Brad Friedman Rips Apart Election Commissioner's Testimony

[Consider this a guest post, by Brad Friedman.]

L.A. based investigative journalist and the Brad Blog(ger) Brad Friedman specializes in election fraud and issues with Diebold machines and other voting machines.  Based on the bio on his website the Los Angeles Times called him:

"The state's most persistent blogger-watchdog on the dangers of voting technology."

The New York Times wasn't so parochial:

"Perhaps the most dogged critic of electronic voting machine technology in the blogosphere."
 --The New York Times

[Of course I checked these quotes.  The NYT quote is linked.  The LATimes blog Feb. 7, 2007 comes up with the quote on google, but I can't get to the link.]


He's been watching the Anchorage April 3, 2012 election carefully.  Since I wrote some posts on the election, I've been included in emails among a group of people concerned how the election was conducted.  Brad too is part of this group.

He watched the Assembly meeting (I'm assuming online) Thursday night.  He sent out an email which took her [Election Commissioner Gwen Mathew's] testimony apart paragraph by paragraph.  And he's given us permission to use it.  Thanks Brad for letting us post this, but more importantly applying your expertise to our election. His critique is so damning about the competence and knowledge of our local election commissioner that I'm posting it here for all to evaluate.

(I must confess I was committed to another event last night that was scheduled before the special Assembly meeting was.  But check Bent Alaska's comprehensive listing of links to the election coverage.)  

[UPDATE:  note the correct spelling is Mathew, not Matthews.]

Here's Brad's email:

"As Gwen Matthews told me personally on the phone, she had not read any of the many security analyses and reviews of Diebold (pronounced DEE-bold, since approximately 1859 when the company was founded) op-scan systems. That was apparent tonight in her testimony for the Assembly as she simply either made things up about Diebold in CA, or repeated what someone had told her.

"Here's part of what she said, which was so wrong in so many ways that I'll post what she said, and then respond line-by-line below it...

GWEN MATTHEWS: In 2003, in California, the Superior -- some court, I can't remember what it is -- they ruled that the Diebold machines were not good for elections. But that is the touch-screens in California. These are much different. The touch-screens, they had software, firmware, hardware issues -- which, by the way, were resolved --  and, but these machines are simple scanning machines and counters. They're very basic. The only security risk would be the memory card that is in each Diebold machine. 

Through the years, I have worked elections as well. And they do occasionally come off. I mean part of our procedure is the night of the election, we take the memory cards out of the Diebold machines, along with the tapes -- the zero report tapes -- and the election results and we put them in their own envelope. And we take them to City Hall and we hand them to people who 'do all that stuff'.  So, it's not unusual for the security seals to break, because they're supposed to that night.

If you're concerned about the security of this, you have to have a motive, you have to have opportunity, you have to have expertise to program that card, plus I don't think they sell that kind of equipment at Radio Shack. I think it's rather specialized. 

These machines are "overnighted" [she means sent home on "sleepovers" with poll workers], but I think it's unreasonable to assume that someone would want to break into that many precinct chairmen houses and get away with it and have no trail of that. 

One last thing. These machines are easy to check, because they have a paper trail. You can have another machines with -- and by the way Jacqueline [Duke] programs these, she's the only administrator, she has an observer when she does it -- um, and you can run through the same ballots through that machine.  It has a paper trail, which was a factor of the court case in California. 

"Good lord. Not even close. On any of it. Let's go graf-by-graf (sorry!)

GWEN MATTHEWS: In 2003, in California, the Superior -- some court, I can't remember what it is -- they ruled that the Diebold machines were not good for elections. But that is the touch-screens in California. These are much different. The touch-screens, they had software, firmware, hardware issues -- which, by the way, were resolved --  and, but these machines are simple scanning machines and counters. They're very basic. The only security risk would be the memory card that is in each Diebold machine. 

"The 2003 suit she's referring to doesn't actually have anything to do with security of the Diebold machines. It was a qui tam case, filed by Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, concerning the fact that Diebold had defrauded the state by lying about their touch-screen voting machines. This was discovered after Stephen Heller, a whistleblower at Diebold's law firm Jones Day, found that Diebold was planning to lie to state officials about having illegally inserted uncertified firmware into their machines in Alameda County (and one other, as I recall).

"The Secretary of State at the time, Kevin Shelley, decertified the touch-screen systems in the state entirely after that incident, and Diebold eventually paid $3.5m (as I recall) to settle the Qui Tam fraud lawsuit.  It had nothing to do with the actual security of the systems themselves, but the fact that Diebold had lied about it all to officials and installed uncertified firmware.

"Those issues were not "resolved," as Gwen says. Rather, a new Sec of State came in later, Bruce McPherson, appointed by Schwarzenegger and simply certified the same touch-screens (and had Diebold guys working out of his office -- literally) that Shelley had previously decertified.

"He did that in 2006, even after the December 2005 Leon County, FL Hursti Hack which showed how, not only could the Op-scan memory cards be gamed, but so could the memory cards in the touch-screens and, most disturbingly, the GEMS central tabulator itself.  That -- not the 2003 fraud case --  is what is referred to in the 2006 Security Analysis commission by McPherson, that I quoted from in my original report on the Anchorage election mess. As I wrote (but Gwen failed to read, I guess):

The findings of the post-Leon County Security Analysis in California [PDF] revealed, among other things:

Memory card attacks are a real threat. We determined that anyone who has access to a memory card of the [Diebold Accuvote op-scan], and can tamper it (i.e. modify its contents), and can have the modified cards used in a voting machine during an election, can indeed modify the election results from that machine in a number of ways. The fact that the the results are incorrect cannot be detected except by a recount of the original paper ballots.

The analysis went on to warn that the hacker "was indeed able to change the election results by doing nothing more than modifying the contents of a memory card."

"It would be safest if it is not widely used until these bugs are fixed (they never were) and until a modification is made to ensure that the...attack is eliminated." The scientists wrote that "strong procedural safeguards should be implemented that prevent anyone from gaining unsupervised or undocumented access to a memory card, and these procedures should be maintained for the life of all cards. ... Any breach of control over a card should require that its contents be zeroed (in the presence of two people) before it is used again."

"There would be no way to know that any of these attacks occurred; the canvass procedure would not detect any anomalies, and would just produce incorrect results. The only way to detect and correct the problem would be by recount of the original paper ballots," they found.

"That had nothing to do with the 2003 fraud case!

"When Matthews says, about her "amazing" machines that  "The only security risk would be the memory card that is in each Diebold machine," it's clear she hasn't bothered to read any of the security reports about these machines -- as she told me that she had not!

