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.
He was the black Democratic candidate. Huge advantage, maybe enough to get the votes he needed.
I thought his interviews were really amusing. He said, in a barely literate manner of speech, all of the right code words: jobs, edjication, etc. He might be a political idiot savant. Beats being broke.
“The election day ballots all favor Mr. Greene. We don’t know what it means”
Yeah. Democrat ballot fraud is largely accomplished with the absentee ballots. So this must be republicans huh...
Was the Party democrat a white guy?
democrats try to lynch Senate candidate’s bid.
Yeah, Vic Rawl is a white-looking white guy. So SC blacks voted for the black on election day.
No surprise there...
Yeah, the guy the SC Dem establishment wanted is White. They don’t want the Black guy. Hmm, what would we call THAT ?
That’s hilarious. :-)
DamnSouthwern Democrats. Just another lynching of a black man.
Aren’t you glad we’re in the post-racial America?
Need some popcorn to watch this farce unfold.
Bring in the ‘experts’ to build a case for the outcome you had planned on seeing, but somehow didn’t come about. That’s a good libtard tactic...
Vote counts that add up to more votes than were cast. That’s an ACORN tactic...
Huge disparity between Election Day counts and absentee ballots. That’s a DhimmiRat tactic.
Seems like all their chickens came home to roost... And, the manure is just getting deeper.
More votes CAST than voters in the district? But isn’t that NORMAL for the democrat party??!!!
Follow the money....When Greene filled out the form in the criminal porn case, disclosed his assets and got a public defender, he lied about his finances. If he had $10K in the bank, he wouldn’t have gotten a PD.
More popcorn please.
So where are the media types excoriating the democrat party for working to UNSEAT the BLACK winner??!!! Isn’t this RAAAAACIST??!!
It could also mean the people were ready for anyone but Rawls... I have live in the area before and I believe this could be the biggest reason.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.