6/12/2010 7:38:13 PM

6/12/2010 8:07:28 PM

This is getting damned entertaining.

It's like a "whodunnit."

Was it the voters, was it the Republicans, was it apathy, was it ignorance, was it racism, was it machine tampering, was it a statistical anomaly, or was it something as yet unimagined?

The list of suspects grows and grows daily.

6/13/2010 2:15:10 PM

A good point was made on NPR It's All Politics . . . even though it is an open primary, the Republican gubernatorial contest was so intense it is unlikely that many Republican voters would have crossed over to vote on the Democratic ballot when either senatorial candidate was likely to lose to DeMint.


Alvin Greene's entry into the SC primary is undeniably dubious but once he was nominated it was either vote fraud on an unprecedented statewide level or simply ignorant SC Democratic voters that propelled him into office.


Either way, it is a rather chilling commentary on the state of our participatory democracy.

6/13/2010 2:29:18 PM

if this guy is a Republican plant, he is the WORST planted candidate ever. why would you plant someone with zero record, zero campaign funds, and zero elect-ability ? (nevermind that he won )

6/13/2010 3:13:35 PM

^

Quote :

"to force the most unqualified candidate to run against the incumbent and make it impossible for the "vote-against-the-incumbent" folks to vote against the incumbent"

6/13/2010 3:56:13 PM

This isn't a mystery. No Democrat is going to win that election, period, so no legitimate contender bothered investing much funds or effort.

6/13/2010 4:07:58 PM

^ winner.

Although I would still like to know where he got the 10K for the filing fee. Knowing SC politics, it really wouldn't surprise me if this ended up being an old political nemesis of Rawls' trying to get back at him by not allowing him to run in an uncontested primary, but not actually suspecting Greene would ever win.

[Edited on June 13, 2010 at 4:56 PM. Reason : adsasd]

6/13/2010 4:55:43 PM

How many think that "South of the Border" is a money laundering drug operation?

6/13/2010 5:19:30 PM

Why the hell does it cost $10,000 to run for office? Fucking crooked ass country.

6/13/2010 5:44:32 PM

^

6/13/2010 5:55:34 PM

^^^ Ooooo, yet another entertaining theory!

6/13/2010 6:45:48 PM

Quote :

"if this guy is a Republican plant, he is the WORST planted candidate ever. why would you plant someone with zero record, zero campaign funds, and zero elect-ability ?"

That's the entire point of a plant, get someone in as your opponent that has zero elect-ability.

Quote :

"Why the hell does it cost $10,000 to run for office?"

It costs $10,000 to run in a political party's primary, which is because it costs money for a political party to run and it costs money to run a primary.

6/13/2010 7:41:25 PM

^ exactly

http://www.scvotes.org/candidate_information/2010_filing_fees

6/13/2010 8:29:57 PM

Everybody is still glossing over one important fact.

It doesn't matter who paid the filing fee. It doesn't matter that no serious contender put a lot of money in the race. It doesn't matter why the Republicans might plant a guy like him. Yet, those are the explanations out there for this question.

The question is: how did he win? That is, why did so many genuine democrats vote for him, despite having no idea what kind of idiot he was.

The answer is that they, the voters, are idiots just like him and get what they deserve for not knowing who they voted for.

Who put Greene up to it and how is irrelevant. It only worked because SC Dem primary voters are racist, stupid, and easy to set up.

6/13/2010 8:57:13 PM

Yet the government has to pay for the primary polling. Let parties hold their own private elections so they can hash out these shenanigans.

Anyone that registers with sufficient signatures should appear on the final ballot, even if that means dozens of candidates. No "D" or "R" should be printed by their name. If your party's voters are too stupid to remember who is who, let them choose alphabetically. Ha, I actually find that preferable.

Also, every ballot should have the following written in giant print at the top:
IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHO TO VOTE FOR, PLEASE LEAVE THAT BOX BLANK
Plenty of retards just pick randomly. I guess they think they have to fill the form out completely.