"That, of course, is just one report. There have been many many others finding all of the above and even much worse. In 2007, the newer CA Sec. of State Debra Bowen did a "Top-to-Bottom Review" of all e-voting systems in the state of CA. You can peruse the reports here which led her to decertify BOTH the touch-screen AND the op-scan, which was conditionally recertified with, among other security requirements, tamper-evident seals that, if broken, would de-certify the machine for use in an election.

"Here are those many reports -- often redacted for security reasons, to remove the most helpful stuff for hackers:

CA's "Top to Bottom Review" of E-voting systems:
Executive Summary

Decertification (and reasons why)

Source Code Report

Red Team Report (HACK TESTING!)
Documentation Review Report

"A year later, the Sec of State of Ohio, Jennifer Brunner, commissioned another study by her own state. Here are those results (Diebold had been renamed "Premier" by then to try and shake off some of the taint they had earned from all the fraud suits and decertifications and whistleblowers, etc.)

OH's EVEREST Study:
Premier System Executive Summary Report (PDF)
Premier System Technical Manager's Report (PDF)
Premier System Technical Details Report (PDF)

"Back to Gwen's statement tonight:

Through the years, I have worked elections as well. And they do occasionally come off. I mean part of our procedure is the night of the election, we take the memory cards out of the Diebold machines, along with the tapes -- the zero report tapes -- and the election results and we put them in their own envelope. And we take them to City Hall and we hand them to people who 'do all that stuff'.  So, it's not unusual for the security seals to break, because they're supposed to that night.

"'Hand them to people who 'do all that stuff''". Love that. Anyway, no, the security are not supposed to break. They are supposed to be cut at the end of the night by the poll workers. If they just break on their own, it kinda defeats the purpose of security seals.  Yes, they are crappy, and actually can be gamed (removed without breaking them, and then re-applying them), but that's hardly the point.

If you're concerned about the security of this, you have to have a motive, you have to have opportunity, you have to have expertise to program that card, plus I don't think they sell that kind of equipment at Radio Shack. I think it's rather specialized. 

"Fair enough. You have to have "motive…opportunity [and] expertise".  There are plenty of folks who have all of the above. Take, for instance, Jacqueline Duke. Her motive would be clear: Make sure her old boss won the election and that the ballot measure he opposed (Prop 5) did too. Of course, she would have both the opportunity and the expertise to game the system, because, as Gwen says as well, " Jacqueline programs these, she's the only administrator".

"Not saying she did it. Just saying that she had all the requirements to game the entire system. Many others did as well. For example, the "people who 'do all that stuff'", as Gwen mentioned.  And yes, poll workers could do so as well. More on that in a moment.

"As far as the equipment required. Well, Harri Hursi programmed his memory card for the Leon County Hack seen in Hacking Democracy by purchasing a crop scanner off the Internet for less than $100 dollars. Pima County, AZ did the same thing when they wanted to test, they say, how easy it would be to do what Hursti did.

"But no equipment is needed at all to simply change results on the GEMS central tabulator. That is done with a few keystrokes by "the people who 'do all that stuff'", if they like.

These machines are "overnighted" [she means sent home on "sleepovers" with poll workers], but I think it's unreasonable to assume that someone would want to break into that many precinct chairmen houses and get away with it and have no trail of that. 

"As the Princeton Diebold Virus Hack of 2006 showed -- (I broke the story at Salon and in a more detailed version at The BRAD BLOG, the hack was later demonstrated, among many other places, live on Fox "News") -- a single memory card can be loaded with a virus that then passes itself either from machine to machine, or straight into the GEMS tabulator affecting all cards and results in the election.  One needn't "break into that many precinct chairmen houses" to do this.

"Gwen is absolutely clueless about which she speaks, and is clearly repeating what she's been told by the Diebold reps (who are now either ES&S or Dominion, whichever one Anchorage uses as their vendor since Diebold was sold off.)

One last thing. These machines are easy to check, because they have a paper trail. You can have another machines with -- and by the way Jacqueline [Duke] programs these, she's the only administrator, she has an observer when she does it -- um, and you can run through the same ballots through that machine.  It has a paper trail, which was a factor of the court case in California. 

"Nothing that she mentioned "was a factor of the court case in California." She simply made that up.

"A so-called "paper trail" is no good if you don't examine it. By refusing to allow the Assembly to hand count the paper ballots, it does no good whatsoever to have a "paper trail". In allowing someone like Jacqueline Duke (who worked for a guy on the ballot) to program the machines (with some unnamed "observer"), train the pollworkers to ignore broken security seals, and then take custody of the "paper trail" (the ballots) themselves for a month before anybody ever gets to examine even one of those ballots by hand, makes a mockery of the entire system.

"That Gwen Matthews is the author of the report used to determine whether that election should be certified or not is a joke. That she serves as the Election Commissioner of Anchorage is an insult. That she would blatantly mislead and/or lie to the Assembly in making her presentation by offering absurd "facts" that have absolutely nothing to do with reality is both an outrage, and merits a LOUD call for her to removed from her post -- along with Jacqueline Duke, by the way -- immediately.

"Good luck guys. You folks may use any or all of the above on the record any way you see fit. IF you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Brad

Again, thanks Brad for so generously sharing your expertise on this issue.

What Do The Election Percentages and Numbers Tell? Maybe Nothing

The Assembly chair has said he will appoint an investigator to review the April 3, 2012 Anchorage Municipal election.  A number of people have gathered data.  None of it proves anything.  But there are lots of anomalies, which taken altogether call out for a thorough investigator to determine whether these anomalies are just coincidences or whether they add up to something seriously wrong with the election.

Elections are important because voting is the fundamental basis of our democracy, which is based on the idea that the public determines our political leaders through elections.  The power comes from the people.  We can argue about whether voters are duped by election propaganda and many other ways elections can go wrong.  But most fundamental is that every person has the right to vote and every vote is counted right.

As I looked at the percentages for the various propositions after the election I was struck by wide margins in each case.  It seemed to me that often school bonds and parks and public transit either lost or won by narrow margins.  But not this year.  So I went back to the Muni website and pulled out the data for several categories of city wide bond propositions.  The data come from the Municipal website.  While I tried to be careful, there is always the possibility of mistakes.

The numbers in the Scribd table show bond elections for the last 6 Anchorage elections. (2012 numbers are from the 4/20 final count.)  All of the bonds for 2012 were at the highest percentage "for" votes in the last six Municipal elections. The school bonds tied 2007 and 2008.  The others were record highs.  Two areas that are most likely to be voted down are public transit and general parks and recreation. (The 2008 vote was for swimming pools and there was a very strong parent backed campaign to pass it.  But when parks and bike trail upgrades are in the ballot, it's likely to barely pass or fail.  Even when it's bundled with emergency medical services as it's been often.)

