4th District Committeeman Report – 6/18/2012 Chuck posted this in Meeting Minutes, News on June 18th, 2012 4th District Committeeman’s Report 6/18/2012
The 4th District Convention was held on Saturday June 9th at the VFW Post #2278 in Hot Springs. The convention was hosted by the Republican Party of Garland County. The meeting was convened and the first order of business was the election of three delegates and three alternates representing Mit Romney to the National Republican Convention in Tampa.
The rules for the voting as set by the Arkansas State Republican Party specified that from the nine filed 4th district candidates for the Romney delegation there would be a series of six votes that would pick a first thru third delegate and a first through third alternate delegate. According to Larry Bailey at the State District Committee Chairman meeting there was concern expressed about the method of conducting the election because of the potential for abuse, but they were told this was according to the requirements of the state rules and was not negotiable. The 4th District election was held in accord with the state rules.
Delegates elected on the first three votes were 1st Delegate, Tammy Pope, 2nd Delegate Cora Linda Liscinski, and 3rd Delegate Michael Motes. Oddly, none of the three candidates that were recommended by the Mit Romney campaign were elected as Delegates from the Fourth District! District chairman Larry Bailey then asked if any of the delegate candidates wished their names removed from the ballot before consideration for the Alternate Delegates so they could run for Delegate positions with the “At Large” candidates at the state meeting on June 23rd. Skot Covert and Barbara Deuschele withdrew their names from consideration leaving a slate of four persons for consideration as alternates. The persons elected from those remaining four were 1st Alternate Stacy Dejarnette, 2nd Alternate Sara Darling, and 3rd Alternate Drury Hoover.
When the convention convened a group of delegates considering themselves as “Constitutionalists” and supporters of Ron Paul arrived with lists directing them exactly how to vote on each of the ballots for their desired three candidates. As a result, when they voted in the first vote, although they comprised only 1/3rd or less of the total delegates all of them voted for the same candidate while the other 2/3rd s of the delegates who did not know about the “fix” had their votes split between nine candidates. Mathematically this effectively made this group’s votes count three to four times more than everyone else’s since theirs was not even split between their three candidates of choice. Of course under the lax rules their candidate received the most votes and was picked as delegate # 1 with only about 1/3 of the total votes cast. Their second and third candidate choices for the D2 and D3 positions received few or no votes on the first ballot since all their votes were concentrated on only ONE ballot. Since the state rules specified there was to be no “runoff” to establish a plurality of votes, as would be appropriate for elections of large numbers of candidates like this, their candidate was declared the winner.
Likewise on the second vote all of this group voted for their second candidate on their list while everyone else’s votes were split among eight candidates. Likewise their second candidate was declared the winner with a minority of total votes cast and again no runoff was conducted in accordance with state directed rules. Again, few or no votes were recorded for their desired third candidate. The same result on the third ballot with them voting for their third candidate while everyone else’s votes was split between the seven remaining candidates.
The net result was that a relatively small but well organized group whose loyalties were not with either the Republican party, its presidential candidate or the 4th district effectively hijacked the election denying an opportunity for the majorities’ votes to count. Here a group of less than one third of the delegates conspired to make each of their votes count as much as three or four times as much as the votes of the other delegates. According to reports from other districts in Arkansas the same thing was done with essentially the same results in three of the four Arkansas Republican District conventions. The net result is that a relatively small group with loyalties outside of the Republican Party colluded to hijack the election and deny the voting rights of the majority of the delegates to the 4th District Convention.
Since this resulted in what was essentially a rigged election, raising several questions. First, should the election be nullified because of voting irregularities? Why? The individuals that perpetuated this “fix,” did nothing directly in violation of the rules. They used the weaknesses in the rules to take over a party election to the benefit of their group effectively denying voting rights to the majority of delegates. Second question, should the individuals that participated in this “fix” be punished in some way? Individually they followed the rules. A comment made by Larry Baily after the event described it as a tactic, “skillfully crafted and flawlessly executed.” What they actually did was to demonstrate that their loyalties lie outside that of the Republican Party and they have put their local committees on notice that they can not be trusted. However, collectively these individuals conspired to impose the will of an outside group on the Republican Party, to effectively hijack the delegates of the nominee of the party substituting them with, in their words, “stealth” delegates who were secretly pledged to support someone else thus stealing the delegates of the Presidential candidate that received 73% of the votes of the primary voters of Arkansas. Such could certainly be considered a violation of their responsibility as members of a local Republican committee for “working against the interest of the Republican Party” under Article II, section 12 of the rules of the Republican Party of Arkansas.