6/13/2010 9:03:40 PM

Quote :

"In 25 precincts, Greene received more votes than were actually cast; and while Rawls won absentee ballots by a whopping 84-to-16 percentage point margin, the election-day results showed Greene winning by 18 percentage points."

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0613/dems-convinced-voter-fraud-sc-primaries/
SHENANIGANS AHOY!

Also the usual badass statistical analysis from FifeThirtyEight: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/sc-democratic-primary-getting-weirder.html

6/13/2010 10:20:02 PM

USA! USA! USA!

6/13/2010 11:41:23 PM

Quote :

"Let parties hold their own private elections"

I've been saying this for a while.
The DNC and RNC are private entities, right? They are not a part of the US government, right?
We should abolish the primary elections system as we know it. Fuck the DNC and RNC.

6/14/2010 6:32:54 AM

Yes, but this would only work if the general election is changed to make parties less powerful.

Don't print party affiliation on ballots.
Switch to some form of ranked polling(1st choice, 2nd choice, etc)
Encourage voters to abstain from voting on elections that they aren't familiar with

Otherwise you'd just be allowing the parties to further disenfranchise voters and continue their oligarchy. The two-party system is fundamentally broken and we won't have democracy again until it is fixed.

6/14/2010 11:12:34 AM

Quote :

"The question is: how did he win? That is, why did so many genuine democrats vote for him, despite having no idea what kind of idiot he was. The answer is that they, the voters, are idiots just like him and get what they deserve for not knowing who they voted for. Who put Greene up to it and how is irrelevant. It only worked because SC Dem primary voters are racist, stupid, and easy to set up."

6/14/2010 11:45:57 AM

He now also believes that he should be TIME's Person of the Year:

Quote :

"One unexpectedly victorious campaign for unemployed South Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene just doesn’t seem like enough these days. In the midst of a confusing run against established GOP incumbent Jim DeMint, Greene dished to Time magazine on his polished campaign platform and his plan to defeat DeMint in an upcoming debate, but requested a few things in return: namely, cash and the magazine’s “Person of the Year” award."

Quote :

"Greene made his first ever fundraising attempt in response to this interview, asking the Time representative who called to book him, “Does the candidate get paid?” And, surely, he’s going to need the money for his lofty goals. But one of those goals that money can’t buy he will have to wring from the hands of his interviewer himself: Time’s Man of the Year award. And this is a campaign that Greene was more than eager to wage: “I am the best candidate for the United States Senate in South Carolina,” he says, hitting his talking points, as he is apt to do. “And I am also the best person to be TIME magazine’s Man of the Year.”"

:facepalm:

6/18/2010 11:56:19 AM

He'll make some minor campaign finance error and the oligarchy will throw his ass in prison before the election.

6/18/2010 2:43:35 PM

Quote :

"Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That's something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It's not something a typical person would bring up. That's something that could happen, that makes sense. It's not a joke."

http://pourmecoffee.posterous.com/alvin-greene-says-the-most-insane-thing-ever

7/7/2010 8:26:05 AM

He's self-serving, arrogant, full of himself and willing to use his office to create and perpetuate his legacy.

The perfect politician!

7/7/2010 10:13:15 AM

Quote :

"Alvin Greene might run for president. Greene, the unlikely Democratic Senate nominee in South Carolina who lost overwhelmingly to Republican Sen. Jim DeMint last week, called the state Democratic Party on Tuesday to ask how much it would cost to run for president. “Maybe. I’ll have to see,” Greene told POLITICO when asked whether he was considering filing to run for president. He confirmed that he called the state party Tuesday to ask about the fee. The state party’s spokeswoman, Keiana Page, confirmed that someone called the party Tuesday asking about the presidential filing fee but said that the caller did not identify himself."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44895.html#ixzz14oMJh2e0

AWESOME!

11/9/2010 1:29:40 PM

!

11/9/2010 1:56:07 PM

11/9/2010 2:03:45 PM