Justin's Thursday Political News 11.08.07

Posted by Justin Baragona on 11.08.2007

I flash back to a year ago to do a recap of the 2006 election, my experience working as an election judge in St. Louis and the results/fallout. Also, I weigh in a bit about the latest Republican presidential candidate endorsements.

Welcome to another edition of Justin's Thursday Political News. Well, I survived the debacle that was Halloween, and despite my grumpy disposition, I did not see my house egged or vandalized in anyway. Which is shocking based on all of the asshole kids that inhabit my neighborhood. Anyway, while there is quite a bit of political news going on right now, most of it revolves around the upcoming presidential election and frankly, I'm kid of burned out on it at the moment since it seems like all of my most recent columns have been about that. Of course, that is how it should be as it is the major story on the political front. Now, I could cover something else going on, such as the situation with the Iraq Prime Minister or whatever is going on in Congress, but I'm not nearly that ambitious. So, what I'll do is comment a bit about some of the most recent key endorements that have come down for the Republican candiddates. Then, I will go ahead and reprint my special column from last year letting you know my experience working as an election judge in St. Louis for the 2006 midterm elections. I also discussed the fallout from those elections in the immediate days afterwards.


Well, it appears that two major Christian conservative figures came out and put their support behind two Republican candidates. In a somewhat shocking development, Christian Coalition founder and televangelist Pat Robertson endorsed former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for president. This despite Giuliani's seemingly moderate views towards abortion and gay marriage, both major sticking points with the religious right, or his past adulterous indiscretions and two divorces. Perhaps Robertson, who claims he can leg lift 2,000 pounds, was impressed by Rudy single handedly rescuing victims from the World Trade Center rubble in the days after 9/11. Another key endorsement that happened recently was for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) as he picked up support for former presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS). Brownback was considered the most socially conservative candidate in the race before he dropped out. McCain is also seen by some as a moderate, and his picking up Brownback's endoresement could help him win some of the religious votes. Despite the rough times that McCain has endured in this campaign, particularly on the finance end, he has held tough and is still within striking distance of the frontrunner Giuliani. McCain and Giuliani picking up these key endorsements from the religious right has to be seen as a major blow to Mitt Romney, who had been throwing the full-court press at the Christians in an attempt to woo some major names in his corner.


Well, let's see what I had to say one year ago....


This is from my 11/13/2006 column:



Today is Monday, November 13th and welcome to a special edition of my normal Thursday news column. In today's edition, I will be discussing my experience working for the city of St. Louis as a poll worker in our most recent elections. I'll also discuss the election results and its repercussions. Needless to say, I'm excited about what happened on Tuesday and what may lay ahead. So, enough with the setup, let's get this started.

As I've stated previously, I worked as a Democratic Election Judge for St. Louis City on Election Day. I first heard about this opportunity through my employer, as an email was sent out a few weeks ago asking for volunteers to work the elections. It was an easy yes for me, as I've always wanted to experience the election process first-hand and I also thought it would be good fodder for a column. Plus, St. Louis City has experienced bad press in the past few years in regards to poorly run elections, possible election fraud, and the like, so I wanted to see if I could witness this or at least understand why the city has received this reputation. Anyway, I received a letter from the Missouri Secretary of State about two weeks before the election stating that the City Board of Elections would be contacting me shortly letting me know if I would be needed on Election Day. A few days before Election Day, I was called by the Board and they informed me that I would be needed and to show up on Saturday for training. It would be at the training that I would be told of my poll assignment.

Well, I showed up on Saturday expecting a real training session. Instead, I was handed a training manual and told to sit while the Election Commissioner was in front of a view-screen basically reading from the manual. I did get to do my absentee ballot and found out my poll assignment, but other than that the training was pretty worthless. I could have been sent the training manual and learned just as much. In fact, I made sure to read the manual the night before Election Day as the training was that worthless. My suggestion, especially for first time poll workers like myself, would be to have smaller groups put together and have experienced poll workers or Board of Election members run the groups, doing a more hands-on approach. This would help ensure that you have better trained poll workers show up and could lead to less confusion. However, I'm sure that would cost more money, but don't we want to do everything to make sure our elections run smoothly?

