Whoops, Santorum Had Enough Signatures After All

I'll let you try to make sense of this. Cindy Mowery, a Republican elections worker in the Marion County voter registration office, initially claimed that Rick Santorum's 7th District petitions lacked the required 500 valid voter signatures. That triggered a slew of challenges being filed against Santorum's candidacy to keep him off the ballot for Indiana's Republican presidential primary. Those challenges are scheduled to be heard today before the Indiana Election Commission. Yesterday, Mowery changed her mind and now says that Santorum had enough valid signatures after all. Sorry, nothing to see here, move along now. Hum.

Great, Romney's Indiana Co-Chairman Gets To Decide If Santorum Will Appear On Indiana's Ballot

The presidential campaign of Mitt Romney orchestrated a challenge to the sufficiency of the petitions filed by the campaign of Rick Santorum and now Romney's Indiana co-chairman, big firm lawyer/lobbyist Dan Dumezich, who chairs the Indiana Elections Commission, will get to decide Santorum's fate. Spoken like a typical lobbyist, Dumezich sees no reason for recusing himself from participating in the case. The Star's Mary Beth Schneider has the story:

Four Hoosier voters have filed challenges seeking to have Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum removed from Indiana's May primary election ballot.

Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, filed his candidacy last week even though he fell eight petition signatures short of meeting Indiana's ballot requirement. To be on Indiana's ballot, Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, as well as state candidates running statewide, must collect the signatures of 500 voters in each of the nine congressional districts. While Santorum's campaign said it collected more than the needed number in each district, Marion County voter registration officials say he fell eight short in the 7th District, which is entirely in Marion County.

Today, four voters -- Jerry Bickle of Columbia City, Philip A. Smith of Indianapolis, Reynaldo M. Farias of Noblesville and Christopher C. Watson of West Lafayette -- each filed challenges with the Indiana Election Division saying Santorum did not meet the state's ballot requirements and should not be on the May 8 ballot . . .

Santorum's fate now will be decided by the four-member Indiana Election Commission. Chairman of the commission is Dan Dumezich, a Schererville attorney who is co-chairman of the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney in Indiana. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, is Santorum's leading competitor to win the Republican nomination.

Romney is on Indiana's ballot, along with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

With the GOP race far from over, Indiana's May primary election -- usually a study in foregone conclusions -- may have significance this year in determining the nomination.

Dumezich said there is no reason for him to recuse himself from the case.

"I can be impartial," Dumezich said. "It doesn't present a problem for me. Of course, if someone wants to argue (that he should step aside) I'd listen to it."

A few weeks back, I pointed out how the presidential campaigns of Romney, Gingrich and Paul all agreed not to challenge the sufficiency of Rick Santorum's petitions to get on the Illinois ballot where his campaign came up way short of the required number of signatures in a number of congressional districts. That was then when Romney's campaign believed it had the Republican nomination sewn up before it had really gotten started. Now that Republican voters have shown a disinclination to coronate the candidate chosen by the New World Order puppeteers who pull the strings every four years to ensure that only the presidential candidates committed to ending American sovereignty and creating a new world government in its place are chosen by the respective major parties.

If you examine where Santorum's problems in Indiana arose it happened right here in Marion County where a Republican election official in the Marion Co. Clerks office, who takes her orders from state party officials, went over the Santorum petitions with a fine tooth comb. Although Santorum submitted more than enough signatures, this election official disqualified the signatures of any Marion County voter on the petitions shown not to reside in the 7th congressional district. A newly-drawn congressional map has reduced the county's representation by four congressional districts to just two. Most of the county lies in the 7th District but a significant area along the northern part of the county lies in the newly-drawn 5th District. Santorum's campaign has been knocked for getting signatures of people within the county who aren't in the new 7th District. The truth is that many of those signatures came from persons who attended the Marion County GOP slating convention, most of whom are precinct committeepersons who should have known whether they lived in the 7th District.

