Thursday, July 05, 2007

Corrections to Comments at BVBL

Since I can't comment at BVBL, I'll correct a couple of factual errors here.

A real problem with the internet is how many people post without knowing what they are talking about. However, the danger of that is minimized by having open comments so the people who know the facts can correct the misstatements.

BVBL apparently wants to allow errors to go uncorrected, by blocking the comments of people who have shown the ability to correct his errors and the errors of his commenters.

Worse, I'd rather NOT promote the correction of errors to an actual POST, where the world sees them. It would be much less damaging to those in error to be corrected within their own circle. So commenters who don't like being "shown up" in posts that go to aggregators might ask BVBL to stop blocking comments so they can be corrected more privately.

With that said, here are two factual errors in comments to BVBL's thread on Michelle McQuigg's e-mail, which I commented on in the post McQuigg adds details about 51st convention. The first commenter, Johnathan Mark, said in response to a comment by I think Lyle:

LYLE: "Each delegate at the convention had a credential with name, and precinct. To get a ballot, the delegate had to present his/her credential and a picture ID.”

JM: A number of people, including Republitarian, went home early without voting because of delays in voting. There is nothing in the above system which would have stopped someone who left early from giving his or her ballot to a credentialed friend.

As Lyle noted, in order to get a ballot, you had to present both your credential AND a picture ID. Even if someone LEFT a picture ID with someone else, that someone else couldn't get away with USING it.

As to "giving the ballot" to a credentialed friend, we've already explained several times that the ballots were handed out AT THE BALLOT BOX, in the line. You couldn't get a ballot ahead of time, you had to wait in the voting line, and be at the front, and ready to cast your ballot. At that point, even if you were in a hurry you might as well just fill out your ballot and drop it in the box. I think JM thought you might get your ballot in the morning, but that was not the case.

I hope that clears up any possible thought people had that ballots could be handed to other people to vote. Each ballot was handed out at the front of the line, to credentialed delegates with PICTURE ID. Each ballot had the name of the precinct, and was numbered. No invalid numbers or duplicate numbers were found, and no ballot was found in the wrong precinct. So in those precincts that were overvoted, those ballots were handed to credentialed delegates with valid PICTURE ID, handed to them by volunteers of the Lucas campaign (and the Gill campaign), who had to check off the credential name tag (which had the precinct name on it).

Next was the "republitarian" himself (or as he now is called, the cheap imitation Republitarian, who said:

Bottom line is that numerous vehicles parked outside the convention were from North Carolina, Maryland and had Gill stickers. Another pattern was the cars with VA tags had a dealership labels from the Herndon area. I live in PWC and buy my car from a local dealership so I bring it for service close to home.

One wonders how this delegate had the time to wander around looking for the dealership labels on cars in the parking lot, when they said they had to leave early. But that's not the error, although all the delegates were verified as living on the 51st district.

Many of us local Republican’s commented that we had never seen these folks at a Republican event, at the local grocery store, with their children at school, on the bus stop or anywhere in our neighborhoods.

Oddly, I guess "these folks" (delegates) were probably saying the same thing about these "local Republicans".

I suspect they were either Democrats, have multiple addresses they use for this purpose and or to confuse Immigration Naturalization and or FBI of their whereabouts, and their main place of residence is outside of Prince William.

I guess Democrats don't go to school, ride a bus, or live in neighborhoods? As to the rest, accusing people of criminal activity with no evidence is bad form.

How do we know if they are citizen’s of the United States of America? Where these Delegates really qualified to vote? Gimme a break!

Yes, they were qualified. A committee of six dedicated people, including two chairs picked by the campaigns, and two representatives of each campaign, slaved for tens of hours over every delegate form. The Lucas team was meticulous in trying to throw out Gill delegates. Their names, addresses, citizenship, and voter registrations were all checked. Every one was found to live in the district and be qualified to vote. of the 500+ Gill delegates, all but 17 had PROOF of voter registration IN THE DISTRICT. The 17 were looked at much more closely, had all filed for registration BEFORE May 21, and had to prove that they lived in the district.

Further, Assuming this "republitarian" was actually at the convention, they voted to ACCEPT all the delegates. Because the vote to accept the credential committee list was UNANIMOUS. So Republitarian is one of those we can blame for whoever was allowed to vote.

Then there was an anonymous poster who asked:

I want to see the delegate lists. I want to verify the names. Where do we get the list?
Is it with McQuigg?

Call Julie Lucas. Her campaign has all that information. No delegate challenge was presented in the appeal. There are occasional snide comments about that process, but nobody challenged any delegates at the convention (the vote to accept the credentials committee report was unanimous).

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