Why would a surge of conservative voters (there to vote no on Prop. 5) vote in record percentages for bonds that normally win narrowly at best or not at all?  Such voters generally vote to keep property taxes down.  It's an anomaly the investigator should check into. 

A larger percentage of people voted for public transit (in with emergency vehicles) than ever before
Anchorage Prop Vote History 2006-2012

(You can play with the Table above here or go to Scribd and download it.)

I'd note the election data are posted by year and some of the results pages show some Propositions more than once - it appears that they had different numbers of precincts in.  I choose the ones with 100%.  You'll also note that transit is usually packaged with emergency vehicles and it's difficult to figure out it includes public transit funds.

You can see all the past election results here.
Since the results pages are vague, I also checked the sample ballots to see what people were voting for. 


The table below looks at the total vote for the 2012 election,

• for each Muni-wide bond issue and
• each Muni-wide office (mayor and school board members), and 
• compares them to the total votes for or against Prop 5, and 
• then compares them to the total number of voters.

Muni-Wide	Votes	Prop 5 Total	Fewer than Prop 5	Total Vote	Fewer than total
Schools	68,376	70,431	2,055	71,099	2,723
Roads/Drains	69,523	70,431	908	71,099	1,576
Med/Transit	69,890	70,431	741	71,099	1,409
Parks	68,246	70,431	1,185	71,099	1,853
Prop 5	70,431	70,431	0	71,099	668
Mayor	69,655	70,431	776	71,099	1,444
School Seat E	55,226	70,431	15,205	71,099	15,873
School Seat F	53,615	70,431	16,616	71,099	17.484
School Seat G	55,921	70,431	14,510	71,099	15,178

HTML Tables

[UPDATE 8:30: I fixed a typo in the Prop 5 column changing 70451 to 70431.  Fortunately it was correct in the chart I did the calculating so the next column should still be ok.]]

You can see no issue or person on the ballot had more people voting than Prop. 5 (to make it illegal to discriminate against GLBT folks).  The difference ranges from 741 to 2, 055 among the bond propositions and 766  to 16,616  among the candidates running.

Despite the fact that Prop 5 got the most total votes (for or against) there were another 688 people who didn't vote on that proposition.

I don't know what this means, if anything.  It makes sense that Prop 5 attracted more voters than any other issue.  It was the most emotional and the one subject to campaigns for and against. 

I do think that whoever does the investigation ought to look at these figures, probably with the help of a statistician, and determine if they are consistent with past elections. Or if the extra numbers and the high percentages in favor of bond issues Conservatives normally vote against could be the result of tampering with the voting machines.

I would also note that the total number of voters - 71,099 is the highest count going back to 2006.  But it's not something the election planners shouldn't have anticipated.  The 2006 election - also a mayoral race - had 70,859 ballots cast.  That's only 240 fewer ballots than 2012.  If the Deputy Clerk was going to consider more than one previous mayoral race to figure out how many voters to expect, she would have had to have seen this figure.

[UPDATE 9:30 am:  I'm presenting numbers here as objectively as I can.  What they mean is much harder to ascertain.  A good example of this data interpretation problem is in a New York Times article today that looks at attempts to get data to determine the US income gap.  It's  not easy to get clean numbers that reflect what you want to know.  But once you get the numbers it's easy to twist them to make them support your position.  Well, easy if your audience isn't asking hard questions.  In any case, the election numbers are pretty easy to get.  They raise questions that require more investigation.  Are the high percentages for increasing bond indebtedness really high enough to raise eyebrows?  If so, is it just an anomaly or is there something wrong in the vote count?  We can ask similar questions about the overall vote counts for each ballot issue.  Given so many signs from different aspects of the election, the investigation coming up is clearly justified.]

Guadalupe Marroquin, Former Anchorage Election Chief, Talks About The Election

OK, Lupe's official title used to be Municipal Deputy Clerk, in charge of running Municipal Elections and Budget Liaison, but that's too long for the title.  I first became aware of Lupe when she went to extraordinary lengths to make sure that we were able to fax our ballots from Thailand one year.  The time difference between Thailand and here meant we were faxing late at night and she was in the office at 6am to make sure it worked.

So, given the controversy over the recent election and the lack of ballots for some voters, I thought that it would be helpful to get some technical points clarified by someone who knows how this is supposed to work.  The video is long.  Almost 20 minutes.  I decided not to edit it, but rather to leave it all there and not decide for you what is important and what is not.  There are some breaks where I stopped the video and then started again.  Mainly I didn't want to have such long sections that take forever to download.  And sometimes we chatted while the camera was off.  But everything I videoed is there, even the part where she suggests I cut it because she didn't know the answer.  She's agreed that can stay in.  

Here's what I got out of the interview.

• There should have been a lot more ballots sent out to the polling places.  Lupe said when she used to do it, she'd look back three to six years and figured the highest turnout then add some more ballots for each polling place.  The highest turnout in the last two mayoral election was 35% in 2006.  If they had sent that many ballots out, there probably wouldn't have been a problem since only about 27% of voters went to the polling places to vote on Tuesday.
• While the folks that came to register and then vote or who weren't Anchorage residents because of Minnery's email, while problematic in their own right, were not the reason the polling places ran out of ballots.  She estimated that Minnery's email wouldn't have gotten more than about 300 people to the polling places.  We did the interview on Tuesday and Wednesday's Anchorage Daily News said there were 609 rejected ballots compared to 63 in the last mayoral election.  So that's a little higher than her estimate, but not enough to run out of ballots if they had enough to cover 35%.  There were 5,756 questioned ballots, three times, the number in 2009.  These include people who go to the wrong polling place.  But if half of the extra challenged ballots were the result of Minnery's email, the impact was higher than Lupe estimated, but still well under the 35% range of the 2006 election that they should have planned for. (Since there are about 204,000 registered voters, 1% would be about 2000 people. So even 4000 more people showing up would still only be in the 28 or 29% range.)
• There used to be two boards that monitored the elections. 
• The  Accuvote Testing Board which is made up of people working at the polls who test ballots to see if the machine counts them right.
• The Data Processing Review Board - this board has been eliminated.  They used to test the machines before and after the election.  They also sealed the cards into place to prevent tamperingl.  Now one of the issues is that the seal was broken on a number of the ballot boxes.    I did ask if there were ever any problems when they tested the boxes and she said no.  Maybe that's why the Board was eliminated.  But it seems that this is so fundamental to democracy that it's worth it to test.
• There's two kinds of programming
• The Deputy Clerk in charge of elections programs each ballot box.  What this means is that she punches in information about what will be on the ballots for that particular polling place.  Different polling places have different candidates and issues on the ballots, so each box has to be programmed separately.
• There is also programming of the card which enables it to accept the data from the Deputy Clerk and also tells it how to count the ballots.  Lupe was not involved with this part, but this is the part that would seem to be the most invisible and be most vulnerable to someone with good IT skills tampering.  
• Because Anchorage does not use touch screens and we have paper ballots, if there are questions, the ballots can be counted.
• This is probably an ideal time to have an investigation.
• Because none of the races is close, the investigation is unlikely to impact any race, so the pressure to impact a race will not be a factor in the investigation.  Unless things are much worse than I suspect.  

