2004 Election

Shocking:

The Federal Election Commission has fined one of the last cycle’s biggest liberal political action committees $775,000 for using unregulated soft money to boost John Kerry and other Democratic candidates during the 2004 elections.

America Coming Together (ACT) raised $137 million for its get-out-the-vote effort in 2004, but the FEC found most of that cash came through contributions that violated federal limits.

The group’s big donors included George Soros, Progressive Corp. chairman Peter Lewis and the Service Employees International Union.

The settlement, which the FEC approved unanimously, is the third largest enforcement penalty in the commission’s 33-year history.

Why would anyone want to emulate the steaming pile of feces that is McCain-Feingold, as the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform ("Speech for me, but not for thee!") wants to do here in Illinois?

Beacuse such reforms are working so well the FEC has dropped a $750,000 fine (which is about 0.5 percent of what it spent in 2004) on a group that no longer exists three years after the election they were trying to influence, even though everybody knew at the time that the organization was breaking the law and even though the group in question didn't care about the fines and penalties?

Campaign finance "reforms" don't work.  The only thing that does is 100 percent, near-instant, online disclosure of every penny raised and spent, and relying on voters decide what is corrupt and what isn't.

Some people are convinced that George Bush stole the last couple elections. These claims are largely based on wild suppositions, the wildest of the suppositions being the claims regarding Ohio in 2004. In response to people's concerns regarding Diebold and possible vote tampering, a number of people are suggesting that after the election, election officials should do a sampling of ballots in every precinct to determine whether the machines are rigged. The proposals vary, but no one suggests more than a 10% sample of ballots be counted.

Under the sampling theory, we can know whether an election is fraudulent by looking at a mere 10% of the ballots. It's a ridiculous proposal, and will serve to increase voter cynicism and uncertainty about our vote counting process.

The proposal by the Election Defense Alliance has gathered a lot of attention and was brought to my attention after I spoke to the NIU law school Election law symposium in March. A person who is working with the EDA approached me about doing a pilot project in Champaign County using the EDA sampling proposal. I turned him down and referred him to our own vote count integrity program.

I offered a few points to him for which he had no response. Perhaps others do.

First, after a 10% sample, the results will all but certainly be different than the actual results. How much different will vary, but the likelihood of them being different by .5% is high. So for example, take the Myers Frerichs Senate race last year. Frerichs won by just under 1% (Frerichs - 27,149, Myers - 26,607, Parnarauskis - 1,894). Suppose we sample 5,565 ballots (10%) and we get the following results: Myers - 2,690, Frerichs - 2,685, and Parnarauskis - 190. This result is statistically not improbable. From a public relations standpoint it's a disaster. Certainly, those who understand or generally accept probability theory will not have an issue, except for those who have a vested interest in fomenting public dissatisfaction with the election process. A large number of other people will also have a problem because they simply don't understand the math. What we have done is not increased certainty, but rather increased uncertainty.

Second, the Election Defense Alliance suggests that they have a 99% chance of being accurate. That means, if they run this sample on every Congressional District, we will have four districts where the sample will show inaccurate results. In those areas, there will once again be a crisis of confidence.

Third, the random sampling will allow someone to program fraud into a system with a limited chance of being caught. So while the proponents of sampling speak of the high probability of 1% vote fraud being detected, they don't speak of the improbability of .2% vote fraud being detected. A computer programmer who wanted to drop one vote per precinct could have altered the Presidential election results in Florida, Iowa, Oregon, and New Mexico in 2000 and Wisconsin and Iowa in 2004. Sampling probably would not have caught this fraud.

Fourth, crimes are generally deterred by the probability of being caught. The Election Defense Alliance suggests that 40% of vote fraud would not be caught under a 2% sampling scheme as proposed in the Holt Bill. What that means is that anyone who rigs an election has a 60% chance of getting caught. I doubt that any computer hacker who is skilled enough to do all the programming work to steal an election would be willing to take that kind of risk.  In fact, I'm not sure what criminal activity with a 60% chance of being caught is ever engaged in by reasonable people.

Fifth, the public has a right to know that their vote counting equipment is 100% accurate. Only a redundant recount in a sample of precincts can actually instill that confidence in people. When we conducted our redundant count, we were able to point to specific ballots that were likely the result of the vote discrepancies.

The Election Defense Alliance is sound in requesting some automatic triggers for redundant counts. I would fully support that. I was actually pleased when the election in the Village of Ivesdale went to a discovery recount. I wanted to know that indeed the votes were counted as they were cast. We found out that they were, and both the winners and losers in that contest can rest easy in the accuracy of the results.

Regaining the public's confidence in our election system is not beyond us. The most critical part of regaining that confidence is to provide facts instead of supposition and to engage in rational debate instead of lobbing wild accusations. Sampling is certainly not the answer.

I often tell people of the amazing story of Aaron Schock.  At 19, Aaron ran a successful write-in campaign against the incumbent school board president for Peoria District 150, receiving over 6,400 write-in votes and winning by a margin of 60% to 40%.  At 23, he ousted incumbent State Rep. Ricca Slone by 235 votes in a district viewed as 57% Democratic, despite being outspent by more than $200,000.