As I've publicly stated before, I'm supporting Ron Paul's campaign. I have no vested interested in seeing Santorum's name appear on the Indiana ballot, but I think it would be a real travesty if Indiana Republican voters were denied a choice of voting for one of the four major candidates still in the race just to make Romney's path to winning the nomination a little more smooth. There are no accusations that Santorum's campaign forged the signatures of voters on their petitions in order to get on the ballot as Barack Obama's campaign did in order to make the ballot in 2008. Four years ago, a political hack for the Democratic Party tried desperately to get John McCain bounced from the Indiana ballot, challenging the sufficiency of the number of signatures his campaign filed.

Frankly, this entire GOP nominating process this year has been one major disappointment starting with the poorly-run Iowa caucus that mispronounced Romney the winner only to later discovery Santorum had actually won it. The party elites have become apoplectic since Gingrich stomped Romney in South Carolina and Santorum scored three wins in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri this past week. Party leaders in Maine likely rigged the vote there this weekend to deny Paul a victory there. Romney's campaign has run a scorched earth campaign against his opponents since the Iowa Caucus, particularly against Paul and Gingrich, probably because the facts prove that he isn't a genuine Republican or conservative and most Republicans can't stand the man. I'm not sure what GOP leaders are trying to accomplish with this election. Defeating Barack Obama certainly doesn't seem to be the end game.

Gingrich Upsets Romney In South Carolina

No sooner had the polls closed in South Carolina than the major news networks called Newt Gingrich the big winner in tonight's critical primary election where 25 delegates are at stake over Mitt Romney, who had led in polls by a wide margin only a week ago. The Palmetto State has a perfect record to date in picking the eventual winner of the Republican nomination. Gingrich captured 40% of the vote to Romney's 28%. Rick Santorum trailed with 17% and Ron Paul finished in fourth place with 13% of the vote. Interestingly, exit polling data showed Gingrich winning big among voters who described themselves as tea party members or evangelical Christians.

Take a deep breath. I don't for one minute think Gingrich will wind up the winner of the Republican nomination. After three tests, Romney, Santorum and Gingrich each have a victory, although Gingrich's win tonight was the largest to date for any of the candidates. In the all important delegate count, Romney is leading narrowly with 31 delegates, followed by Gingrich's 26 delegates, Paul's 10 delegates and Santorum's 8 delegates. The fact remains that, unlike the campaigns of Romney and Paul, Gingrich does not have a campaign organization or money to handle the heavy schedule of upcoming primaries and caucuses. The next primary is in Florida where Romney currently has a big lead, but as we've seen tonight, Romney's support is very soft and can be challenged. Paul and Santorum aren't competitive in Florida, and Paul's campaign says he may skip the state altogether and focus on upcoming caucus votes in Nevada and Minnesota where he believes his chances are better.

Romney still has to be considered the odds on favorite. He has the money and the organization the other campaigns, except Paul, are lacking, which is critical for any candidate to win a drawn out fight for the nomination. Having said that, Paul's campaign has to be very disappointed with his poor fourth place showing tonight. A Republican presidential candidate has to have appeal among southern voters in order to win a general election. His 13% share of the vote in South Carolina suggests he will have a tough road ahead of him in the remaining primaries in the South. What tonight's upset win for Gingrich does is give pause to many prominent Republican leaders about Romney's status as the presumptive nominee. If Gingrich is able to reverse Romney's lead in Florida as he did successfully in South Carolina, then you can expect Republican leaders across the country to view Romney as the nominee with trepidation.

Pundits are already talking about the possibility of a late entrant into the presidential race, but the reality is that it is too late because any candidate entering at this late date has already missed the filing deadline to get on the ballot in many of the upcoming primary elections. What party leaders may hope, instead, is that a drawn out nomination battle may result in no candidate having a majority of the delegates by the time the convention rolls around next summer. Because delegates are being awarded proportionally instead of the winner-take-all rules of past elections, losing candidates can still win delegates as long as they are earning a significant share of the vote in the states in which they are competing. The best hope a late entrant candidate could have is a convention where no candidate has enough delegates to win on the first ballot, in which case the nomination could be opened up to other candidates. It's been a long time since either party produced a nominee through a brokered convention. The Republican Party hasn't had a brokered convention since Thomas Dewey won the nomination in 1948.