This should be a wake up call to the Republican Party of Garland County, the 4th District and the Republican Party of Arkansas that such ill conceived and lax election rules should never again be used and should certainly never be enforced on the districts or county committees against their better judgment. It is my personal opinion that the local Republican Party of Garland County should adopt a policy and so notify the state, that we will not abide by such lax voting rules in the future. If the state then wishes to disallow the results of one of our elections, so be it. To have an election nullified by the state would be no worse than to have it hijacked by an outside group that does not place their allegiance with the Republican Party of Arkansas.
The next meeting of the 4th District will be in Scott County in Early October. Time and location are as yet TBD.
Respectfully submitted,
Chuck Chatham
4th District Committeeman
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Mr Evan Soule attempted to post another comment on this thread today with further arguments about this subject. It will not appear here. If he wishes to publish additional comments he can go to dailypaul.com or ronpaulforums.com or other partisan forums dedicated to one candidate. If you wish to make incessant comments about how your group is smarter, righter, or more deserving than other Republican supporters in Arkansas go to appropriate places for those arguments.
Garlandgop.com is an informational site that supports Republican candidates in Arkansas period. Although we will make every reasonable effort to allow all views to be presented it is not an open forum to present unlimited diatribe that is derogatory to the Republican Party or its candidates.
Dear Chuck,
Thank you for your report.
However, out of a necessity to set the record straight (as I believe it to be) I am obliged to object to your following words:
“fix”, “whose loyalties were not with either the Republican party, its presidential candidate or the 4th district”, “hijacked the election”, “conspired”, “colluded to hijack the election”, “essentially a rigged election”, “their loyalties lie outside that of the Republican Party”, “conspired to impose the will of an outside group on the Republican Party”, “hijack the delegates of the nominee of the party”, “stealing the delegates of the Presidential candidate”
Such words are inaccurate at best and totally untrue at worst.
It is my understanding that a number of the District Delegates who voted for the elected Delegates to the Republican National Convention are supporters of Congressman Ron Paul. As you know, Dr. Paul IS a Republican. As such, he IS a member of the Republican Party. Thus, for you to claim that the loyalties of those District Delegates “lie outside that of the Republican Party” is untrue. Likewise, to claim that such District Delegates “conspired to impose the will of an outside group on the Republican Party” is also untrue. Both Congressman Ron Paul and those District Delegates who actively support his message of free enterprise, adherence to our Constitution and individual liberty are individuals who value both the preamble and content of the Republican Party platform. And if anyone attempts to claim that “Republicans for Ron Paul” is an “outside group” then the same could be said of “Republicans for Santorum” or “Republicans for Gingrich”.
All of the District Delegates were presented with a ballot containing nine (9) delegate-candidates. Six (6) of those delegate-candidates had asterisks by their names indicating that they were the preferred “slate” of individuals which the attending District Delegates were apparently expected to…
Thanks for your concern. I understand your objection to the words I chose but I chose them for specific reasons. I believe them to be quite accurate in the context listed and will list them in order.
“Fix” – is defined “In organized sports, match fixing or sports fixing occurs as a match is played to a completely or partially pre-determined result”. If you read the mechanics of the way your group manipulated the lax rules of the convention election, in the context of this election, there was an absolute certainty of a pre-determined result even though the group involved was a minority of delegates. By the very definition of the word, it was fixed!
“loyalties not with . . .” – a simple read of your blogs shows the accuracy of my words here. http://dougwead.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/ron-paul-surprise-in-arkansas/
“hijacked the election” see “fix”ed above.
“conspired” – Come on. Surely you graduated from the fifth grade do you not know the definition of “conspired” and “conspiracy”? “an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.” Can you look anyone in the face and claim that was not exactly what this was?
