Readers, I have a serious question for you: should we challenge Annette Bosworth's U.S. Senate nominating petition?
Fake candidate Bosworth claims to have submitted 2,750 signatures to earn a spot on the Republican U.S. Senate primary ballot. Her name does not appear on the list of approved GOP U.S. Senate candidates Secretary of State Jason Gant posted this afternoon; the names of Stace Nelson, Larry Rhoden, Jason Ravnsborg, and Mike Rounds do. We may assume that Secretary Gant's team will get to Bosworth's signatures at breakfast tomorrow.
2,750 is 40.7% more signatures than the 1,955 required to make the Republican ballot. Under normal conditions, that's a really safe cushion.
Team Bosworth does not operate under normal conditions. Bosworth and her husband Chad Haber are not known for effective organization and management skills. Bosworth does not know the issues; she may not know campaign law.
Nor are Bosworth and Haber are also known for integrity. They've manufactured stories. They launched their campaign with fake and clumsy web publicity. They've cooked up fake names, stolen a man's image, and plagiarized my blog material to promote the Bosworth brand. Would they have the moral restraint not to cook up fake petition signatures?
On the other hand, Base Connect and other campaign fundraisers are making money off Bosworth. A reliable source tells me that those fundraisers, who may well be keeping all of the money they raise through direct mail and giving Bosworth inflated campaign finance figures of which she will never spend a penny on actual campaigning in South Dakota, paid to ensure the petition drive's success. Bosworth had no grassroots network of South Dakota volunteers, but she had paid operatives motivated by the prospect of riding Bosworth's gravy train to two months more of campaign profit.
Now consider the following facts about petition challenges that I laid out in the comment section Sunday:
- SDCL 12-1-13 specifies that "any interested party" may challenge a petition. Challengers have five business days from the date of filing to challenge. A challenge must include an itemized list of specific deficiencies identified in the petition.
- The Secretary of State charges $1 per copy/page, so 2,750 signatures (max 20 signatures per sheet, front and back, surely some sheets not full, so guesstimate 300–350 pages), obtaining every page to verify signatures and mark errors would cost $300–$350 pages.
- There are four levels of error-checking:
- A challenger can check for obvious errors: missing or misdated notary seals, improperly completed candidate declaration, and missing signatory information. That just takes a good eye and time.
- A challenger can engage Google and brains to look for invalid signers: dead people, fake names, duplicate names, etc.
- A challenger can spend money and match each name on the petition to the voter registration list. To obtain an electronic copy of that list, one must pay the Secretary of State $2,500 (paper costs $5,500).
- A challenger can cross-check signatures on Bosworth's petition with signatures on petitions already submitted for Nelson, Rhoden, Pressler, Rounds, and Ravnsborg. Bosworth filed last, so if any of Bosworth's signatories signed other petitions, their names don't count for Bosworth. That's about 19,000 unalphabetized signatures, available only in scanned, non-computer-searchable or sortable PDF format, spread across at least 1,900 pages, which would cost $1,900 and a lot of eye-strain.
Given that information, does anyone want to pass the hat to verify that Bosworth's petition has followed the laws of the state of South Dakota? Or can citizens interested in truth and justice get a better return from their time, effort, and money from other projects?
Paid petition circulators have been outside the Pennington County courthouse the last week or so.
OT, but worthy of note: Dem Haven Stuck was approved for the Senate race in District 33. I think he'll wait and see if Jensen wins the Pub primary, and if so, Haven will run. I think he'll have a great chance.
Cory,
Two good reasons not to challenge.
1) Money wasted could be better spent on Dem campaigns.
2) Bosworth on the ballot is bound to draw some voters away from Rounds and every little bit helps if he has to spend anything to counteract her.
Let her stew in her own juices.
Neal: how do you know they were paid? Did you chat with them? What did they tell you? And were they still collecting today? If so, that would mean more signatures are coming by mail to boost that 2,750.
Rather than contest the Bosworth petition could we vote on an alternative entry for the slot DWC holds in Madville's sidebar?
I nominate Flyover Wire to replace DWC in Madville's sidebar
Jessie, very reasonable points. Is Bosworth smart enough to mount any effective challenge against Rounds? What level of support would she have to reach for Rounds to bother to squash her?
Pass the hat? I thought you were shelling out $5,000 plus for stories! (sarcasm is now turned off.)
Flyover Wire makes my sidebar when I know who they are. If they are Lowell Feld again, never.
DWC represents a chilling effect on my right to peaceably assemble a denial of service attack.
I have a few shekels to donate if others don't mind dropping a little change in the tip jar also.
So, Bill Clay was allowed to infest Madville's sidebar without revealing his identity?
How much to end DWC's infestation in Madville's sidebar?
Normally I would say that anything Bosworth says or does should be challenged. If her petitions are legitimate, I'd prefer to see her in the primary and exposed for what she is. The Republican primary looks as if it could get really ugly, let Rhoden, Nelson, Rounds, and that other guy take her on.
Did Nelson challenge Rhoden's petition, and if so, did he actually pay all that money to do so?
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mOfOYyucjhA
(Got me on Clay, Larry, but I'm not fighting that war here. Donations do not buy editorial choices.)
MJL, I can't believe national bloggers aren't knocking down my door offering cash to help obtain these signatures. Where'd they all go? :-)
I chatted with a couple different petition gatherers. I work there so I see them all the time. As a rule, I sign everything, no matter what the issue or candidate is, but I had to explain to one of them that, while I am sorry to take money out of his pocket, I would not sign for Boz. He asked why. He said that he didn't know anything about her. I told him that Boz is a grifter and a scam artist. He said "good to know."
Can't recall if anyone was there today gathering.
Thanks for that report, Neal... and thanks for helping to educate the circulator! I hope he gets paid for the work he did.
What am I missing? If it costs that much to get the information needed to challenge, why would anyone? Isn't it the job of the Secretary of State's office to do all of this checking, including cross referencing the petitions to make sure there are no signatures on one that are on another?
Lanny, you'd think. But the Secretary of State's office does not do a complete review of these petitions.
SDAR 05:02:08:00 says that the SOS need not check the voter registration status of signatories. It also says that the counters need not check every signature; they can stop checking once they have reached the minimum number. The SOS may thus not look at signatures #1956 through #2750.
SDAR 05:02:08:00.01 says what the SOS is required to check on petitions. It does not require the cross-check with other petitions.
That is almost as much democracy as Iowa's first in the nation caucuses for President of the United States. Those ensure that working people who cannot afford to take time off work to caucus are thus disenfranchised of their vote. And then of course the winner goes into the next round as the favorite to get the nomination for President.
Sure glad we are sending millions of our troops around the world for thousands of them to die to provide that same democracy for other countries.
I was half expecting her to miss the deadline and claim her petitions were stolen.
Neal, when they asked you to sign, did they ask if you were a registered republican?
Indeed they did.
Why on earth would you not want this woman involved in the R's campaign?
She is a transparently disgraceful person who will never win a general election, so let her soil your political competition without you having to lift a finger.
Bosworth is bleeding resources from candidates who can actually beat the guy alleged to have caused the death of a crony.
Morbo,
Sometimes we (you and I) get so caught up in game of politics that we lose track of the big picture.