I would also mention that in some of our conversation when the video camera was not on, Lupe expressed respect for the professionalism with which the Municipal Clerk Barbara Gruenstein does her job.  My own limited experience with Barbara over the years has also been very positive.

Note:  I've used Viddler's onscreen comment feature to try to mark where I asked different questions.  Roll over the little white dots on the bottom of the screen to see where different questions were asked.  I'm afraid I was a little incoherent in some questions. 

The Myth of the Big Election Turnout

Tuesday night at Election Central as the stories of people being turned away from the polls were told, people were also talking about 'the big turnout.'

That didn't explain, for me, how that would have affected things.  After all, they are required, as I pointed out in the previous post, to have enough ballots to take care of a 70% turnout.  Normal turnouts for Municipal elections range from low 20% range to the mid 30% range.  The numbers on the election results from last night show turnout at 26.82%.

Registered Voters 204838 - Cards Cast 54946 26.82%
Num. Report Precinct 121 - Num. Reporting 118 97.52%

 So, they had 54,946 people vote.  70% of registered voters (204,838) would have been 143,386 ballots.  If they had that many ballots ready, even if 20,000 unregistered voters showed up, that shouldn't have put any strain on their supply of ballots.  But people kept talking about high turnout.

The Anchorage Daily News has a story titled "Voter turnout creates ballot shortage" and quotes Municipal Clerk, Barbara Gruenstein:

"An "unprecedented number of voters" caused the shortage, she said."

 The Clerk is a sharp lady so maybe I'm missing something, but here are the voter turnouts as I could figure them for the last Municipal elections going back to 2006.  I got the numbers for the past election years from the Municipal Clerk's Website:  Election History/Past Election Results.  I got this year's numbers from this year's election results page. 

	# of Voters	% of Registered V's
2006 Mayoral	70,859	35.18%
2007 Assembly	62,071	32.13%
2008 Assembly	46,850	23.36%
2009 Mayoral	58,714	29.92%
2010 Assembly	39,096	19.42%
2011 Assembly	45,200	22.9%
2012 Mayoral	54,946	26.82%

HTML Tables

[UPDATE April 23:  The total number of ballots listed in the April 20, 2012 Election Summary Report is 71,099.  That comes out to 240 more votes than the 2006 election.  So this was a 'big' turn out by Municipal election standards, but only barely higher than the second highest count two mayoral elections back.]

 The numbers are as of 11:48 pm Tuesday night, 118 out of 121 precincts reporting.
Even if 10,000 more votes were outstanding, this year's total would not be a record in either total number or percentage of voters.  Is there something I'm missing? 

As it stands, the turnout is less than the previous two mayoral elections.

What makes more sense, if lots of unregistered folks showed up, was that they ran out of questioned ballots.  There were stories of people crossing out the Sample on the Sample ballots and using them.  But there should still have been a lot of back up regular ballots. 

Yesterday's Election Shenanigans

I was tired last night and not in a particularly good mood. So even though there was conflicting information I didn't pursue it.  But Mel at Bent Alaska covers it in detail and the story is going to be disturbing. From Bent:

"Yesterday, we reported that an administrator of Jim Minnery’s Protect Your Rights – Vote NO on 5 Facebook page posted the following notice: Attention Young People or First Time Voters – YOU CAN REGISTER AND VOTE AT THE SAME LOCATION TODAY !! It is super easy. Take a few minutes TODAY and stop by a polling station, register to vote (all you need is your AK driver’s license) and cast a NO Vote on Prop. 5. We really need you to vote. Tell at least 3 of your friends how easy it is."

As soon as I heard that there was a rush of people to the polls and they ran out of ballots,  I began to suspect that this was an intentional attempt disrupt the elections.

Mel's post makes it clear that the "Protect Your Rights" folks knew full well that the information was false.  They'd sent an earlier email out to their list telling people exactly when the registration deadline was. Is it possible the person who did the FB page and the email acted alone and didn't know about the deadline?  Not likely.  



The generally conservative - but with straightforward local political reporting - blog Alaska Pride (no, not gay pride) had this headline March 28:

Dittman Poll Shows 50 Percent Support Anchorage Proposition 5 Vs. 41 Percent Opposed; One Anchorage Got An Earlier Start, More Money, And Remained Civil

 Let's go back to 2009 when the Anchorage Municipal Assembly had hearings on an ordinance that would have done the same thing this ballot initiative tried to do.

Mayor Mark Begich had resigned to take his US Senate seat and liberal Assembly Chair Matt Claman assumed his job as Acting Mayor until the Municipal election in April, when he was defeated by current Mayor Dan Sullivan.  The new mayor doesn't take office until July 1.  There were enough votes to pass the ordinance on the Assembly, but Minnery and his Anchorage Baptist Church friends flooded the Assembly with people to speak against the ordinance - including busing people from outside of Anchorage.  Assembly chair Debbie Ossiander ruled that everyone could talk, even people from outside of Anchorage.  This strategy worked to delay passage of the ordinance for weeks, long enough that Mayor Sullivan took office and then vetoed it.

The liberals were outsmarted in terms of strategy.  And while busing in people from outside the city and getting the Assembly chair to let them speak pushes the limits of fair play, there is a long tradition of using the rules to thwart your opponents.  It tends to be ok if your side does it, but not if the other side does it. 

But telling people to go to the polling place to register, knowing they had to register 30 days earlier, in an attempt to disrupt the election crosses the line for me because it resulted in legitimate voters not being able to vote.  Clearly it's in the dirty tricks category.  But the First Amendment allows people to lie in most circumstances.

Assuming then they were intentionally getting unregistered people to the polls, what was their goal? 

