'm an immigrant, and I vote," read another.

"Brown and proud," one announced.

"Nigeria Present," on another, reminded the overwhelmingly Latino crowd that immigrants have arrived here from all over.

For many, the rally was their first political experience. Ranks of young men who listened in respectful silence, high-school students taking advantage of their spring break, immigrant mothers arriving with young children and day laborers who live in fear of deportation turned out in force.

"Every Hispanic has to stand up. Every person who believes in justice has to stand up," said Anna Torres, 38, a federal worker from Mount Pleasant in Northwest Washington who brought along her sons, Joseph, 6, and Jeremy, 8. They were waiting to be joined by their father, who came here from Guatemala 15 years ago and is still an illegal resident.

"I'm here for my friends and my neighbors -- and my husband," Torres said. "They are all very hardworking people."

And as the last traces of the late-day sun disappeared behind the Washington Monument, something of a battle cry was sounded to a crowd frustrated by Congress's failure to reshape immigration law to their liking.

"This is only the start!" Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA of Maryland, shouted to them. "We are just starting this movement."

The crowd erupted with an oft-repeated cheer: "Hoy, marchamos; mañana, votamos."

Today, we march; tomorrow, we vote.

As the rally dispersed, the loudspeakers blared what circumstance transformed into something of an anthem: a Spanish version of Gloria Estefan's "Coming Out of the Dark."

"This is just the beginning," said Elmer Palmer, 30, of Woodbridge, a real estate agent originally from El Salvador. "If we don't have a fair response to this, we'll continue, greater and greater."

Palmer pumped a sign above his head that read, in Spanish, "If you deport me, who will build the wall?" -- a reference to proposed legislation that calls for construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Most of the construction work is done by immigrants. We do the hard work here," Palmer said. "If we get deported, who will build the houses?"

The crowd numbered in the tens of thousands, at least 100,000 by the estimate of one police official who spoke on condition that he not be named. Closer to 500,000, according to Germonique R. Jones, a spokeswoman for the organizers.

Along the route, as protesters marched from a staging area at Meridian Hill Park, spectator support seemed overwhelming. Office workers leaned out of windows and piled onto the sidewalks to shout encouragement. About 150 members of the National Education Association took administrative leave to cheer on the demonstrators, NEA President Reg Weaver said.

"This issue is of such magnitude to America that we can't stand by and watch from the sidelines," he said.

Only a few counter-demonstrators were visible. A handful appeared on the east side of Seventh Street NW, across from the back of the rally stage. One held a sign that read, "Protect Our Border." Another sign read "Back You Go to Mexico."

At 16th and Church streets NW, Erin Carrington accepted the boos from passersby as she held a sign that read, "Keep walking -- Just 1,800 miles till you're home." Carrington, a 22-year-old graduate student, said she is concerned that the taxes she pays will increase if immigrants receive benefits.

But the opponents' numbers were minuscule compared with the marchers', who arrived at the staging area from throughout the region in buses provided by the National Capital Immigration Coalition, the umbrella group coordinating the event. Vendors there sold small American, Salvadoran and Mexican flags for $5 and $10.

Charles Vela, a naturalized citizen from El Salvador who lives in Potomac, was among the first in line.

"I don't think it's fair that people who risk everything to come here live in fear that they're going to be sent back," said Vela, 54. "We have humanitarian policies for people in other countries -- why not here?"

Alan Coleman, a D.C. teacher, said he resents the fact that according to immigration reform proposals, "we could get in trouble if we help illegal immigrants, if we don't turn them in."

Coleman was in the thick of the demonstrators, holding a sign decorated with green shamrocks and reading, "We Were All Immigrants Once."

A 15-year-old from Northwest Washington said he joined the rally because he feels that he and his family are threatened.

His parents are illegal residents from El Salvador, and he worries that they could be deported. His mother, who is a custodian at FBI headquarters, and his father, a landscaper in Virginia, have always stressed the importance of getting good grades in school so he doesn't end up like them.

"My mom works from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m.," he said. "She's like, 'Stay in school; you don't want to be like me. You're lucky to be born here.' "

Although the crowd was mostly Latino -- speakers' statements were routinely translated from English into Spanish -- people representing other ethnic groups also participated. At 16th and I streets, a coalition of Asian American groups posed for pictures and compared posters as they waited for marchers to reach them.

Many of them compared the present-day legislation they are battling to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the subsequent quotas that limited the number of immigrants allowed into the United States.

"It's something people still remember and think about," said Lisa Hasegawa, director of a D.C. Asian advocacy group whose office cleared out to attend the rally. "I think that history of being excluded and not welcome in the country -- those things resonate with us. We went through it."

Many in the group had worked furiously to prepare for the event. Anh Phan, with the Organization of Chinese Americans, kept rejecting possible slogans for signs until she came up with a winner -- a poster of panda celebrity Tai Shan with the caption "Butterstick is the son of immigrants!"

"Well, if we're being precise, it would be 'son of temporary guest workers,' since they're going back," Phan said.

