Well Hurricane Katrina might have prompted alot of people to leave the state of Louisiana but it certainly did not persuade any curruption to leave. The state GOP party not only changed the rules of its caucuses once it realized that Ron Paul was going to dominate, it then proceeded to bring old voter registrations to the caucus forcing everyone who registered in the month of November (predominantly Ron Paul supporters) to file provisional ballots. It then proceeds to release unofficial results and still one week later has not been able to verify and count 500-650 provisional ballots.
The net result... Ron Paul is denied the news of his victory in Louisiana till after Florida results are done. Sure you might be saying, "big deal... it is only Louisiana!" But then you would be missing the important message. What message you ask? That Ron Paul CAN WIN. All this time we are repeatedly told that Ron Paul is just a wanna be. A sideshow. A also ran. But now we are seeing that he in fact has won a state. Well i take that back, we are not seeing that he won a state.
And here we thought King County was bad!!!
Posted by tpahl at January 28, 2008 08:02 PM | Email ThisHowever, if they took those provisionals and never counted them or, like King County, made those several hundred into several thousand votes, that would be corruption.
Posted by: swatter on January 29, 2008 07:45 AMpudge, do you mean to ask "what are you going to say when IF we find out Ron Paul didn't win?" Fair enough, but what IF he did????
Posted by: Michelle on January 29, 2008 09:30 AMNo, I meant to ask it how I did ask it ... not because I know one way or another, but because Travis was assuming Paul DID win, so I said it that way just to mess with him. :-)
Posted by: pudge on January 29, 2008 04:11 PMHow do you think the Giants react if on Saturday the NFL changed who is eligible to play on Super Bowl Sunday resulting in the Patriots being able to play some key players they would not otherwise be able to play? First of all it would not happen but if it did you would hear about how currupt the NFL is for years to come. That is the sports equivalent of what the Louisiana GOP (whos leader is a big McCain supporter) has done with the delegate eligibility by changing who can be a delagate a few hours after the Ron Paul campaign submitted its delegate slate.
How would the media and public react if the NCAA decided one week to review a key play at the end of the game but not get the results back for a few weeks and in the meantime the team falls in the NCAA polls because until they review it they count your team as losing? It would be on every sports radio show for at least a few weeks how inept the NCAA would be to take such a long time to review a play. That is the sports equivalent of not being able to count a few hundred ballots in a week.
The sports world may have some curruption but it is not the norm and it is reported on because it is unusual. In Louisiana politics (and politics in general) curruption has become the norm and is not reported on unless it benifits a party leader.
Regardless of who wins after the provisionals are counted the Louisiana results are already rigged against Paul because of the change in rules they did days before the caucus to allow the other campaigns to submit more delagets to compete with Paul.
Posted by: Lysander on January 29, 2008 06:10 PMI consider what you say dirty pool and I don't see corruption in what they did. It wasn't right, but unless they don't count the votes, there is no corruption.
King County is corrupt as they manufactured votes.
Posted by: swatter on January 30, 2008 01:32 PMThe corruption comes in when the party manufactures phantom votes, or in this case, if they don't count the votes.
King County is corruption.
Posted by: swatter on January 30, 2008 02:54 PMThey had a deadline for when delagates (not voters) needed to turn in applications to the party. This deadline was published well in advance. A couple hours after the paul delegates turned their applications in the state GOP changes the rules and extends the deadline. Why? Well one can only guess but the obvious reason is that they realized that Paul was the only candidate to come close to having a complete slate of delagates and realized that he was going to win unless they extended the deadlines and told the other campaigns how well the Paul campaign had done.
Changing the rules because you do not like the results is curruption no matter how you spin it!
Posted by: Lysander on January 30, 2008 04:50 PMThey did not announce in according to their rules with adequate time but it was still about 3-4 weeks in advance of the deadline. It was 6 hours after the paul slate submitted that they then realized that their plan to try and hurry things up with the hope of screwing Ron Paul over had back fired that they went ahead and amended their rules again.
Posted by: Lysander on January 30, 2008 09:58 PM1. Extend the deadline immediately after complaints were made not within a day of the deadline and after one campaign comes forward with a full slate.
2. Change the date of the caucuses to provide the 2 months notice their existing rules required.
Instead they changed the rules after they saw it was not going to give them the intended results.
Oh I just thought of a third option, announced the caucus earlier than they did like their rules outlined. If you deny corruption the only other explanation is ineptness. I suppose I was giving them the benifit of the doubt and assuming they were capable people being evil than stupid people trying hard.
Given it has now been nearly two weeks and they still have not been able to count 600 ballots maybe inept is a better description. Or maybe they do not want the news to get out Paul won a state until after super tuesday.
Posted by: Lysander on January 31, 2008 04:22 PMThat is not how it works: these are PROVISIONAL ballots. You can't just count them, you have to verify them. Maybe they should have been taken care of by now, but it's not merely a matter of counting.
Posted by: pudge on February 1, 2008 12:51 AM