If the anti-Prop 5 folks read the polling data that said Prop 5 was ahead 50% to 41%,  perhaps they decided to cause enough irregularities at the polls to challenge the election if they lost.  I don't know.  Now that they've won,  what will the Prop 5 folks do?  It would seem that even with a challenge, they are too far behind to get enough votes to win.  I'd emphasize the word seem.  I'm sure there are other possible scenarios. 

It's clear, to me anyway, that Minnery's group's Facebook post and emails were intended to get unregistered voters to the polling places to ask to register and then vote, which Minnery knew they were not entitled to do.  He couldn't help but know that this would disrupt the election process by diverting the attention of the voting officials from helping qualified voters.  And that it would increase the number of challenged vote ballots needed way beyond the normal level.  What his reasons for doing this were and what all the consequences were, we don't know.  Was he hoping to establish a grounds for challenging the election if they lost, which the Dittman poll suggested?

Of course, it also raises the question of how the Dittman poll could be so far off.  Last week it was 50% to 41% in favor.  And this week it is 58% to 41% against.  That is a HUGE margin of error.  Was Dittman really that far off?  Or is the vote count off?

I'd note that the ADN reported Tuesday that "More than 3,800 people had already voted at Loussac Library, City Hall or Chugiak Senior Center through Sunday . . . [and a]nother 2,675 people had requested absentee ballots. . ."   The absentee ballots have not been counted yet, nor, I believe, have the early votes.    But if 2,000 of the absentees actually send in their ballots, the total outstanding would only be about 5800 or 9.5%. 

Again, I encourage you to look at Bent Alaska's post on this.

Anchorage Mayor Wins, Gay Rights Lose, And Not Enough Ballots

Not all the votes were in when I left election central at the Denaina Center, but the numbers were pretty clear in most of the races.  But the big topic was that - this is all based on rumor, though I did talk to both mayoral candidates and an assembly member - about 17 -20 precincts ran out of ballots.

The Municipal Code requires that

"For each regular and special election, the municipal clerk shall ensure that ballots are prepared for at least 70 percent of the registered voters within each precinct to present all candidates and propositions to the voters."28.40.010 B

And turnout was significantly lower than that.   I talked with Mayoral Candidate Paul Honeman but didn't get his comments about the balloting on video.  It was not yet 9pm, but already he was significantly behind.



A bit later I talked to the Mayor.


 And finally I spoke to Assembly Member Dick Traini.

Scared Of Men In Dresses, Again

Anchorage folks, just go vote yes on Prop. 5.  Today. I'm tired of people using their gods to persecute other human beings.  A fanatic Jerry Prevo has fought against gay rights in Anchorage - just to keep a job or apartment, we're not even talking partnerships - here for far too long.

I heard about a Dittman poll on the radio yesterday saying Sullivan was ahead 57% to 30something% for mayor, but Prop 5 was ahead 50% to 42%.  That's promising, but I can imagine some people saying:  "Well Sullivan's in but Prop 5 will win, so I don't have to vote."

Don't you believe it.  I wouldn't be surprised if they put those numbers out there to keep people away from the polls.  "Your vote won't matter anyway, so why bother?"  NOT TRUE.  They certainly haven't given up.  There were big media buys for the weekend and Anti-5 people were on a bunch of corners on Monday already.  In force.

This year they've brought men in dresses back into their scare tactics as well as the idea that Prop. 5 would take away people's religious rights.  I don't recall any religious practices that require Christians to turn gays away from their rental property or workplace.  Where does it say, "Thou shall not rent to gays"?   It doesn't.  Instead it says repeatedly to be good to strangers - in the Old and New Testaments.  No one is saying that Prevo can't spew his hate in his church.  Or that people can't pray anyway they like  Just that they can't use their religion to keep gays from working at their businesses or renting their apartments.  And if it's a fourplex or smaller, it doesn't apply to you.  They can even boycott businesses with gay employees.  So chill.  Can someone say, "I won't rent to you because you eat pork and shellfish, which is prohibited in the bible"?  Of course not.   It does say to love your neighbor though. 

I'm really depressed that so many people are so ignorant and so personally needy that they have to lash out against others to make themselves feel better. [Is that a gross generalization?  Maybe, but surely it applies to many of these frightened individuals.]  Slavery and then segregation were also defended with the bible.  At least we aren't fighting a civil war over this.

We need to step back.  Breathe deep.  Each take responsibility to make sure three other people go vote yes on 5, and approach this with a little humor.  So I'm reposting a piece I put up last time Anchorage battled over this.  Enjoy.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Men Jerry Prevo Would Ban from Anchorage Schools

[Note: The pictures in this post are NOT mine. To see the source of the picture, click on the picture. UPDATE:  Not all of them still work three years later.]

In his ADN letter opposing the addition of "sexual orientation" to Anchorage's anti-discrimination ordinance, Reverend Jerry Provo wrote:

Maybe, worst of all, this ordinance would allow a man who teaches a second grade class or any grade to show up as a woman in the classroom and the School District could do nothing because of this ordinance.

I confess that I laughed when I read this letter last Friday. Phil had an overview of some of the blogs that showed how each point in the letter was dead wrong. The letter is ludicrous. His biggest worry was about men dressing like women. Where are his public crusades against drunk drivers? Against redlight runners? Against heterosexual adulterers? It seems to me that murder and adultery are both prohibited in the Ten Commandments, not in some obscure passage in Deuteronomy along with other obscure prohibitions that we no longer observe. After all, what is the big deal about men who want to dress like women?

Men have a long tradition of wearing clothes that are more like women's clothes than than the "pants of the family" we associate with men in the US.

Religious men, particularly, seem to like to wear gown like clothing. Probably foremost is the Pope who wears some of the most elaborate clothing of anyone in the world. But this trend of dressing in garments more like women's clothing isn't confined to Catholics. Protestants also find this appropriate for the leadership.






Like these Episcopalians.
















And Russian  Orthodox.









Muslims clerics don't wear trousers either.

Nor Buddhist monks. They wear robes.

Nor Hindu priests

Even rabbis.

All the religious leaders I know of are also considered teachers. Would Rev. Prevo protest any of these people teaching in an Anchorage school wearing their work clothes? (I know some people are thinking "separation of church and state," but it's ok. If they are teaching ABOUT their faith and NOT teaching their faith, it's ok. And most such religious leaders also have expertise in other areas they might teach.)

And it's not just religious leaders who wear clothing that would be more closely associated with women than men.

Surgeons wear gowns at work.

And academics also have a tradition of wearing gowns. Even our former President whom Rev. Prevo supported so strongly.






And would Rev. Prevo prevent these two gentlemen from coming to class dressed this way to talk about Scotland?


