Funny numbers

[ProSense]

After reading the article posted here, I decided to check the 2004 results. The counties are in NJ District 2 and the House Rep is a Republican, as pointed out in the article. What's interesting is this from the same article:

Democrats running on top of the ballot in Atlantic County generally outpace their GOP rivals. Jon Corzine got 52.6% of the vote in Atlantic County, besting Republican Doug Forrester by nearly ten percent. John Kerry and Sen. Frank Lautenberg both carried Atlantic County in their most recent bids, as well.

Downballot, however, Republicans had usually dominated. The GOP had controlled the Atlantic County Freeholder Board since its inception in 1975 and have run the office of County Executive since 1984. Up until last year, Republicans had only lost two Assembly races in the last 20 years: once in 1989 when Democrat Fred Scerni defeated incumbent Republican J. Edward Kline, and again in 1993, when then-Freeholder Tom Foley defeated Assemblyman Frederick Nickles - both while Jim Florio was winning the county in landslide victories over both Jim Courter and Christie Whitman.

Republicans reclaimed both seats after just one term.

Last year was another banner year for Atlantic County Democrats. Democrat Alisa Beth Cooper picked up an at-large Freeholder seat for her party, while Democrat Jim Carney won his race to become the first Democratic Surrogate for Atlantic County in at least thirty years.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=273&topic_id=64333&mesg_id=64423

What’s even more interesting is how Bush’s numbers jumped in a few of these counties (note Burlington and Glouchester):

Atlantic
Kerry 55,746
Bush 49,487

Gore 52,880
Bush 35,593

Corzine 34,539
Forrester 28,004

Burlington
Kerry 110,411
Bush 95,936

Gore 99,506
Bush 72,254

Corzine 64,421
Forrester 57,908


Cape May
Bush 28,832
Kerry 21,475

Gore 22,189
Bush 23,794

Corzine 14,375
Forrester 16,179


Cumberland
Kerry 27,875
Bush 24,362

Gore 28,188
Bush 18,882

Corzine 18,580
Forrester 12,692


Glouchester
Kerry 66,835
Bush 60,033

Gore 61,095
Bush 42,315

Corzine 41,128
Forrester 33,225


Salem
Bush 15,721
Kerry 13,749

Gore 13,718
Bush 12,257

Corzine 10,057
Forrester 9,608



2004 by county (pres)
http://www.state.nj.us/lps/elections/2004gen_results/official_04_gen_pres_results.pdf

2000 by county (pres)
http://www.state.nj.us/lps/elections/elec2000/results/2000g_p_state_sum_candidate_tally.html

2005 by county (Gov)
http://www.state.nj.us/lps/elections/2005results/05_generalelection/2005_Official_General_Election-Governor_tallies.pdf

[blm]

1. That IS interesting and reconfirms my suspicions of national votepadding.

.

[whometense]

2. Democracy Now

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/04/1532218

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: ...There was election fraud -- extensive election fraud in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. But there was also election fraud throughout the nation, places as different as West Virginia, Oregon, Montana, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Jersey, even in solidly Democratic states. There seemed to be a general program of doing everything possible, using the broadest possible array of tactics, to cut down the Kerry vote and to hype or pad the Bush vote, and this even extended to the expatriate vote...

...Now, I enjoy faulting political operatives for running idiotic campaigns. You know, it’s kind of gratifying. It’s cathartic, but let's not be misled by this. The fact is that even though he ran a bad campaign, Bush had been running a far worse presidency, and the American people had had enough of that. I don't – you know, I'm not a Democrat, as I say, and I'm not at the moment much of an admirer of Senator Kerry, but the fact is that this was an anti-Bush vote, and it’s extremely important, because Bush represents the antithesis of democracy.

Bolding mine. MCM is not my favorite person in the world, but I do believe what he says in that first paragraph to be true.

[ProSense]

3. Info about the man Bush appointed to the EAC, resigned after election

Hmmmm! He was named in a big Republican scandal in NJ.

Snip...

Former Chairman of the EAC was DeForest Soaries Jr a Baptist minister, and a Republican who was former New Jersey Secretary of State under then-Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who claimed that critics are blowing problems with electronic voting machines out of proportion (as quoted by The Washington Post on February 17, 2004: "We have some flaws, but the truth is that the error rates are very small, with all technologies. Legislators are proposing solutions to a problem that doesn't exist. They're talking about 'What if?' scenarios.") <1> (http://enight.dos.state.fl.us/dreinfo/washingtonpost.pdf) (pdf)

"We're a very diverse commission," Soaries told The Washington Post. "We have a Hispanic lawyer, an Italian administrator, an African American executive and a Baptist preacher."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Election_Assistance_Commission

Snip...

Equally glaring but less well-known, Madsen said, is Dr. DeForest B. Soaries, Jr, the Bush-appointed chairman of the new United States Election Assistance Commission, which was created after Florida’s debacle in 2000. Saories is a partisan Republican with a long history of attacking Democratic candidates and office-holders. When GOP consultant Ed Rollins boasted in the 1993 New Jersey governor’s race electing Christie Todd Whitman that he suppressed the Black vote, Madsen said Rollins was referring to money that he gave Soaries to distribute among Black clergy to discourage turnout. The chairman of the nation’s supposedly unbiased election oversight board also had a role in attacking the former California Secretary of State, Kevin Shelly, who recently resigned under pressure. “We’ve got to get the election process out of the hands of these kinds of firms and these people,” Madsen said.

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1179

More on Soaries:

http://www.eac.gov/soaries.asp?format=none
http://fbcsomerset.com/about/staff/senior.shtml

Snip...

Following the 1992 elections, during a breakfast debriefing, Rollins admitted to journalists that one factor in the success of Christine Todd Whitman in the New Jersey governor's race against incumbent Democrat Jim Florio had been the distribution of "walking around" money to influential persons in inner-city precincts, including African-American pastors.

According to Rollins, workers who had been hired to help get out the Democratic vote were told, "How much have they paid you to do your normal duty? . . . We'll match it. Go home, sit, and watch television." In addition, Rollins said, "We went into black churches and we basically said to ministers who had endorsed Florio, 'Do you have a special project?' And they said, 'We've already endorsed Florio.' And we said, 'That's fine, don't get up on the Sunday pulpit and preach. . . . Don't get up there and say it's your moral obligation that you go out on Tuesday and vote for Jim Florio.'" Ministers who cooperated, Rollins said, received contributions to their "favorite charities." As a result, Rollins said, "I think, to a certain extent, we suppressed their vote."

Subsequently, the Democrats launched a lawsuit as Rollins' comments were alleged to be an admission of illegal behavior. When cross-examined by Democratic attorneys, Rollins claimed that his comments had been no more than part of a "psychological warfare" game he was playing with James Carville, the campaign manager for Whitman's opponent. A federal grand jury investigation proceeded, but eventually the grand jury concluded that no evidence had been presented to show that any laws had been broken.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ed_Rollins

Snip...

On the basis of Rollins's original assertions, the New Jersey Democratic party filed its suit to overturn the election. But it later dropped the effort, saying it would be impossible to prove that vote suppression efforts had altered the outcome. One can only hope that this retreat has not deterred news organizations from investigating vigorously in an effort to solve this New Jersey mystery once and for all.

http://archives.cjr.org/year/94/1/cynicism.asp