GOP Straw Poll Shenanigans at the State Fair?

by Cal Skinner

The big news about Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair will be that Mitt Romney got 40% of the vote. But the bigger news would have been that libertarian, anti-war Republican presidential candidate Congressman Ron Paul came in 2nd.

Incredibly, who had how many votes was visible by the folks running the straw poll…and others.  At 3:30 a Ron Paul supporter saw the totals.  His candidate had 151 votes.  He was in second place. Fred Thompson was in third place at 148 votes.

Although the party rules said the polls would be open from 11 AM to 4 PM, an announcement was made that, because of the rain, the polls would be kept open until 4:30.  Does that sound like what the Democrats do in St. Louis?

Then someone in authority said the polls would close at 4:15.  But at 4:08, the voting ended.  I guess the Establishment folks must have been able to round up enough votes to push Thompson ahead of Paul.

When I listened to Channel 7’s Andy Shaw at 5, he said that Romney had won with 40% of the vote.  I asked my source who got how many votes.  He said the GOP didn’t release numbers, just percentages.  I find no results on the party web site.

Being able to trust the vote counters is essential to making a democracy work. A lot of the new folks who came to Republican Day are leaving with a bitter taste in their mouths.

Labels: Fred Thompson, Illinios State Fair, Illinois, Illinois Repubilcan Party, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Straw Poll

Comments

[Hascat]

This is very encouraging, despite the shifty poll closing time. The Iowa straw poll is questionable because it requires money just to vote and candidates bus in supporters to boost their results. Without the concerted campaign efforts to get supporters voting, these numbers are likely more representative of the population as a whole.

[countmein]

I received a letter and e-mail from Rutherford, who is in charge of Romney's campaign, and they were bussing people in yesterday for the straw polls. Sounds like concerted campaign efforts to me.

[Brian Cotin]

I am very encouraged by these results, but discouraged by the way the Republican Party handled the vote. As Ronald Regan said something to the extent of "Trust, but verify". I don't know the exact rules that were supposed to be used in the straw poll, but they did say repeatedly that the polls would close at 4:00 PM in all instances. 3:45 they announced that the polls would remain open till 4:30. It would be understandable if it was for rain delay, but why not put those circumstances in the rules and let people know ahead of time. It wasn't like anyone was lined up at 4:00 that were waiting to get in, and then if you say 4:30 is the closing time, don't close the polls at 4:08. It just looks darn unprofessional, and that allows people to make accusations. Other than that the day was a very good event, and my thanks to those in the Republican Party especially the behind the scenes man, Curt Conrad, who tried to keep the event as fun and fair as possible.

Regards,

Brian Costin

[Jason A]

I am the person who saw the results as of 3:30 pm and forwarded them to Scott and others.

The running totals were on one of the GOP staffer's laptops. I saw the top vote getters (they were ranked in order of votes on the screen - Romney 348, Paul 151, Thompson 148 and McCain in the low 100s) and started a conversation when another Illinois GOP Party official ran over to us and said that this was not public information and told the person he needed to minimize the results screen.

I relayed the news and fought for the remaining half hour to get people to vote. We were able to get 23 additional voters for the final total of 174 votes, 10 behind Thompson's "184" votes.

We did not see any Fred Thompson representatives beyond a few Illinois politicians speaking on his behalf so God only knows how he received support beyond the GOP County Chairman who voted for him in a pre Straw Poll Ballot.

The suspicious bump in the final 38* minutes (20% of Thompson's votes (184 vs. 148) were cast during this time frame (10% of the poll time) when the area was pretty much dead as far as new voters were concerned) is why we question the announced returns.

We saw all of Romney's buses and were not surprised with his paid for victory but I was pretty disappointed when Andy McKenna presented the final tally with Thompson beating Paul by ten votes.

Then again, I was disappointed when Andy McKenna's organization criticized Oberweis' & Gidwitz's 2006 Primary advertisements attacking the Party's favored candidate (and Andy's predecessor) Judy Baar Topinka.

The Topinka debacle resulted in many conservatives having to leave the party to vote for the more conservative candidate in the General Election.

(1998 (Poshard) and 2002 Cal Skinner of course :) and 2006 Randy Stufflebeam).

In any event, Ron Paul finished ten times above the media's much cited figure of "1-2%". No other campaign has an energized group of volunteer supporters putting their time and personal money into expenses including signs and literature.

We need to continue to snowball this thing and it will take daily baby steps such as the Illinois Straw Poll and other events to slowly but surely increase the name recognition and support for Dr. Ron Paul, America's final hope!

[Bro.Butch]

Isn't it a little strange to anyone that the supposed national front runner in the polls has been defeated and defeated badly in 4 of 4 of this years state straw polls (UT,IA,IL & AL) ? It makes me think he is just corparate media driven ! One of the things I remember from my political sceince classes from college was how my liberal dem professor vigorously stressed that polls weren't accurate. They could be made to say anything the questioner wished them to say. Dr. Pauls results are evidence to me that the MSM's polling data is very much flawed. Bottomline the actual votes are what matter (IF they are tabulated honestly). PEACE

[jimrun]

Does anyone think it might be just a little bit important to elect someone from the SOUTH or WEST since this is where the party base is at now. What short menories we all have about gore and edwards; neither one could win their own state presidential campaigns even though they had all those years of grass root support there. Think what would have happen if even one of them could have won their own state. The south will play to our strengths. Fred Thompson, actor,politican,and a natural with the camera, ring any bells? If we pick a candidate from the northeast could either one of them, for sure, win there own state, very doubtful. Lets all think very hard about who could really win or do we want to vote for who we like and then lose the most important seat in the land?