Santorum Probably Won Iowa Caucus

This will become one of those footnotes in history, but it's very bothersome considering that it involves the election of a president. It now looks like Rick Santorum and not Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucus. After all the votes were tabulated on election night earlier this month, we were told Romney had pulled off a win over Santorum by about 9 votes. If you were paying close attention at the time, there were indications that tabulating errors were made and that Santorum was the true winner. Nonetheless, Romney has been going about his campaign as the declared winner. New results actually show Santorum the winner by 34 votes. Yet election officials say it can't be certainly declared that he actually won because the vote results from  four eight precincts have turned up missing. It only goes to show that the reliability of elections in this country has improved little, if any, since the 2000 presidential race between Al Gore and George W. Bush that was decided by only a few hundred votes in the state of Florida after the Supreme Court essentially declared the system state officials were using to recount the votes cast on election day so badly flawed that the certified result showing Bush the winner should stand.

Santorum's apparent win in Iowa is an inconvenient fact for the state-run media to absorb. The corporate media giants have already anointed Romney as the GOP candidate to be the fall guy and deliberately throw the 2012 presidential election to Barack Obama, who was never constitutionally eligible to hold the office since he is not a natural born citizen, a convenient fact overlooked by the media and made possible by the abdication by members of the Supreme Court and Congress of their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. By the time this election is over, The One should have solidified his control to the point of declaring the constitution null and void and permanently replaced with his new monarchy and sending members of Congress and the Supreme Court away on a permanent vacation compliments of the citizens subjects of King Barack.

In case you missed it, a foreign company will now control the tabulation of votes cast in U.S. elections.

In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world's dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA's dominant election results reporting company.

When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private corporate site controlled by SOE software, which operates under the name ClarityElections.com.

The good news is that this firm promptly reports precinct-level detail in downloadable spreadsheet format. As reported by BlackBoxVoting.org in 2008, the bad news is that this centralizes one middleman access point for over 525 jurisdictions in AL, AZ, CA, CO, DC, FL, KY, MI, KS, IL, IN, NC, NM, MN, NY, SC, TX, UT, WA. And growing.

As local election results funnel through SOE's servers (typically before they reach the public elsewhere), those who run the computer servers for SOE essentially get "first look" at results and the ability to immediately and privately examine vote details throughout the USA.

In 2004, many Americans were justifiably concerned when, days before the presidential election, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell redirected Ohio election night results through the Tennessee-based server for several national Republican Party operations.

This is worse: This redirects results reporting to a centralized privately held server which is not just for Ohio, but national; not just USA-based, but global. A mitigation against fraud by SOE insiders has been the separation of voting machine systems from the SOE results reports. Because most US jurisdictions require posting evidence of results from each voting machine at the precinct, public citizens can organize to examine these results to compare with SOE results. Black Box Voting spearheaded a national citizen action to videotape / photograph these poll tapes in 2008.

With the merger of SOE and SCYTL, that won't work (if SCYTL's voting system is used). When there are two truly independent sources of information, the public can perform its own "audit" by matching one number against the other.

These two independent sources, however, will now be merged into one single source: an Internet voting system controlled by SCYTL, with a results reporting system also controlled by SCYTL.

With SCYTL internet voting, there will be no ballots. No physical evidence. No chain of custody. No way for the public to authenticate who actually cast the votes, chain of custody, or the count.

SCYTL is moving into or already running elections in: the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, India and Australia.

SCYTL is based in Barcelona; its funding comes from international venture capital funds including Nauta Capital, Balderton Capital and Spinnaker.

Yep, the Republic is dead. Learn to accept the New World Order.