OK, these men aren't exactly dressed as women, but my assertion that what they wear is more like women's garments than men's is much closer to the truth than Prevo's various assertions about the 'horrible' things that would happen if the ordinance passed.

And what should we do about all the women teachers who come to school already wearing pants? Prevo doesn't raise this 'serious' problem. My belief is that in our society it's less of a problem for a woman to dress like a man, because it's natural for people to want to be mistaken for the people who have the most power. But it seems perverted, to some people, for people with power, to try to be like those with less power. So men shouldn't dress like women. It's giving away their male based privilege.

Sorry I can't let go of this quite yet. I suspect Prevo knows this is ludicrous, and he probably knows that those who introduced the ordinance did so because they think they have the votes to pass it. Last December, Frank Schaeffer was interviewed on National Public Radio. You can hear the interview at the link. From the NPR page:

Frank Schaeffer's parents, Francis and Edith, were best-selling authors who were instrumental in linking the evangelical community with the anti-abortion movement.

But after coming of age as an evangelist and helping to organize religious fundamentalists politically, Schaeffer had a crisis of faith: Though he is pro-life, he decided that abortion should remain legal.

One of the things he says in the interview is that abortion and gay issues were no big deal with his father when Frank (the son) was little. They became big issues for evangelicals because whenever they talked about them, they got lots and lots of donations.

So, I'm guessing that Prevo has a knee jerk reaction to the word 'gay'. It's less about stopping the ordinance than it's about raising money. This letter isn't aimed at the vast majority of people in Anchorage. It's far too silly. It's aimed at the rabidly ignorant who will open their wallets to fight the 'perverts.' So when Prevo writes:

It would allow any man to dress like a woman and use any public women's restroom. Ladies, do you want that to happen?

it's to alarm those folks, who don't think, into supporting Prevo's high lifestyle.

Of course, thinkers would shake their heads in disbelief. What's to stop men from dressing up as women now and going into women's bathrooms? The law? It's illegal to go through red lights, to litter, to beat up women, yet people do these things every day. And when the ordinance has passed and is law, I promise you that it won't prevent the police from arresting men who dress as women in order to get into women's restrooms.

First, the ordinance says:  [April 3, 2012: it's basically the same this time around]

The assembly finds that invidious discrimination in the sale or rental of real
property, financing practices, employment practices, public accommodations, educational institutions, and practices of the municipality, based upon race, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, marital status, age, veteran’s status, or physical or mental disability, adversely affects the welfare of the community. Accordingly, such discrimination is prohibited.

Only the bold is new language. It is already illegal based on sex. So using Prevo's logic, men already can't be prevented from using the women's room. But simple practical logic tells us that since men already have an equal, alternative place to wash their hands, they aren't being discriminated against. In fact at big events, the lines are usually longer at the women's restrooms, not the men's. Sexual orientation doesn't change the fact that gay men are still men. So the same logic that applies to "sex" will apply to "sexual orientation." If it didn't happen when 'sex' became a protected class, it won't happen now.

Second, even if the ordinance did what Prevo asserts, the sexual orientation clause wouldn't save men who dress up as women to get into the women's room. Why not? Simple. Gay men aren't sexually interested in women. It is only straight men who would try to see women's private parts exposed. And they couldn't claim they were being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation.

There is one serious issue here though. Transgender folks. Despite what we've been taught, the distinction between men and women is not as clear cut as we tend to believe. This topic is far too complicated to start after I've already written so much here. My advice is for people to read Eugenides' Middlesex. Wikipedia says:

Middlesex is a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. It was published in 2002 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003.
The narrator and protagonist, Calliope Stephanides (later called "Cal"), an intersexed person of Greek descent, has 5-alpha-reductase deficiency. The bulk of the novel is devoted to telling his coming-of-age story growing up in Detroit, Michigan in the late 20th century.

I'm not an expert on this topic, but this novel gives at least one view of the topic in a way that makes the issue understandable to people who otherwise might dismiss people having a sex change as crazy. And it is a well written and interesting story. I would say this is the easiest way to get a good understanding of the topic.

I raise this because there are people who, as they are transitioning from one gender to another, will be using new restrooms. (I notice that Prevo isn't worried about women coming into men's rooms.) If someone reads Middlesex, and their mind isn't totally shut down, they will understand that these people pose no threat at all to women in the restroom.

I'm not satisfied with what I've found on the topic online for those who want to know more, but are not ready to get Middlesex from the library. Here's the Mayo Clinic's take on ambiguous genitalia.

4% of Voting Eligible Tennesseans Vote for Santorum - Some Context of a Primary

From the State of Tennessee's website tonight: 

President - Republican
Michele Bachmann - R	1,790
Newt Gingrich - R	126,251
Jon Huntsman - R	1,143
Gary Johnson - R	542
Ron Paul - R	47,794
Rick Perry - R	1,829
Charles "Buddy" Roemer - R	830
Mitt Romney - R	144,237
Rick Santorum - R	192,765

President - Democratic
Barack Obama - D	68,221

Adding those all up we come up with 585,402 voters in both the Republican and Democratic primaries.


From the United States Election Project website at George Mason University, we learn that Tennessee's voting eligible population  4,621,705.

That means that about 12.6% of Tennessee's voting eligible population voted in Tuesday's primary.

That means about 4.1% of Tennessee's voting eligible population voted for Santorum.  



Tennessee's voter id law took effect January this year requiring voters to have photo id.  Here's the state of Tennessee's website list of acceptable voter id:

Any of the following IDs may be used, even if expired:

• Tennessee drivers license with your photo
• United States Passport
• Photo ID issued by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security
• Photo ID issued by the federal or any state government
• United States Military photo ID
• State-issued handgun carry permit with your photo

And what id is NOT acceptable?

College student IDs and photo IDs not issued by the federal or a state government are NOT acceptable.

And who is exempt from the photo id requirement?

• Voters who vote absentee by mail (view requirements here)
• Voters who are residents of a licensed nursing home or assisted living center and who vote at the facility         
• Voters who are hospitalized
• Voters with a religious objection to being photographed*
• Voters who are indigent and unable to obtain a photo ID without paying a fee

 You might want to go through that list and ask yourself which of the id's that are acceptable are more likely to vote conservative or liberal (say, people with military id's or student id's;  older folks - nursing homes, hospitalized - or younger folks?)

And consider how someone might prove they are indigent.  Or even how an indigent person might.

By the way, the two PSA announcements - first  and second -  don't tell you much more than you need a photo id.  There's nothing about the exceptions.  Or that student ids aren't acceptable. 

