Disenchantment With Democratic Caucus Pours Out

Fellow blogger and GLBT activist Bil Browning describes his disappointing experience as a supposed precinct committeeperson at Saturday's Democratic caucus to slate the 7th District special election candidate where he was not allowed to cast a vote despite being assured that he could vote by the Marion County Democratic Party on the eve of the vote. To put it bluntly, he thinks the entire process was rigged in favor of Andre Carson from the get-go and began long before the late Rep. Julia Carson died after losing her battle with lung cancer. "I'm not one for a conspiracy theory, but usually where there is smoke there's fire and there is a lot of smoke blowing around Indy right now," Browning writes. "I'm not saying I have all of the answers, but I have lots of questions. It's not clear if this election was fixed or botched or both, but something just isn't right." Here's a look at some of the questions he has:

• "Julia announced she had lung cancer late last year and died shortly thereafter. Potential candidates were left scrambling while her grandson obviously knew before everyone else . . . Keeping everyone else out in the cold as long as possible gives you plenty of time to get key people in place and appoint as many of your own precinct committee persons as you can."
• "At Julia's funeral Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI) and Louis Farrakhan praised Andre and urged attendees to choose him to replace his grandmother. Kilpatrick and Tubbs Jones both claimed Julia's deathbed wish was "Send my seed."
• "The 8 candidates for the special caucus had to pay the Democratic Party $500 each for lists of the Precinct Committee people eligible to vote in the special caucus. Confusion ensued as different candidates received different lists and some candidates complained of contacting dozens of supposed committee persons only to find out the lists were horribly out of date."
• "The Marion County Democratic Party was responsible for the [PC] list. Ultimately, the excuse was that the county party hadn't used the 2006 election data to update the PC lists. Mike O'Connor, the county party chair, was "out of communication" while vacationing in California the week prior to the vote."
• "Several precinct committee persons who should have been able to vote yesterday weren't allowed to cast ballots. I was one of them. The county party is being blamed for providing incorrect lists of eligible precinct committee persons - several times." [Note, Bil had pledged to support Joanne Sanders in slating prior to the caucus].
• "Strangely, with fewer than half of the votes cast, officials started shutting down some of the machines. When asked, they said they were getting an early start on tallying the votes and reprogramming the machines. The rules of the special election stipulated that if no one got the requisite 50% on the first vote, the lowest vote getter would be removed and a new vote would take place. It takes about 30 minutes to reprogram the machines for the next vote."
• "If you watch the video of Dan Parker reading off the vote totals, you'll notice something a little odd. He says that 439 votes were cast (even though 440 people registered.) When he reads off the numbers for each candidate it adds up to a total of 435 votes. That's 4 votes short. The explanation given to me by a Democratic insider is that those voters went to the machine, but didn't select a candidate when they cast their vote. Which would mean four people went through registration, wandered the halls, waited through the instructions, sat in their rows, waited in a long line, walked to a machine, acted like they voted and got their card punched to show they'd already voted, just to do nothing?"
• "After yesterday's vote, two of the voting machines were stolen and are currently missing. The staffers say they had gone to lunch, but would have had to have gone out of their way. The warehouse for votes is on Washington Street near downtown. The caucus took place on 34th Street. The machines were stolen about 15 blocks north of the polling place. Washington Street is south of 34th Street."

After ticking off a litany of questions, Browning ponders, "Can you read my eyebrows raising? Doesn't this all seem rather coincidental to you?" Browning concluded, "I didn't see an election; I saw a coronation." That's a mockery of democracy in my book too."

I've been told by long-time observers that nobody knows how to win these caucus elections better than the Carson machine, and it once again proved that on Saturday. As to the stolen voting machines, party spokesperson Jen Wagner explained to me that state party officials, including herself, went to Binkley's after the caucus for lunch. She explained that someone smashed the back and side windows of the executive director's white Ford Escape and stole two of the iVotronic machines in broad daylight, along with her purse sans wallet. Wagner said the voting cards were removed by ES&S staff following the voting, rendering the machines useless. Police who responded to the scene advised the party officials that there had been a number of similar smash-and-grabs in that area in recent weeks. So I think it is fairly safe to assume the stolen voting machines is a product of Indianapolis' out of control crime problem and nothing else. As for Bil's unanswered questions, I hope he resolves them in his own mind and decides that the best choice he can make on March 11 is a vote for Jon Elrod.