GOP Presidential Candidates Prove They Aren't Cut Throat Like Obama

Barack Obama once told his supporters that if your opponent brings a knife to a fight, you bring a gun. He meant it. Obama won his two elective offices in Illinois prior to running for president by default. When he ran for the state sentate, he hired a team of lawyers to challenge the petitions filed by the long-time respected incumbent, Alice Palmer, and got her, along with every other primary opponent he faced, tossed from the primary election ballot for deficiencies in their petitions. As we now know, Obama's campaign forged its way onto the Indiana ballot. But for hundreds of forged signatures, he would have never made the Indiana ballot in 2008 and could well have lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton as a consequence of that misstep.

When Obama ran for the U.S. Senate, his political guru David Axelrod, former political editor for the Chicago Tribune, convinced his former employer to go to court to get the divorce records of a self-financed candidate polls showed winning the primary race. Damning, but unproven allegations by his ex-wife, contained in the documents sunk his campaign. Facing another self-financed attractive candidate in the general election, Axelrod got his newspaper buddies to unseal that opponent's divorce records containing unproven allegations made by his ex-wife, forcing him to leave the race when party leaders decided they didn't want to even make an attempt to defend the first-time candidate. Obama wound up facing a carpetbagger, loser candidate, Alan Keyes, who even the state GOP chairman refused to support.

It's quite a different story in Illinois today where the Republican presidential candidates faced tough filing requirements in order to make the ballot. Gathering enough signatures to get the candidate's name on the ballot is only half the battle. Each candidate must also field a slate of delegate candidates that run separately in each of the state's 18 congressional districts. The delegate slates in each district  must have a minimum of 600 signatures on their petitions to secure a spot on the ballot in every district statewide. Without the delegate candidates, it makes no difference how many votes a candidate receives in the popular vote. Only the winning delegates pledged to support a chosen candidate get to cast the votes that matter at the national nominating convention. Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich each filed petitions to field a full slate of delegate candidates in the 18 congressional districts. Rick Santorum only managed to file petitions for delegate slates in 14 of the districts, and of the 14, only 4 contained the minimum 600 petition signatures.

So the Republican sharks managing the opposing campaigns could smell the blood in the water. Would they go in for the kill? No. Each of the campaigns reached a pact not to challenge each other's candidate petitions. Santorum's campaign released the following statement:

Leadership from the Romney campaign (Dan Rutherford), Gingrich campaign (Bruce Hansen and Nick Provenzano), Paul campaign (Chris Younce) and Santorum campaign (Al Salvi and Jon Zahm) have agreed today to withdraw all petition challenges in Illinois against one another’s statewide and delegate petitions.

What is it they say? Nice guys finish last. Obama believes it and lives it.

Romney's Big Win In New Hampshire Pleases New World Order

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the American people will have an echo not a choice in this year's presidential race. Mitt Romney, a billionaire insider who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and who has absolutely nothing in common with ordinary Americans, is poised to put the GOP presidential nomination in the bag barely before the race has started. Romney's win tonight with 38% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary mirrors the large victory the Granite State gave to prior GOP nominees, including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and John McCain. Ron Paul finished second with 24% ahead of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who finished third with 17% of the vote. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum finished fourth and fifth with about 10% of the vote each. Texas Gov. Rick Perry struggled to get a mere 1% of the vote.

The next primary is South Carolina where Romney had looked weak, but the continued collapse of Gingrich's campaign has seen his large lead disappear with the rise of Rick Santorum. Still, Romney is beating both candidates in the latest polls in South Carolina. Paul is performing badly in South Carolina and has no plans to compete in the Florida primary, the largest primary state ahead on the calendar. Nobody in the field seems positioned to challenge Romney in Florida, a winner take all state that will give the victor 51 delegates. Perry's campaign is over for all practical purposes. Jon Huntsman, who like Romney is a super wealthy Mormon with little in common with the American people, learned today that he won't be on the ballot in several large states, including Arizona, Illinois and Virginia. He built his entire campaign on pulling an upset in New Hampshire, spending more time there than any other candidate, and finished no better than a distant third. Rick Santorum is proving to be a flash in the pan for good reason. He has no national organization or money to compete as a serious candidate, aside from being dead wrong on most of the issues.

