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.
Wasn’t he with the Commodores?
he got 84 percent from absentee ballots. I think theres cheating going on. Maybe not from Greene, but certainly from a democrat who have been able to generate tonnes of absentee votes
I guess Mr. Gray only sees things in Black and White. ;~))
is this sore loserman again?
I wonder what the difference is in absentee ballot use between black and white voters in SC.
and maybe gray...
ive been suspicious on how democrats are able to get the large majority of absentee votes. How is it that large majority of democrats prefer to vote via absentee than showing up at the ballot box over republicans? Is there no verification of those ppl who claim to be who they say they were. Maybe thers a group out there e.g acorn who has collected tonnes of ppl’s name and address and just voting with these data without their conscent?
That was hilarious, I'll never forget those signs.
He had all the PC advantage he was both black and green.
There are a lot of people that vote for a good sounding name.
Hanging Chad Alert...
ACORN just got confused!
Yep, pretty obvious. They’ve got to be part of the “who am I” and “what am I” crowd. :)
In Chicago so many people automatically vote for an Irish name that candidates have been known to change their name. The judicial ballot is especially tedious to go through. A couple of elections ago, a woman whose married name was not Irish but whose maiden name was legally changed her name to show both her maiden name and her married name and was duly elected.
Gosh, what whiners these Rats are. The establishment Rats get clobbered by the “Coffee Party” Rats, and they immediately start screaming, and crying, and carrying on, and start trying to steal the election back that didn’t go the way they wanted it to go.
Along the way, it relays an anecdote from one Manning, S.C. barbershop owner who said Greene brought in a flier and asked to tape it to the window, but forgot to bring tape.
He'll be perfect for when investigators ask for files - he lost them or forgot where they were. A perfect Democrat.
"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.
Inordinate absentee ballot surges are usually NOT the province of fringe, outsiders. They are usually the workings of the big party machines.
Forget Greene, that is a stinging indictment of the basic integrity of our ballot boxes.
We had this happen at a convention in PWC, and it was considered a major scandal. And yet in less than 5% of an actual, officially-run election could they actually track the number of votes with the number of voters.
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