absentee voting

It looks like Jim Tedisco may have pulled off the victory in NY-20 after all. And there is good reason to think that the remaining absentee ballots should favor Tedisco. That said, there was a serious problem.

The state Board of Elections seesm to have deliberately disinfranchised military voters. Heritage's Hans von Spakovsky describes how the Democrats on the Board of Election actually voted to reject a Department of Justice recommendation to send out ballots.

The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, which is responsible for enforcing the federal statute that guarantees the right of overseas citizens and military personnel to vote by absentee ballot, contacted the New York State Board of Elections and requested that they issue their ballots sooner for this race. The two Republican members of the board voted to support this request. Yet the two Democratic members of the board, shamefully enough, voted against doing so. Were they trying to disenfranchise military voters?

So the DoJ actually had to file suit against the NY State board of Election. Hans explains why that suit was still inadequate because, ultimately, the Civil Rights Division at DoJ doesn't take the issue of voting rights seriously for the military.

In the end though, there are about 1,000 military absentee votes outstanding. In spite of Democratic attempts to disenfranchise our soldiers, some of our troops will get to vote. And it looks like we will win the race.

But we need to stop this coniving next time.

Promoted and bumped. -Patrick

I've been involved with many facets of many different types of campaigns: local school board, city council, state legislature, statewide gubernatorial, congressional, ballot initiative, and in-state presidential organizations. When I occassionally speak at campaign management and organization seminars, I am often asked the question: what is the most important part of the campaign? That question is so hard to answer because (1) campaigns are short-term "fire-fighting" operations as much as they are long-term strategic organziations, and (2) each part of the campaign (or at least a good campaign) is interconnected.

Yes, most of the money that gets spent is on paid media, and some will say that because of this, fundraising is the most important facet. While I don't disagree, something that I focus a lot of my attention on is GOTV efforts, a low-cost and high-importance category that has to be planned from the very beginning of the campaign but is executed in the last 72 hours.

So here are a few items of interest that all deal with GOTV efforts: