Posted on 01/04/2008 8:29:29 PM PST by TBP
The Iowa Republican Party has neither counted nor reported the number of votes for Alan Keyes in the GOP caucuses held Jan. 3.
"We didn't have the electronic means to record the tallies for Keyes, so we can't yet report to the public how many votes Keyes got," said John Lund at the Iowa GOP headquarters in Des Moines. "We can't report the Keyes votes until we've double-checked each individual paper ballot."
Meanwhile, the Iowa GOP widely reported the vote tallies of all other candidates, including Tom Tancredo, who got 5 votes despite having quit the race.
"I personally traveled with Alan Keyes across Iowa, and we met scores of Keyes voters. It's totally unfair these citizens' votes are now being withheld from the public," said Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt. "This is tantamount to election fraud."
"I voted for Alan Keyes," said Siena Hoefling of Calhoun County. "It's ridiculous they didn't report my vote. Each precinct could have easily called or emailed the vote tallies to headquarters, so they should have been counted by now."
"County election officials showed me a ballot list of 'suggested' candidates, but Alan Keyes' name wasn't on the list," said Hoefling. "When I asked them if they would include Alan's name, they said they'd have to write it in."
One election official apologized to Hoefling that Keyes' name was omitted, saying "these are just the names we were given by [Iowa GOP] headquarters."
Duaine Bollwitt of Monticello said, "Alan Keyes was not on the list of Republican Presidential candidates. My vote for Alan Keyes was treated as a write-in. I thought that was odd, but what do I know."
"A presidential preference poll reporting procedure was given to me, explaining how to report the votes to headquarters," said Michael Walsh, a precinct permanent secretary for Windsor Heights. "When we called in the vote tallies by telephone, an electronic voice asked for the number of votes, candidate-by-candidate."
Whether the electronic voice prompt collecting the votes offered Alan Keyes as a choice is unclear.
Tom Youngwirth, recorder for his Windsor Heights precinct, said, "Now that I think of it, I didn't hear Alan Keyes' name on the voice prompt. But John McCain's name was on the voice prompt."
"I know for sure we reported votes for Alan Keyes to headquarters," said Ron Granzow, precinct chair for Windsor Heights. "I don't know why they wouldn't report his votes to the public."
"This resembles a 'communist-style' approach to electoral politics," said Stephen Stone, chairman of Alan Keyes for President. "In the former Soviet Union, political officials limited voters' choices in a way that created merely the illusion of democracy, without the reality. Any undue interference with free and open elections, of the sort we think we just witnessed, is un-American."
Added Stone, "Alan Keyes has been an announced candidate for president since Sept. 14. Yet the state GOP chose to exclude him from the caucus process, claiming he 'announced too late' to be included, so that his name was not even mentioned on official lists of candidates or in reporting instructions. This disenfranchises Iowa voters."
What the heck does ballet have to do with this? I thought we were talking about a caucus in Iowa, not a bunch of toe-dancers in tights! What's this site coming to?
Check this out!
Obama defeated Keyes for the 2004 Senate seat in Illinois. Obama 70% and Keyes 27%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Illinois,_2004
Keyes previously lost an attempt to be elected Senator in Maryland.
I think careful readers of the article will agree that nobody has refused to report his vote count. They said it would require hand counting every ballot. They did not say it wouldn’t be done, so we in turn don’t know if it will, or not.
It would not impact the results of the caucus, to determine if he had 1 or 10 or 100 votes.
Maybe they will hand count the votes, if Keyes demands a recount, based on one of several possible guises.
A) Nothing can remedy the damage done by leaving his name off the ballots, and by the party pretending he wasn’t a candidate throughout the entire process.
B) There is no way on God’s green earth that any count they come up with now can be relied upon. There are over seventeen hundred precincts, with no controls over the disposition of paper ballots since Thursday night whatsoever.
They’ve destroyed trust in the caucus process,and that is a crying shame.
Have you ever seen a ballerina dance on a stage made of ballots? :)
If I remember correctly, there was an opening for a Senator (Federal) in Illinois because an incumbent died in office. The Dems ran Obama and the only person the Repubc could get was Keyes - an out-of-state candidate. Obama beat Keyes handily.
Check it out. I’m sure it happened.
Is that your daughter quoted in the article?
His votes should of been counted and tallied... I agree with your assessment.
No, the incumbent one term GOP Senator Peter Fitzgerald did not run for reelection.
I certainly agree. This entire election so far has been disgraceful.
I’m about ready to ditch the GOP for good. Their behavior is reprehensible.
No.
OK, so you don’t get it. That’s OK. You are stating facts you yourself said you don’t know if they are true or not. That’s what people do who want to cast doubt and build a case that doesn’t exist and shoves the real case into oblivion. What piece of crap you spin. Spin away. Far away.
O.K.
But Keyes did run for U.S. Senator against Obama in Illinois and lost, no?
Absolutely. In that weird election the leading GOP candidate had a messy divorce from the actress who played Seven-of-Nine on Star Trek Voyager, and salacious details were leaked. The guys he defeated in the primary refused to replace him, so the desperate state party begged Keyes to be a sacrificial lamb. He did just that.
I don’t support Alan Keyes, but his votes deserve to be counted.
I don’t support him either and after that disaster of a debate he gave the last one he was in I can’t even believe he did not drop out with embarassment, but I also agree with you that he does deserve to know how many voted for him. All ten people have that right.../sarc.
Well, every time he tried to make a statement or answer a quesion, the liberal Dimmycrap moderator did interrupt him, and that was after trying to pretend that he didn't exist (as liberals are wont to do with black folks.) So he kept trying to point out how he was being stepped on.
He got off several very insightful statements anyway, in spite of that.
Of course they did.
Why? Wouldn't you like to have a President with Dr. Keyes's principles and ideas? I certainly would. Well, who is mor elikely to give you that than Keyes himself?
“I’ve never known a more stout-hearted defender of a strong
America than Alan Keyes. He truly knows that freedom works.”
—Ronald Reagan
Its over. Have some Keyes on toast
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