The group Arabs for Immigrant Rights also participated. Rami El-Amine, an information technology worker for the federal government, formed the group two weeks ago to ensure that Arab Americans would be represented at the rally. Badia Albanna, 32, of Takoma Park brought her 4-month-old daughter, Sama Jahmila, who was wearing a pink shirt with a white peace sign.

"It's her third march of the year," Albanna said. "She's got to learn to stand up for stuff, you know? As Arab Americans, our community has been demonized since the terrorist attacks," she said.

"The Latino struggle is similar to ours. We need to stick together, support each other."

Laura Castro said she has begun to think that way, too.

An 18-year-old in stylish sunglasses, she wandered away from the stage, her sign held high above her head. Castro's reasons to be proud were listed on her homemade sign: "Current HS GPA: 4.13, Class Rank: 14 out of 386, Pres. of Spanish Club . . . National Honor Society . . . Am I a criminal?"

Castro is in the United States illegally. Having come from Colombia six years ago to live with her mother in Chesterfield, Va., she overstayed her visa and never returned home. That means she has no valid Virginia driver's license. She will start at Virginia Commonwealth University in the fall, studying toward her goal of becoming a doctor. She will pay out-of-state tuition, and she will not receive any scholarships or grants.

"Because of my status," she said.

But Castro also has had a realization: The issue of immigration has inspired her to speak out and unite her Latino friends, too.

"It used to be like, 'I'm Colombian' or 'I'm from Mexico,' " she said. "Now, it's like, 'I'm Hispanic, I'm Hispanic.' "

Organizers were mostly successful in their pleas to have marchers leave their Mexican flags at home and instead bring only the Stars and Stripes. A prior, less-planned march last month on the Phoenix offices if U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl drew some backlash with a flurry of red, white and green flags.
The central message, delivered in both English and Spanish, was that marchers consider those here illegally to be part of this country. Both in signs and speeches, the official theme of Somos America -- We are America -- showed up again and again.

As to the size of the march, Phoenix police said the only number that they, the mayor's office and organizers could agree on was more than 100,000. But Lydia Guzman, one of the Somos America organizers, said the numbers may have hit 200,000 or more.

Less clear is what percentage of those marching were in this country illegally. Elias Bermudez, one of the organizers, put the figure at upwards of 60 percent.

"Our message was that we wanted the undocumented to come out," he said. "We wanted them to show their faces, come out of the shadows."

But Alfredo Gutierrez who also was involved in planning the event said his impression was that it was no more than a third. Gutierrez, a former state senator and one-time gubernatorial contender, said most people without documents remain hesitant to come out of the shadows, even for a march like this.

While the stated purpose of the march, one of more than 100 nationwide, was focused on Congress, local politicians and activists used the opportunity to try to galvanize the Hispanic community with the goal of revamping politics in Arizona. And the method of achieving that goal was through a simultaneous voter registration drive.

"Today we march, tomorrow we vote," said Guzman.

"We shall arm ourselves," added Gutierrez.

"In America, the only weapon that counts is the vote," he continued. Gutierrez said those who are eligible to vote must do so to "defeat those who humiliate us and defend those who stand with us."

And Rep. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, told the crowd that had gathered in front of the House of Representatives "we need your help to change the make-up of this political body in this building behind me."

Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City, who was watching the marchers, said he's not concerned.

"That's fine," he said. "We'll call on our constituents to send lawmakers back to the legislature who don't want to give aid and comfort to illegal aliens."

The voter registration effort drew a raised eyebrow from state Sen. Barbara Leff, R-Paradise Valley, who crafted legislation designed to crack down on and arrest or deport those who entered this country illegally.

"Illegal immigration has created several industries that are really frightening and should be frightening to all the people," she said. And one of those, Leff said, is the "cottage industry" of fake documents.

"Who knows which documents are real and which are not real?" she asked, referring specifically to the "today we march, tomorrow we vote" call of march organizers. "They look real. They're very well done."

Organizers said Monday night they had no estimate of how many new voters were registered.

Guzman acknowledged that registration is only half the task. But she said people can be convinced to actually show up at the polls if they believe there are issues that affect them.

In March, one of its most effective chapters, the Christian Coalition of Iowa, cut ties with the national organization and reincorporated itself as the Iowa Christian Alliance, saying it "found it impossible to continue to carry a name that in any way associated us with this national organization."

"The credibility is just not there like it once was," said Stephen L. Scheffler, president of the Iowa affiliate since 2000. "The budget has shrunk from $26 million to $1 million. There's a trail of debt. . . . We believe, our board believes, any Christian organization has an obligation to pay its debts in a timely fashion."

At its peak a decade ago, the Christian Coalition deployed a dozen lobbyists on Capitol Hill. Today, it has a single Washington employee who works out of his home. Its phone number with a 202 area code is automatically forwarded to a small office in Charleston, S.C.

The Christian Coalition is still routinely included in meetings with White House officials and conservative leaders, and is still a household name. But financial problems and a long battle over its tax status have sapped its strength, allowing it to be eclipsed by other Christian groups, such as the Family Research Council and the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Although some of those groups have begun moving into the coalition's specialty -- grass-roots voter education and get-out-the-vote drives -- none is poised to distribute 70 million voter guides through churches, as the Christian Coalition did in 2000.

