Posted on 06/11/2010 12:08:05 PM PDT by jazusamo
The campaign of defeated Democratic Senate candidate Vic Rawl has assembled a team of national academic experts to review Tuesday’s perplexing South Carolina primary results that propelled a virtually unknown, underfunded and unemployed candidate to the party’s nomination over a veteran officeholder and public official.
Rawl campaign manager Walter Ludwig tells POLITICO three different teams of experts in election data analysis are combing through the results in the state’s 46 counties and already turning up some eye-opening trend lines.
The review is in response to the shocking victory by 32-year-old Alvin Greene, who, despite never giving a campaign speech or running any television or radio ads, managed to handily defeat Rawl 59 percent to 41 percent. The state party chairwoman has already asked Greene to step aside, and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) has speculated that he might be a Republican plant.
Greene has pledged to remain in the race and said he has “always been a Democrat.”
While Ludwig cautioned that the campaign is not jumping to any conclusions, he said the experts, who volunteered their services, have already uncovered some “curious” findings in the election data.
One potential red flag: A significant difference between the results of absentee and election day ballots.
According to Ludwig, of the state’s 46 counties, half have a disparity of greater than 10 percentage points between the absentee and election day ballots.
“The election day ballots all favor Mr. Greene. We don’t know what it means,” Ludwig said in an interview. “We did significantly better on absentees than Election Day, which is according to the mathematicians, quite significant. The other reason is, it didn’t happen in any other races on the ballot.”
In Lancaster County, Rawl won absentee ballots over Greene by a staggering 84 percent to 16 percent margin; but Greene easily led among Election Day voters by 17 percentage points.
In Spartanburg County, Ludwig said there are 25 precincts in which Greene received more votes than were actually cast and 50 other precincts where votes appeared to be missing from the final count.
“In only two of 88 precincts, do the number of votes Greene got plus the number we got equal the total cast,” Ludwig said.
Greene also racked up a 75 percent or greater margin in one-seventh of all precincts statewide, a mark that Ludwig notes is even difficult for an incumbent to reach.
“This may add up to nothing. This all could be a clerical error. We don’t know but thought it was worth looking into,” said Ludwig, who added that the experts doing the unpaid research asked that their names not be revealed until they disclose their conclusions.
Ludwig said the experts could be prepared to offer their findings by late Friday but cautioned that it’s likely not to be definitive.
“These are not detectives, they look at huge amounts of election data that say this doesn’t look like it should, or it does,” he said.
Asked what else could explain Greene’s unlikely rise, Ludwig appeared to be at a loss.
He said the campaign sent out 300,000 e-mails, conducted a quarter -million robocalls and logged nearly 17,000 miles to Democratic events around the state.
“I was tracking the guy everywhere and there was nothing to track. Am I kicking myself in the ass? Sure. I’m just not sure what we would’ve done different,” he said.
New cohort for Pelosi, Reid, Boxer, Schumer, et al. Birds of a feather so to speak?
I’m sure his Messiah in our White House will welcome him into the political arena. Wonder is Soros backed him?
The guy is not a felon. He’s merely been accused of something that is a felony. He hasn’t even been indicted yet.
And frankly, the “felony” he’s been accused of isn’t even the kind of thing you’d associate with felonies. He tried to pick up a college student by showing her pornographic pictures on his computer screen.
The girl was rightfully disgusted and reported him, but I bet that tactic actually works on some people these days.
I believe you’re correct, ballot fraud is much easier with the absentees.
Yeah, I’m assuming that more black people just show up at the polls than bothered to register to get an absentee ballot.
If you took this as a conspiracy, now you have poll workers trying to throw the election to Greene, a person who supposedly is a shock because nobody at all knows him and he didn’t try to win.
So the unemployed broke guy who nobody knew about somehow got 25 precinct workers to risk felony tampering charges to stuff the ballot box for him?
Perhaps, but that doesn't mean most Greenes are plants. I knew a Jeff Plant once and he wasn't green though he now may be. Plus, the Democrats have gone Green so most blacks are now Green.
He has skills. He served in the military, and apparently has some impressive decorations that he doesn’t discuss.
He also graduated college, which just shows how bad affirmative action has corrupted the value of a college degree.
“Yeah. Democrat ballot fraud is largely accomplished with the absentee ballots.”
Exactly. The dimoKKKRAT fraud machine went awry. However they will have it fixed for the general election.
This goes right along with all those democrats in Florida who spoiled their ballots by voting for two people, because the ballot went from one page to the next and they were told to vote for the 1st line of each page (1st line was the Democrat line, EXCEPT for the race which spilled to the 2nd page).
I wonder if it is illegal to pay someone to drop out of a race. I think Greene will be getting paid, unless he is a terrible negotiator.
Greene won on election day, by contrast, because that is likely when all the generic non-activist black Democrat ACORN voters showed up, not really because they have a dog in the race but because it was voting day and that's simply what they do: show up and vote for Democrats. It's no surprise that they voted for the black guy. They were Greene's constituency.
The ONLY thing this proves is that the generic black Democrat ACORN types outnumber the Democratic Party activists and elites in South Carolina.
*The guy can just barely speak, like talking is a challenge for him.*
The man could be mentally incompetent.
Or it could just be NERVES.
I’m sure most of us would clam up significantly if put on a cable news program.
Another way to eliminate the peoples vote. Kind of like how Obama and McCain were selected; not elected.
I think real jail terms for those involved and if that includes Soros; so be it.
Let the guy run, he can’t be much worse than what they’ve already got, and Jim DeMint will kick his ass into next year.
It’s good enough for the rainbow coalition!!
Post of the day. Nominations are now closed.
It's a little messy to dig them up and drive them down to the polling station, ala "Weekend at Bernie's." Much easier to handle via the absentee.
I doubt that many voters knew he was black. I think his name was the big factor. People either thought they were voting for the “Al Green,” or they at least knew the name “Al Green.” If his opponent had changed his first name to “Lou,” he might have won.
The rat’s system comes through for them in living color.
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