Rapid Response needed RE: Illinois Straw Poll

[Bruehound]

An influential Illinois conservative blog is taking a poll on the fairness of the Illinois Straw Poll ( the poll is down the left hand column)
http://www.illinoisreview.typepad.com

As many of you may be aware, the Illinois Straw Poll this past Thursday was somewhat tainted because the ILGOP kep tthe polling open an additional 8 minutes allowing undeclared candidate Fred Thompson to edge Ron Paul out of 2'nd place by a mere 11 votes.

[purepaloma]

Don't we want to KEEP the results ? We got 2nd place !!!

That's huge!

[Bruehound]

RP should have won 2nd place but came in THIRD because the ILGOP kept the poll open an additional 8 minutes.

Voting was to take place between 11am-4pm. A RP supporter saw a running tally on a staffers laptop screen at 3:30pm showing RP was beating Fred Thompson 151-148 for second place. It was then announce the poll would stay open until 4:30 "because it rained". Then they said it woudl close at 4:15pm.....then they shut it down at 4:08(apparently satisfied with the desired outcome).

[Wyurm]

The only problem I had with it was their use of electronic voting machines. Keeping the polls open a little longer was no big deal, infact I wished they were open even longer cause there would have been alot of people who wanted to vote that would have been able to do so if it wasnt scheduled during a time that interfered with work.

[MozoVote]

Because it's "only" a straw poll, I don't see the big deal in holding it open a little longer for the bus riders. I mean, if you were riding a Ron Paul bus, would you want to be told you can't vote, after riding for hours and arriving 10 minutes late?

[njandrewg]

Right...8 minutes sure made a world of difference. I'm going to make a big deal about it just in case. First the diebold crap in Iowa...now this in Illinois, why can't there be a straw poll w/o any problems?

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Fishy_dealings_at_the_Illinois_straw_poll

[LibertyEagle]

Just leave it alone. Let's not add to the belief that we're a bunch of whiners. The VIS people will be doing there thing. Let's do ours and get the word spread about Dr. Paul, beyond the internet. This is our only failing.

[trispear]

Calling to task EVERY STRAW POLL taking place might make us feel good, but will give our enemies ammunition when Ron Paul starts winning them.

Ride them out, challenge the real odious ones, but as for the rest, let it go and move on to the next battle.

[Bro.Butch]

Right...8 minutes sure made a world of difference. I'm going to make a big deal about it just in case. First the diebold crap in Iowa...now this in Illinois, why can't there be a straw poll w/o any problems?

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Fishy_dealings_at_the_Illinois_straw_poll

We didn't have any problems in Alabama friend ! And it was a $35 poll just like Ames ! Someone needs to inform the MSM...;)


Truly a GREAT week. RP Defeated Ghouliani, Huckabee, McCain, Brownback, Tancredo, & Hunter by landslides in two state straw polls (IL & AL) ! And got by Willard & Freddy by a landslide today !!! :D

Alabama State Straw Poll:
Candidate Percentage

1. Dr.Ron Paul -- [81.20%]

2. Willard Romney -- [05.26%]

3. Duncan Hunter -- [03.76%]

4. Fred Thompson -- [03.38%]

5. Rudy Giuliani -- [02.63%]

6. Mike Huckabee -- [02.26%]

7. Sam Brownback -- [00.75%]

7. John McCain -- [00.75%]

9. Tom Tancredo -- [00.00%]

Illinois Straw poll 8/16/7
Here are the final poll results:
Candidate Percentage

1. Willard Romney -- 40.35%

2. Fred Thompson -- 19.96%

3. Ron Paul -- 18.87%

4. Rudy Giuliani -- 11.61%

5. John McCain -- 04.12%

6. Mike Huckabee -- 03.04%

7. Sam Brownback --01.08%

8. Duncan Hunter -- 00.65%

9. Tom Tancredo -- 00.33%

We are on our way friends, let's keep the momenum going !!!
Anyone up for calling Texas Delegates...:cool:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=12495

[Spirit of '76]

Just a friendly suggestion:

It's fine that you want to raise the issue of unfair polling practices, but I think the campaign would prefer if we didn't involve them in it. Maybe just raising the point that keeping the polls open was unfair for everyone and that they should abide by the rules they set would get your point across, and you wouldn't even need to mention Ron Paul specifically, which could poison the well against him in further dealings with the Illinois GOP.

Remember we're trying to convince these people to give Ron Paul the nomination, and while some of them might be beyond reach, others might not have made up their minds about Paul yet. There may be some "Sunshine Patriots" hiding in the ranks of the GOP leadership yet.

[axiomata]

Interesting first hand account from the blog comments:




I am the person who saw the results as of 3:30 pm and forwarded them to Scott and others.

The running totals were on one of the GOP staffer's laptops. I saw the top vote getters (they were ranked in order of votes on the screen - Romney 348, Paul 151, Thompson 148 and McCain in the low 100s) and started a conversation when another Illinois GOP Party official ran over to us and said that this was not public information and told the person he needed to minimize the results screen.

I relayed the news and fought for the remaining half hour to get people to vote. We were able to get 23 additional voters for the final total of 174 votes, 10 behind Thompson's "184" votes.

We did not see any Fred Thompson representatives beyond a few Illinois politicians speaking on his behalf so God only knows how he received support beyond the GOP County Chairman who voted for him in a pre Straw Poll Ballot.

The suspicious bump in the final 38* minutes (20% of Thompson's votes (184 vs. 148) were cast during this time frame (10% of the poll time) when the area was pretty much dead as far as new voters were concerned) is why we question the announced returns.

We saw all of Romney's buses and were not surprised with his paid for victory but I was pretty disappointed when Andy McKenna presented the final tally with Thompson beating Paul by ten votes.

Then again, I was disappointed when Andy McKenna's organization criticized Oberweis' & Gidwitz's 2006 Primary advertisements attacking the Party's favored candidate (and Andy's predecessor) Judy Baar Topinka.

The Topinka debacle resulted in many conservatives having to leave the party to vote for the more conservative candidate in the General Election.

(1998 (Poshard) and 2002 Cal Skinner of course :) and 2006 Randy Stufflebeam).

In any event, Ron Paul finished ten times above the media's much cited figure of "1-2%". No other campaign has an energized group of volunteer supporters putting their time and personal money into expenses including signs and literature.

We need to continue to snowball this thing and it will take daily baby steps such as the Illinois Straw Poll and other events to slowly but surely increase the name recognition and support for Dr. Ron Paul, America's final hope!

Posted by: Jason A | Saturday, August 18, 2007 at 01:33 AM


Regarding the 8 extra minutes ... there are some things to fight for, and some things you need to just let go. They should have closed the poll on time. Everyone knows that. But unless you can prove malice then it's not worth fighting over, and if you must, there's no reason why Paul's campaign needs to be associated with the concern when you express it.