The coalition's decline is a story that can perhaps best be told along biblical lines: It is the narrative of a group that wandered after the departure of its early leaders, lost faith in some of its guiding principles and struggled to keep its identity after entering the promised land -- in this case, the land of political influence.

From its inception, the coalition was built around two individuals, Robertson and Ralph Reed. Both were big personalities with big followings.

"After the founders left, the Christian Coalition never fully recovered," said James L. Guth, an expert on politics and religion at Furman University in South Carolina. "The dependence on Robertson and Reed was really disastrous."

Reed left in 1997 to become a Republican political consultant and is now seeking the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Georgia. Once a golden boy of GOP politics, he has recently had his reputation tarnished by his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Robertson resigned as the Christian Coalition's president in 2001 after defending China's one-child policy in a CNN interview that fellow conservatives viewed with horror. It was among the most damaging in a series of remarks that have hurt Robertson's standing among evangelical Christians -- and may have hurt the Christian Coalition as well.

"He kind of constantly makes people wonder whether the organizations he was involved with really are fringe organizations when he does things like explain Ariel Sharon's stroke as an act of God," Guth said, referring to a comment Robertson made about the Israeli prime minister earlier this year.

Roberta Combs, the South Carolina coordinator for Robertson's 1988 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, replaced him as head of the Christian Coalition five years ago. She says the organization was in worse financial shape then, with debts approaching $4 million. She cleaned house and, she says, made enemies.

"I had to let a lot of staff go, and they all got upset with me because they were close to Ralph [Reed]. Of course they said bad things about me. But we got a lot of that [debt] paid down over time," Combs said.

IRS records show that the Christian Coalition's red ink has remounted. Its debts exceeded its assets by $983,000 in 2001, $1.3 million in 2002, $2 million in 2003 and $2.28 million at the end of 2004, the most recent year for which it has filed a nonprofit tax return.

Lawsuits for unpaid bills have multiplied. The Christian Coalition's longtime law firm -- Huff, Poole & Mahoney PC of Virginia Beach -- says it is owed $69,729. Global Direct, a fundraising firm in Oklahoma, is suing for $87,000 in expenses. Reese & Sons Inc., a moving company in District Heights, is trying to recover $1,890 for packing up furniture when the Christian Coalition closed its Washington office in 2002. The list goes on.

Michele Combs, the Christian Coalition's spokeswoman and Roberta Combs's daughter, described the organization as "a victim of our own success."

Money flowed to the coalition in the mid-1990s, when Bill Clinton was president. But, Michele Combs said, with a conservative president and a conservative Congress, things are different. "It's harder to raise money when the agenda you've been working for all these years is moving forward and you have a place at the table," she said.

According to some former employees, however, the Christian Coalition stumbled because it lost touch with core conservative principles.

Despite Robertson's denials, fellow conservative Christians viewed his 2001 CNN interview as a defense of forced abortions. "The Christian Coalition was already on life support. Robertson's remarks probably mean its demise," former Christian Coalition lobbyist Marshall Wittmann predicted at the time.

In 2003, Roberta Combs defied conservative orthodoxy when she campaigned in Alabama in support of a state tax increase. Leaders of the Christian Coalition's Alabama chapter said the national organization had "dramatically departed from a 13-year traditional core values platform."

Combs also drew charges of nepotism by hiring her daughter and son-in-law, Tracy E. Ammons, a schoolteacher who became a $6,000-a-month Senate lobbyist. When the couple divorced two years ago, he claimed that the Christian Coalition owed him $130,000 in unpaid salary.

"On the financial end, I was privy to everything from counting money to going and talking to the landlord when we couldn't pay the rent," Ammons said in a recent interview. "Lots of times we wouldn't pay until someone sued. I did it to others. Then [the Christian Coalition] did it to me."

The group's identity is now tied to its voter guides, which are about to undergo a substantial change.

After years of battling the IRS, the Christian Coalition reached a settlement a year ago that secures its status as a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) lobbying and educational institution.

But the settlement requires the Christian Coalition to allow candidates to write up to 25 words of explanation on each issue in the voter guides. In the past, the guides listed topics such as "unrestricted abortion on demand" or "adoption of children by homosexuals" and described the candidates' positions simply as "supports" or "opposes."

In a letter to state chapters in February, Roberta Combs warned that they, too, must follow the 25-word rule when they publish voter guides for state elections, or else stop using the Christian Coalition's name and logo. The settlement has irritated some conservative activists, who think it will make the guides less effective.

Combs said that although some chapters are upset, it was vital to resolve the dispute with the IRS and that "it won't be hard to find new people" to form chapters in Iowa or any other state that balks. She also said the Christian Coalition needs a new face on television and is looking for an executive director who can play that role.

"People have been writing our obituary for years," she said. "But you go out in the hinterlands and talk to the grass roots, and it's a whole different story. People call us every day and want to be involved."