“colluded to hijack the election” – see “fix” and “conspired” above.
“essentially a rigged election” – likewise see “fix” above.
“their loyalties lie outside that of the Republican Party” – Absolutely! The leadership of this group is not the Ron Paul campaign. Dr Paul dropped out of the race and his son had publicly endorsed Mit Romney before this plan was executed. Leaders according to your blogs included Glenn Gallas who rejected the Republican party and wrote a scathing condemnation of it sixteen months ago when he specifically “resigned” from the Republican Party. Along with Glenn was Monica Serranos who I can not find anywhere as an actual member of the Republican Party or local county committees. In Arkansas anyone can vote in a primary. You do not have to be a party member to do so. Many vote in the opposite party’s primary regularly to pick the weakest candidates in the opposition’s line-up and have done so for years. In Arkansas voting in a Republican Primary does not make you a Republican any more than eating at KFC makes you a chicken farmer. Monica wrote glowing praise on how this scheme was carried out. She described it as an outside force infiltrating local party chapters and praised them for paying “fees and get papers notarized and filed with county clerks, just to be able to vote on the people that VOTE on the Delegates.” Obviously this described an “outside group” by any stretch of the imagination. Even though many joined local party chapters it is obvious they had an outside intent in doing so and were following leadership that was specifically outside the Republican Party. Look at some of the comments on YOUR blogs. “Y’all did a great job of sneaking around and coordinating your efforts to game the system and play on people’s trust”, “We are gonna drag Ron Paul to the presidency whether he wants to or not”, “stealth delegates. . .” There are dozens of other comments there where they described themselves as an outside force that was intent on taking over the Republican Party by hostile means.
“conspired to impose the will of an outside group on the Republican Party” – see above.
“hijack the delegates of the nominee of the party” and “stealing the delegates of the Presidential candidate”- Comments on your own blogs describing your “delegates” as “stealth delegates” or “Ron Paul delegates” when these delegate positions were specifically granted by Arkansas voters for Mit Romney who won 73% of the vote in Arkansas even though Ron Paul received less than 14% of the primary votes in Arkansas. This was definitely an attempt to steal those Romney delegate positions for folks who were pledged to their outside group to support someone other than the candidate the voters selected. Other blog posts brag about how since the National Republican party has no specific rules penalizing delegates who vote at the national convention for someone other than the candidate they filed to support that you had substituted Ron Paul candidates for Romney’s delegates in the state of Arkansas.
Ron Paul is a Republican, but Ron Paul suspended his candidacy when he won no more than 15% in any state primary. He asked his supporters to be respectful of the winner. Ron Paul was a gentleman after his defeat at the polls. You on the other hand are a band of unruly rogues. You people have attempted to steal the delegates of the obvious winner of the Arkansas primaries for your own purposes. Many of us respect Ron Paul. I for one can imagine no one who would be a better Secretary of the Treasury or Chairman of the Federal Reserve than congressman Ron Paul. Romney was not my first choice, nor even my second choice, but as the obvious winner of the Republican primaries and the nominee designate I will support him in every possible way! Anything else would be a vote for Barack Obama and his band of socialists and Saul Alenski trained followers. Do you really think Ron Paul would support that?
Four of our current Supreme Court Justices are elderly and/or with failing health. Whoever wins the election in November will most assuredly appoint from two to four Supreme Court justices who will hold their seats for the next 20 to 24 years. Romney has pledged to nominate conservative voices to that court who will support most of my and your goals. If you succeed in torpedoing the Republican Party by throwing everything into turmoil and reelecting Barack Obama you and your children will suffer the consequences.
Yep I used strong words. This attempt to hijack the delegate selection process demanded strong words so dummies who are intent on shooting themselves in the foot could understand them. If you want to have a voice in Republican politics, join your local party, be respectful of others that differ with your views and show your loyalty by recruiting, supporting and helping to elect Republican candidates to office. Abandon your confrontational attitude and militaristic language and prove your loyalty to Republican ideals and you will get a lot more of Ron Paul’s ideals actually accomplished.