As I predicted last week, there is really only one candidate, Ron Paul, who has the money and organization to go the distance against Romney. The GOP establishment, however, has been pulling out all the stops to destroy Paul at its own peril. The Huntsman "Manchurian Candidate" video created by a Karl Rove-like operative within the GOP establishment, worked as intended to stop Paul's momentum in New Hampshire dead in its tracks and to allow Huntsman to double his support over the past week from the single digits to his 17% showing, while preserving Romney's big lead. Middle Americans have no reason to turn to someone like Romney as an alternative to the failed policies of Obama. He has managed to be on all sides of an issue depending on the place and time his political ambitions took him. There is absolutely no enthusiasm at all within the party for his candidacy, and he carries more baggage than any GOP nominee in recent memory. If you had told me a few months ago the GOP was going to deliberately throw the 2012 presidential race, I would have said you were crazy. Today, I'm convinced that is exactly what is transpiring before our very eyes.

Iowa Caucus Disappoints

It looks like the only real winner in Iowa tonight is Rick Santorum, the candidate with the least money, a virtually non-existent campaign organization and a remarkably naive view of the world. He's sharing the top honors tonight with Mitt Romney with each getting about 25% of the vote. Presumably, the religious fanatics came out to support Santorum just like they did Mike Huckabee four years ago. A win or close second in Iowa does little to move Santorum's campaign forward. With no money and no campaign apparatus, he will likely fail to make the ballot or field delegate slates in some of the upcoming states. Only Romney, Paul and Perry have the money and organization it takes to run a national campaign. Even Perry failed to make the ballot in Virginia with plenty of money and a large campaign staff, and he finished a disappointing fifth tonight behind Gingrich's 13% share of the vote with only about 10% of the vote. Romney is doing no better in Iowa this year than he did four years ago when he lost to Huckabee after spending $10 million and receiving only a quarter of the vote. Paul improved his numbers substantially but finished a disappointing third place with about 22% of the vote.

The first primary in New Hampshire is just around the corner. Mitt Romney is way out front there according to the latest polls with Ron Paul in a distant second place. As happened to his campaign in Iowa, Gingrich's New Hampshire effort has collapsed even with the endorsement of the Manchester Union-Leader. Earlier polls showed Gingrich running well ahead in South Carolina and Florida, but his lead will most certainly dissipate rapidly in the coming weeks as he struggles to raise money and operate without a campaign organization. At least he has some staff. Santorum has virtually no staff to compete anywhere close to the level Huckabee competed in 2008. What this means is that the only alternative candidate that has both the money, organization and strength to go head-to-head with Romney is Ron Paul. The establishment Republican and media attacks on him have made it difficult for him to break out though.

After all of the bluster, Iowa produced only 25 delegates tonight. The New Hampshire primary produces even fewer delegates with only 16 at stake there. Thirty-one delegates are at stake in the South Carolina primary and 91 are at stake in Florida, which will be the real pivotal contests in the coming weeks. It takes 1,245 delegates to win the nomination. Reading the tea leaves, it's probably a pretty safe bet that this race will be over after Florida with Romney the overwhelming favorite to win the race. Bachman is probably out after tonight. Gingrich will be through after a dismal showing in New Hampshire. Perry will hang on until at least South Carolina in hopes of picking up Gingrich's support, but I have my doubts he can get his act together to mount a credible campaign. Santorum's fifteen minutes of fame end tonight in Iowa. Paul will stay in the race for the long haul. He'll have a chance to shine when he gets to the point of going head-to-head with Romney, but it will probably be too little too late.

UPDATE: The final vote count show Mitt Romney a winner by a mere 8 votes out of more than 122,000 votes cast. Bachmann has scheduled a press conference for later this morning where she is expected to announce she is dropping out of the race. Rick Perry has returned to Texas to reconsider whether he should move ahead. Meanwhile, Rick Santorum is looking like the dog who chased a car he didn't expect to catch and then didn't know what to do with it when he got his teeth snagged in the bumper.