Aaron certainly has a bright political future.  However, he first needs to survive the 2006 elections.  Tom Roeser gives a great analysis of Rep. Schock, his political future, and some great thoughts for the GOP.  Read the whole thing.

I hope to bring Aaron to Champaign-Urbana this Fall.  I think it would do our local GOP good to see the success that can be had by a Republican in a democrat-controlled district served by a weak democrat incumbent.

Last month's verdict was guilty on all counts - but now one of the covicted Democrats is starting to talk about the rich white patrons who supplied the money that bought the votes:

Sheila Thomas said she is innocent, but added that if her vote fraud convictions were justified, then high-ranking county Democrats should also have faced a jury.

Thomas is the first of five defendants convicted of vote fraud in federal court last month to make a public statement after the verdict.

"We got into this because they gave us money," Thomas, 31, said about $73,000 passed out in East St. Louis two days before the Nov. 2 election. St. Clair County Democratic Central Committee Chairman Robert Sprague distributed the funds by giving checks to city Democratic precinct committeemen.

County Democrats have said the money, which is passed out in the city for every election, was intended to get people to the polls, not
to pay them to vote.

Good. Follow the money.

David Gill, 2004 and 2006 Democratic candidate for Congress against Tim Johnson, has a blog. Unfortunately, it looks rather infrequently updated, and has no RSS feed, so it's going to be difficult for me to remember to check it.

Eric Zorn demonstrates yet again why he's among my favorite journalists, even though he and I almost never agree on issues. Referring to a chance encounter with failed US Senate candidate Jack Ryan:

I'm not inclined to retract or modify what I wrote, but, honestly, it does look a little different to me after the reminder that these people we castigate and otherwise feast upon in the moment exist fully outside that moment.

Though we see them as mere characters in the great civic drama we cover and put them out of mind when their star turn is done, they are and continue to be much more than that.

Jack Ryan has exhibited some bad judgment in his life. Haven't we all. But he's a dad who, when no one's looking, when he's not trying to prove anything to anyone, loves, loves, loves his little boy.

It's clear to me now that I never should have even hinted otherwise.

I owe him an apology for that, and next time I see him I'll know to set the phone down and say so.

I was never a Jack Ryan supporter, but Eric's thoughts are provoking, as always.

Have a safe, peaceful and happy weekend. And be sure to tell a child (any child) that you love them. Life is too short.

One more campaign finance note, this time focusing on the 2002 and 2004 battles for State Representative in the 103^rd District.

Naomi Jakobbsen, the stupidest person ever elected to any office, anywhere on earth, was first elected in 2002 to a newly drawn district designed to heavily favor Democrats. She defeated Republican incumbent Tom Berns narrowly in 2002 and faced Deb Frank Feinen, a younger, less conservative candidate in 2004.

In 2002, getting Naomi the Brainless elected cost about $390,00, with about $365,000 of that money coming from Chicago-area Democrats, including The Chairman, Speaker of the House Mike Madigan.

Feinen, on the other hand, raised about $63,000 total, and got another $29,000 in-kind from Illinois House Republican Leader Tom Cross, for a total election expense just over $100,000. About $30,000 was from local sources, or about 30 percent of her total funding.

In 2004, Naomi the Brainless continued to demonstrate her grasp of independence and quality representation. Knowing well that she would be in for a tough re-election battle, in 2003 and 2004, she raised about $50,000 from local sources. Her re-election battle in 2004 cost just $280,000. But again, about $230,000 came from Chicago Democrats, with Madigan again leading the way with about $60,000 in cash and $80,000 in-kind.

So, to calculate the Jakobbson Accountability Ratio (JAR) from 2002-2004, just divide the amount of local campaign support by the total amount of her campaign expenses. For the 2002 and 2004 elections, its $75,000 of local funding out of $670,000 total. About 11.2 percent of Naomi the Brainless' campaign funding has come from local donors. The rest came from Chicago.

Eleven-point-two percent. And that's just about how much representation our district gets out of Naomi. The rest goes to Chicago.

Here are some interesting local campaign finance reports covering July through December 2004, including the 2004 elections:

Champaign County Democrats: Started with $30,000. They raised $28,000. Spent $32,000. Funds available (including investments) as of January 1, 2005: almost $54,000.

Champaign County Republicans (including the Lincoln Club, Republican Women and Young Republicans): Started with $14,000. Raised $93,000. Spent $100,000. Just $7,000 left, not including a $10,000 debt the Lincoln Club borrowed from GOP Chairman Stephen Hartman.

In a nutshell, the County GOP outspent the County Dems by almost three-to-one, and we essentially won back a safe GOP County Board seat, and they took the State’s Attorney’s race from our (very unpopular) incumbent. The Dems are also much better prepared for 2006, with a $60,000 fundraising head start over the Republicans.

In any avenue other than politics, if you got results like this, you’d have to wonder about the effectiveness of the decision-makers, right? The GOP outspent their opposition over three-to-one, and basically lost ground. Yikes.