OK, well I've covered the 'training', how did Election Day go? First off, I had to wake up at an ungodly time, because I needed to be at my poll at 5:00 AM to set up. That, in and of itself, sucked. So, I show up to the school and we realize that we are short a couple of people, including the Democratic Poll Manager. Each poll is supposed to have two managers, a Democrat and a Republican. Being that our Democrat did not show up, it left the poll being run by just the Republican. What she said went, basically. Worse yet, she really didn't know what she was doing, so you have someone put in charge who is clueless. I knew that the Board wouldn't do anything about this either, because the City is about 80% Democrat, so they need to hold onto the few Republican poll workers they have so as they can keep a non-partisan look to the elections. So, we have to deal with an unprofessional, confrontational manager based solely on the city not having enough Republicans. We made another Democratic judge a replacement Democratic manager and made sure to get the polls opened by 6:00 AM.

This was the first major election in St. Louis where the DieBold electronic voting machines were used (they has also been used in the primary elections in August.) Each polling place had a technical specialist on site who had been trained on how to operate and troubleshoot the machines. At our poll, we didn't have any problems throughout the day with the machines, yet did have questions regarding them from voters. Basically, the most common question was if they would get a printout of their vote. Voters do get to see a paper printout of their vote once they cast the ballot, but it is kept within the machine. Any voter not comfortable with the voting machines were allowed to cast a paper ballot. The voting machines were used at about a two to one ratio to the paper ballots. The precinct I worked was pretty small, so I wasn't overly busy throughout the day. I estimate that about 40% of my precinct came out to vote, based on my registered voter list. Other precincts in the city had higher turnouts.

Other than my issues with the poll manager and my feeling that training was insufficient, I would have to say that the election went surprisingly well. We were able to get our ballots tallied in a short amount of time, and there were not problems getting the printouts from the voting machines. Due to the higher than expected voter turnout in the city and St. Louis County, it took a while for the Board of Elections to get the returns out to the media. Due to this, Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO) held a significant lead in early vote returns (as high as 6% with almost half of the precincts reporting.) However, St. Louis voted for McCaskill at about 80%, which took her over the top late Tuesday evening. The stem cell amendment (made famous by the Michael J. Fox ad) also passed after being down early in the evening. Will I be an election judge again? Probably. However, I may ask to be sent to a different polling place.

Being that this is Monday, I'm sure everyone reading this is caught up with the election results and some of the fallout from said results. The most notable event to happen from this election, other than the Democrats now controlling the House and the Senate, is the resignation/firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It should not be that surprising as it was inevitable that the Dems would be calling for Rumsfeld's resignation and perhaps calling for investigations into his actions as Defense Secretary if he remained at his post. However, the President stated afterward that he had known that he was going to ask for Rummy's resignation about a week before Election Day. This has caused many Republicans to get upset as they feel that Rumsfeld's resignation could have possibly kept the Republicans in power in one or both chambers of Congress. "If Rumsfeld had been out, you bet it would have made a difference," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, told CNN. "I would still be chairman of the Judiciary Committee." Specter added, "He should have done it as soon as he made up his mind, and that's a hard thing to calculate, but it's highly doubtful that he made up his mind between the time the election returns came in on Tuesday, and Wednesday, when Rumsfeld was out."

Specter was not the only one to speak out about this revelation. "If the president had replaced Rumsfeld two weeks ago, the Republicans would still control the Senate and they would probably have 10 more House members," Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said. The White House did respond to the criticism. "I could argue the politics of it either way," White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told CNN. "It might have been disheartening for people to see a sudden change at that moment, two or three weeks before the election. But however you view the politics of it, it doesn't matter. The president wasn't ready to make the decision until the last week. And he was determined not to inject politics into one of the most important national security decisions he has got to make."

Another Bush appointee who needs to worry about his job security, and whose appointment was a very divisive issue, is UN Ambassador John Bolton. Bolton was given a recess nomination in August 2005 by President Bush, as it was highly likely at that time that the Democrats were going to use a filibuster to block to appointment. Bolton's appointment expires in January, so the President decided to push his nomination through the Senate before Democrats officially take over in January. However, there are Republicans that will vote no for Bolton's confirmation, and it has been indicated that it will probably die in the Foreign Relations Committee due to this, as they will not vote for full Senate confirmation if they know it will not pass. Democrat Joe Biden, who will be the chairman of the committee come January hinted at this. "I see no point in considering Mr. Bolton's nomination again in the Foreign Relations Committee because regardless of what happens there, he is unlikely to be considered by the full Senate," he said. We'll see in the coming weeks how this plays out once Congress is back in session.



That will do it for me this week. Speaking of endorsements, this week I endorse Joe's column and ask that you read it. I will be back next week with more news in the realm of politics.