Smoking Gun in Texas?

[garybeck]

This story was on the front page for a few hours but seems to have disappeared. Anyone know if there's a followup or what's going on down there?

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Caucus chair uncovers discrepancies

Volunteers who worked the Jester Center caucus on Tuesday are suspicious of at least one of the caucus lists, the precinct chairman said late Thursday night. At least three students who signed the list verified that the candidates attached to their names were not the candidates they voted for.

Government senior Ray Skidmore, precinct chair for the voting precinct that includes all UT dorms, said one of the caucus volunteers on Thursday noticed almost identical handwriting on one of the caucus sheets. Volunteers were recounting the caucus numbers Wednesday and Thursday, Skidmore said, just to double-check before turning them in today. Information from all caucuses - forms and the official delegate counts - are due to the Travis County clerk's office today by 6 p.m.

When recounting, the volunteer noticed a whole list had Sen. Hillary Clinton written in similar handwriting in the presidential preference column for each of the six voters on that list. Skidmore started calling each of the voters on the list when he reached finance senior Ronesha Holmes, who told him she did not write Clinton as her preference; Holmes said she was instructed to leave that line blank.

Even one discrepancy threw up a flag of suspicion, Skidmore said.

more....
http://media.www.dailytexanonline.com/media/storage/paper410/news/2008/03/07/TopStories/Caucus.Chair.Uncovers.Discrepancies-3258732.shtml

[leftofcool]

1. already debunked

[RC]

2. Source?

[garybeck]

3. by whom? n/t

[catgirl]

4. How so?

I haven't seen that at all. The "voters" were called to verify that they had
indeed voted. So far, 2 out of the 6 were for Obama, but someone had
written in Hillary's name. How do you debunk that?

[garybeck]

6. and they all had the same handwriting too.

[sunnystarr]

7. Debunked??? The student who discovered the discrepancy

replied to the article and described what happened in detail. I guess you're the one who's debunked!

[garybeck]

8. Yeah, here is what he said::::

Timothy Bray
posted 3/07/08 @ 3:33 PM CST
I was the volunteer who caught the discrepancy, and I want to give credit to Ray Skidmore for pursuing this and dealing with it very professionally. I noticed the handwriting similarity but was ready to let it go after bringing it to Ray and looking closer realizing the people's names and addresses were written in different hand writing (I had noticed a general hand writing similarity, but hadn't noticed that it existed specifically in the candidate preference column). It was Ray who pursued it further, called the people in question, and noticed that the definite similarity specific to the candidate's column.

[mod mom]

12. Please provide your link showing it de-bunked.

[garybeck]

13. I hear the sound of crickets chirping.....

n/t

[DJ13]

5. Now Clintons insisting her supporters became caucus leaders makes sense

Pretty crappy way to operate.

[txaslftist]

16. And she still got pounded in the caucuses and lost Texas.

Even cheating she runs an inept campaign.

[flor de jasmim]

9. Not being familiar with caucus sheets...

Shouldn't an alarm go off in someone's mind if they are not supposed to fill in the name of the candidate they are supporting?? Isn't that the whole point of the exercise??

[catgirl]

10. Perhaps this is why Hillary hates caucuses....

They can't cheat.

[garybeck]

11. apparantly they can

as of yet I haven't heard of any actions being taken against them or investigations into what happened.

[truedelphi]

15. You got it! n/t

[garybeck]

14. Something I don't understand...

in a caucus, the voters are linked to their votes? it's not a secret ballot?

I'm trying to find a good explanation of how a caucus is different than a primary, and why the voter's names would be tied to their votes, but Wikipedia isn't explaining it.

[Emit]

17. In our caucus

We had people sign in on a large sign in sheet. We then gave them a little sticker that came off the sign in sheet and had a bar code number of some sort that correlated with their name, I believe, IIRC. They then received a preference ballot, and the sticker was then attached to the ballot. On the front of the ballot was their first candidate choice, which they filled out during the first alliance. Then, during the second alliance, if the voter's first choice was not a viable candidate, they filled out the back portion of the preference ballot with their second candidate choice. These were turned into the co-chair (me) and counted (and verified by the chair, the secretary and reps from each group) and we did a head count of each group to make sure all the ballots matched the head count.

Does this help?

Caucuses are usually hand counted, and in primaries, voting is done on machines.

[garybeck]

18. so you are saying

that it would be possible to match the voter to their ballot and you could tell who voted for who? or does the barcode make that impossible?

[Emit]

19. I assumed, but am not certain, that the barcode does allow

for the ability to match the voter preference card to the master registration sheet, and so, in essence, yes, you could track back to match a name with who they voted for.

The secretary of our caucus is a neighbor. She will know better than I, since she received the training for the check in process, etc. I can get back to you on that if you are interested. She is out of town right now (spring break here), but will be back Friday. I'll ask her and either post to this thread or pm you.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

20. next time pm some of us

and we will bump your thread.