Bradblog has a story about a former US Marine who is challenging the law by showing his Tennessee voter registration card, but refusing to show a photo id.  I'm assuming this is an action intended to lead to a court challenge of the law.  I think the challenge is important, but I'm not too impressed with this particular person's video taped protest in his polling place. 

I'm not sure what this all means, but I'm wondering why the media have been making such a big deal out of the primaries and giving them so much coverage without pointing out the pitifully low voter turnout and questioning people's claims about the importance of democracy. 

*I'm not doing well looking on Google  for religions that ban photography.  I found a story about an Amish Canadian claiming his religion forbids personal photos and an Islamic woman claiming her religion forbids a photo (for a drivers license) without her veil. 

"to be a blessing to every person he puts in our path"

The Los Angeles Times Sunday edition had an article entitled "The religious right bankrolls Santorum."

"The faith component that Rick and I share is that we know that we're here to be a channel of God's love to others, his hands and feet in a hurting world, and to be a blessing to every person he puts in our path"

This is from Foster Friess, "a retired mutual fund executive based in Wyoming, [who] gave $300,000 to the superPAC in 2011 . . . He contributed at least $250,000 more in the last month. . . "  Some of the Fox videos on his website identify him in the title as "Billionaire Foster Friess."


What does one have to believe to say he's a channel of God's love?  To say he's here "to be a blessing to every person he puts in our path?"

How is Santorum a blessing to GLBT folks?  How's he a blessing to a woman whose health is threatened without an abortion?

I try to make such questions more than rhetorical.  Santorum and Friess might say something like, "I'm trying to save them from themselves, show them the error of their ways so they may find everlasting peace in heaven."

What sort of view of the world must one have to take that sort of position?  I can think of a few:
1.  Certainty that one is right.
2.  True and unwavering belief in one's interpretation of the bible.
(The first two can easily go hand in hand.)
3.  A Machiavellian cunning that allows one to use people's faith in God to manipulate them with words from their holy book.

I'm sure there are more possibilities.  I'm eager to hear them.

It's possibile that  Friess and Santorum really believe that they channel God's word.  And people on the other side of the religio/political spectrum feel they are as right about their positions as these two.

Who is Foster Friess? 

The website that bears his names lists a few "key issues":

Government

Promoting the principles of limited government and exposing the burdens of excessive regulation that stifle American ingenuity, creativity, and enterprise

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 33

You can see Hamilton's words in context here. He appeared to be exasperated with people opposed to clauses in the proposed constitution giving Congress power to

"to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers by that Constitution vested in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof"; and the second clause of the sixth article declares, "that the Constitution and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, and the treaties made by their authority shall be the supreme law of the land, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

Hamilton, of course, argued for a strong federal government.   From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Though fully conscious that monarchy in America was impossible, he wished to obtain the next best solution in an aristocratic, strongly centralized, coercive, but representative union, with devices to give weight to the influence of class and property.^[8]

Most of the key issues listed on the site - education, climate change, health care - can be solved, the site says, via the free market.  Immigration needs the borders protected - they don't mention the private sector, but neither is government mentioned for this one.  Helping Peaceful Muslims is another of the key issues. (Think Progress says Friess has funded a number of Islamophobic organizations.)  Nothing about the economy.  But there is a final one:

Enduring Values

Combating the negativity in our culture with uplifting, inspiring stories reminding us of the best American principles

As the great political philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to America’s own Founding Fathers have observed, democracy very quickly turns to tyranny when the people are not generally virtuous. To defend our system of ordered liberty, we must always be vigilant, and we must always strive to strengthen our culture, or our free society will be overtaken by government.

(At left) George Washington at prayer.

How did the Friess funded Red, White, and Blue Super Pact add to combating negativity in the Florida Republican primary and the last three caucuses?

I searched his website for "Koch" but nothing was found.

Alternet reports a Koch brothers conference in Palm Springs two weeks ago where the whole  550 room  Esmerelda Renaissance was rented for the private event and connects Friess with the Koch brothers:

A private plane owned by wealthy mutual fund manager Foster Friess flew to the area the morning of the conference, and left the day it ended. Friess is a social conservative who has gained headlines recently for his massive backing of a super-PAC supporting Rick Santorum. He has also attended the Koch meeting in the past.

 The Foster Friess website also has a video of Friess accepting the Paul Weyrich Award.

The award honors Paul Weyrich, who, according to Wikipedia, was a co-founder, with Coors funding, of the Heritage Foundation and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress which,

was among the first grassroots organizations to raise funds extensively through direct mail campaigns. It also was one of the first organizations to tap into evangelical Christian churches as places to recruit and cultivate activists and support for social conservative causes. In 1977, Weyrich co-founded Christian Voice with Robert Grant. Two years later, with Jerry Falwell, he founded the Moral Majority. Weyrich coined the phrase "Moral Majority".^[8]

And

Over the next two decades, Weyrich founded, co-founded, or held prominent roles in a number of other notable conservative organizations. Among them, he was founder of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization of state legislators [and heavily funded by the Koch brothers]; a co-founder of the Council for National Policy, a strategy-formulating organization for social conservatives; co-publisher of the magazine Conservative Digest; and national chairman of Coalitions for America, an association of conservative activist organizations. The CSFC, reorganized into the Free Congress Foundation, also remained active.

Weyrich died in 2008, but Friess is alive and active.

Aside:  From the moment I saw the name Foster Friess, I couldn't help think about an ice cream cone.  So when I finished writing this I googled Foster Freeze.  And sure enough, there was the company that was around my California childhood all along.  And it's still around, one not far from my mom's place.  So I got on my bike to add a photo to this post.

When Was the Last Presidential Nominee Decided At A Convention? Will It Happen Again This Year?

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/pan.6a27874/

On July 14, 1960, a school friend and I sat way up in the highest section (black arrow) of the Los Angeles Sports Arena watching Lyndon B. Johnson get nominated as John F. Kennedy's vice presidential running mate.   Only the day before, had Kennedy clinched the nomination in the first vote with 52% of the votes.

Presidential candidates used to be chosen at conventions. The process for picking them was pretty murky.  From Wikipedia:

Conventions were often heated affairs, playing a vital role in deciding who would be the nominee. The process remained far from democratic or transparent, however. The party convention was a scene of intrigue among political bosses, who appointed and otherwise controlled nearly all of the delegates. Winning a nomination involved intensive negotiations and multiple votes; the 1924 Democratic National Convention required a record 103 ballots to nominate John W. Davis. The term dark horse candidate was coined at the 1844 Democratic National Convention, at which little-known Tennessee politician James K. Polk emerged as the candidate after the failure of the leading candidates - former President Martin Van Buren and Senator Lewis Cass - to secure the necessary two thirds majority.

