Thursday - November 12, 2009

Dirty Election?

h/t to Wardmama!

Unless Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman got exactly zero votes in the town of Fenner (Owens got 157, Scozzafava got 248), and at one polling place in the town of Hamilton (Owens got 75, Scozzafava got 79), and at one polling place in the town of Sullivan (Owens got 173, Scozzafava got 251), the initial vote totals look rather hinky.

By comparison, the lowest number of votes that Owens got at any polling place was 57; the lowest number the withdrawn candidate Scozzafava got was 2. It’s not impossible that no one in any of those places chose to vote for Hoffman, but it certainly seems unusual for a guy who got 45 percent district-wide.

Washington—Conservative Doug Hoffman conceded the race in the 23rd Congressional District last week after receiving two pieces of grim news for his campaign: He was down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night, and he had barely won his stronghold in Oswego County.

As it turns out, neither was true.

But Hoffman’s concession—based on snafus in Oswego County and elsewhere that left his vote undercounted—set off a chain of events that echoed all the way to Washington, D.C., and helped secure passage of a historic health care reform bill.

… a recanvassing in the 11-county district shows that Owens’ lead has narrowed to 3,026 votes over Hoffman, 66,698 to 63,672, according to the latest unofficial results from the state Board of Elections.

In Oswego County, where Hoffman was reported to lead by only 500 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted election night, inspectors found Hoffman actually won by 1,748 votes—12,748 to 11,000.

The new vote totals mean the race will be decided by absentee ballots, of which about 10,200 were distributed, said John Conklin, communications director for the state Board of Elections.

Under a new law in New York that extended deadlines, military and overseas ballots received by this coming Monday (and postmarked by Nov. 2) will be counted. Standard absentee ballots had to be returned this past Monday.

Conklin said the state sent a letter to the House Clerk last week explaining that no winner had been determined in the 23rd District, and therefore the state had not certified the election. But the letter noted that Owens still led by about 3,000 votes, and that the special election was not contested—two factors that legally allowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to swear in Owens on Friday.

So now it’s down to counting the absentee ballots. And NY’s 23rd district covers the huge Army base at Fort Drum. How many (D) votes do you think they’ll turn in? 7, maybe 8?

[Hoffman campaign spokesman Robert] Ryan said an important factor in [Hoffman’s] decision to concede was the unexpected—and erroneous—close vote in Oswego County, where polls had Hoffman with a double digit percentage point lead heading into Election Day.

“That’s the thing that threw us off,” Ryan said.

Oswego County elections officials blame the mistakes on “chaos” in their call-in center that included a phone system foul-up and inspectors who read numbers incorrectly when phoning in results. Of 245 races in the county—not including the congressional and court races -- 84 had incorrect totals reported election night.

In the congressional race, more votes were cast in Oswego County than any other in the 11-county district.

The district’s second biggest voter turnout was in Jefferson County, where Hoffman also has benefited from a turnaround since election night, gaining about 700 votes. Owens led Hoffman by 300 votes on the final election night tally. But after recanvassing, Hoffman now leads by 424 votes, 10,884 to 10,460.

Jerry Eaton, the Republican elections commissioner for Jefferson County, said inspectors found a problem in four districts where Hoffman’s vote total was mistakenly entered as zero.

“Hoffman definitely gained votes where he didn’t have them,” Eaton said.

Jefferson County, home of Fort Drum and the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, distributed 2,299 absentee ballots for the special election. As of this week, 1,303 had been returned but not counted, Eaton said. He said the county will begin counting the absentee ballots early next week.
...
Conklin, of the state Board of Elections, said officials did not have updated absentee ballot totals from the other counties.

Aye Carumba! What is wrong with these people? They KNEW the whole damn country was watching them, yet they miscounted more than a third of the votes? WTF people, WTF? And it’s not like far upstate New York is an urban metropolis. It’s mostly FOREST. There are more lakes up there than there are people, just about. Only one polling point turned in more than 450 votes. Most of the rest were below 400. How can you mess that up? How can the microscopic little town of Hamilton count 154 votes and miss all the votes for Hoffman?

And of course, the bigger picture: Owens was rushed into office, and mere hours later cast what could be seen as the majority vote for Obamacare. Which led that self-centered little “Republican” twit from NOLA to cast his vote for it, which allowed the BS bill to pass.

PS - The other thing that stinks to high heaven is the fact that the absentee ballots have not all been counted yet. There were at most 11,000 of them sent out, which means maybe 7000-8000 of them were returned. Spread out over 11 counties. Less than 730 per county, on average. And election day was 9 days ago. Even allowing for a November 2nd postmark ... the vast majority of them should have been in no later than the 9th. Which means they should have been fully tallied and re-tallied by now. And the re-count numbers updated. Once again it looks like we have an election that is starting to look dirty because the election workers are stupid and lazy. And possibly dirty too. But at least do your friggin’ job for cryin’ out loud! Any one of us could count and tabulate 750 ballots in under 2 hours.

PPS - It’s not probable that Hoffman will win, even with all the absentee votes counted. But until the votes have been counted and enough of the absentee votes counted, past the point where he could win, then it was morally wrong - “legal” takes a back seat here - for Owens to take the oath. Especially if NY state has not yet certified him. The word “usurpation” comes to mind.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/12/2009 at 02:52 PM   
Filed Under: • Politics •  
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