MANCHESTER, N.H. – State Democrats says Republicans should pay them $4.1 million in damages for an illegal phone-jamming operation that disrupted get-out-the-vote operations on Election Day 2002.

That’s nearly half of what Democrats spent on their six-month effort, which was disrupted for nearly two hours the day it was supposed to pay off.

The state and national Republican parties say they should pay only $4,974 – the actual cost of the disrupted telephone service and rental costs – to $21,287.

The disagreement is in a civil lawsuit by the state Democratic Party against the state GOP and several national Republican organizations. The trial is scheduled to begin Dec. 4 in Hillsborough County Superior Court.

State GOP Chairman Wayne Semprini says it’s unlikely the two sides will settle before trial. “I’d expect that we’re miles apart,” he said.

The Republicans hired a telemarketing firm to place hundreds of hang-up calls to phone banks for the Democratic Party and the Manchester firefighters union, a nonpartisan group offering rides to the polls. The election featured a hotly contested U.S. Senate race in which U.S. Rep. John Sununu defeated Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.

Two Republican operatives served prison time after pleading guilty to criminal charges in the case, and Shaun Hansen, the telemarketer whose firm placed the calls, agreed this month to plead guilty. Hansen is scheduled to be sentenced in February.

A national GOP campaign official, James Tobin of Bangor, Maine, was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 10 months in prison but is appealing.

The judge has rejected several Democratic claims, but three remain, including that Republicans committed “trespass to chattels” by interfering with the Democrats’ use of their property.

In court filings, the Republicans say the Democrats are tying artificial costs to the trespassing claim. They want any evidence of damage beyond that to the telephone system excluded.

The Democrats say that would bar testimony that shows the jamming amounted to “catastrophic sabotage.”

“The appropriate measure of damages in this case is for the court to look at the scope of the harm suffered as a result of the trespass and then compute what it would have cost the [Democratic Party] to repair the damage,” a Democratic lawyer wrote. “The best way to calculate the loss is to look at what the [Democratic Party] spent to set up its get-out-the-vote operations on Election Day and then determine the loss.”

An expert for the Republicans argued in court filings the jamming “most likely had a negligible direct impact on the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote efforts.”