Primaries didn't replace conventions until recently.

A few, mostly Western states adopted primary elections in the late 19th century and during the Progressive Era, but the catalyst for their widespread adoption came during the election of 1968. The Vietnam War energized a large number of supporters of anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, but they had no say in the matter. Vice President Hubert Humphrey—associated with the unpopular administration of Lyndon B. Johnson—did not compete in a single primary, yet controlled enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. This proved one of several factors behind rioting which broke out at the convention in Chicago.

Media images of the event—angry mobs facing down police—damaged the image of the Democratic Party, which appointed a commission headed by George McGovern to select a new, less controversial method of choosing nominees. The McGovern–Fraser Commission settled on the primary election, adopted by the Democratic National Committee in 1968. The Republicans adopted the primary as their preferred method in 1972. Henceforth, candidates would be given convention delegates based on their performance in primaries, and these delegates were bound to vote for their candidate.

As a result, the major party presidential nominating convention has lost almost all of its old drama. The last attempt to release delegates from their candidates came in 1980, when Senator Ted Kennedy sought the votes of delegates held by incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. The last major party convention whose outcome was in doubt was the 1976 Republican National Convention, when former California Governor Ronald Reagan nearly won the nomination away from the incumbent, Gerald Ford.

So, it's only 30 some years since the last time the nomination was decided at a convention.  Recent conventions have been more like coronations for the party nominees and a public relations opportunity for the parties to show their candidates in the best possible light to the world.  1976 convention clips begin this C-Span program which includes discussion with supporters of both Ford and Reagan.



2012 Republican Primary Race

But today the majority of the Republican Party appears decidedly unenthusiastic about any one of its candidates.  There are passionate supporters for some, but not enough for any one candidate.  The more establishment members of the party seem to be reluctantly supporting Mitt Romney, but there's little enthusiasm.  I get the sense that he's the pick only because they see the other candidates as worse but they'd love a sexier candidate.

A few folks have begun to talk about new candidates still coming into the race, which seems to be technically more feasible than in 2008.  The Republican Party changed the rules of the primary last year to make the votes from the early primaries proportionate to how many votes each candidate received.  Only after March 31  can a state have a winner-take-all primary. 

From Wikipedia's page on the Republican Presidential Primaries 2012:

Under this plan, elections for delegates to the national convention were to be divided into three periods:

• February 1 – March 5, 2012: Contests of traditional early states Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina
• March 6 – March 31, 2012: Contests that proportionally allocate delegates
• April 1, 2012 and onward: All other contests including winner-take-all elections

By the fall of 2011, several states scheduled contests contravening this plan, pushing the primary calendar into January. These contests are in violation of RNC rules, with New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and Michigan set to be penalized with a loss of half of their delegates. As they are holding non-binding caucuses, Iowa, Colorado, Maine and Minnesota will not be automatically penalized, as their contests to bind national delegates are made later.

 The total number of delegates to the Republican National Convention is about 2282.  I can't find total agreement out there - Sabato says 2282, but Green Papers says 2286.  And the Christian Science Monitor says 2422. The calculation is complicated because states get more delegates if their Senators or Governors, or more than 50% of their Congressional delegation, are Republicans.  If the state legislature is Republican, that also changes the count. [The Green Papers site gives all the details of how this works, plus a link to a pdf of the Republican rules.]

As mentioned above, delegates from states with primaries before April must vote proportionally (no winner-take-all) at the convention.  And states can be penalized with the loss of 50% of their votes for having primaries before March, I think. This gets confusing.  In any case March 6 is the first Tuesday in March 2012, which will be Super Tuesday, with 10 states holding primaries or caucuses.  The point is that they've attempted to use these penalties to keep states from moving to earlier dates on the calendar.  Salon gives Missouri as an example of how this changes things from 2008:

The mathematical implications are stark. Take Missouri, for example, which votes on March 17, 2012, meaning its delegate will be allocated proportionally. Back in 2008, Missouri was winner-take-all. On the GOP side, John McCain edged Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney in a tight three-way contest, 33 percent to 32 percent to 29 percent. Despite the narrow win, McCain took all 58 of Missouri’s delegates.

Fast forward to 2012. If  Mitt Romney performs as well in Missouri as McCain did in 2008, a big if, he would gain fewer than 20 delegates from the state. More to the point, the candidates collectively known as “Not Mitt Romney” would gain 38, making Not Mitt Romney the big winner.

In any case, a winning candidate has to have a majority of committed delegates going into the convention.   From National Review via CBS:

Even if a dark horse couldn't win enough delegates to win the nomination, he could win enough to prevent his competitors from winning. "I think that a contested convention is a distinct possibility," admits Bopp [Committeeman for Indiana.] "I think the RNC is carefully thinking about that prospect and what needs to be done by the RNC to make sure that the convention is successful."

Late entrants into the race are also faced with issues about qualifying for the primary.  Virginia, apparently has  particularly difficult qualifying hurdles.   But a candidate who comes into the race late and does well in a few of the late primaries, and who looks more electable than the other candidates, might be able to start pulling votes from other candidates if no one wins the first ballot.

I'm still not clear to what extent delegates are bound to honor the results of the primary voters. Fair Vote argues:

As set out in the Rules of the Republican Party, delegates have the ability to vote according to the delegates’ preference, even if that is contrary to the outcome of each state’s primary. According to one source, the legal counsel for the Republican National Convention in 2008 stated: “[The] RNC does not recognize a state’s binding of national delegates, but considers each delegate a free agent who can vote for whoever they choose.” Thus, if a delegate were to challenge his or her ability to vote as a free agent, he or she would have grounds under Rule 38.

 Looking in the Rules of the Republican Party I find this:

RULE NO. 38
Unit Rule

No delegate or alternate delegate shall be bound by any attempt of any state or Congressional district to impose the unit rule.

But the National Review via CBS suggests differently:

The RNC no longer allows unpledged delegates, [new Gingrich consultant Craig] Shirley says, but delegates aren't required to vote for their designated candidate beyond the first ballot. If no candidate wins the nomination on the first ballot, the convention would no longer be constrained by the primary results; it could nominate whomever it wanted.

The Democrats had a rough and tumble primary last year, but in the end, Obama gained lots of debate experience for the race against McCain.  The one candidate in 2008 who hadn't been tested by the primaries was the Republican vice presidential nominee.  This might be a lesson for Republicans to heed in 1012 if there are viable convention candidates who were not tested in the primaries.  But could they resist a Jeb Bush candidacy?