Burnt Orange Report

Given the likely voter fraud that occured in the Thune election, this isn't something I would really crow about.

I wonder if the counties waited for the rest of the state's results to report like they did last time....

Interesting, when Republicans intentionally purge thousands of thousands of voters from the Florida rools, it is a proper acion for the Secretary of State. When they lose a close Senate and House race because of Native Americans, it has to be voter fraud.

What a bunch of whiners. Must be Rush Limbaugh Republicans - dish it out but can't take it.

Hm. I haven't voted for an R for any office since 1988.

I call 'em as I see 'em...and what happened in Florida is irrelevent to South Dakota. And what happened in the Thune-Johnson election was that the Ds stole the seat by waiting for the state results to come in, then ensuring that these two counties had enough votes to overcome the deficit.

Pointing this out as a good thing, as Byron is doing, is hardly appropriate.

The GOP voter fraud allegations in 2002 were never proven. They were soley based on the fact that Democrats registered thousands of new voters in those counties and turned them out, so it looked a little suspicious at first glance, and also because it took so long to report them, but considering that they were small rural counties with higher than average turnout, that's hardly a surprise either. It was a manufactured allegation.

I read on another blog that Shannon County's results always come in late because they are counted at the county seat of another county---Fall River. Fall River counts their own first.

Transportation on the reservation is predictably atrocious.

Yeah. Shannon and Todd counties do not have a county government, so they have to be transported to be counted elsewhere. That's why they take awhile to report.

Looks like the white man does not think that the red man is to be trsuted with his own county government. Then, when the white man takes longer to count the red man's votes, the white man accuses the red man of voter fraud.

To a Republican, this all makes perfect sense.

Look, the election was stolen and everyone knows it. Recognizing this doesn't make me an R.

From the WSJ:

"We know, for example, that Mr. Thune was leading all during Election Night, until late Wednesday morning when results flowed in from Shannon County; suddenly he trailed by about 500 votes. Last minute landslide precincts are suspicious on their face, a legendary practice in places like Chicago.

But Michael New, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard-MIT Data Center, has inspected the South Dakota Secretary of State's Web site to discover other striking facts: While Democrat Tim Johnson ran statewide about 12 percentage points behind what Mr. Daschle got in his 1998 Senate victory, in Shannon County Mr. Johnson ran about 12 percentage points ahead. He got 92% of the vote compared with Mr. Daschle's 80%. Nowhere else in the state did Mr. Johnson improve his vote share relative to Mr. Daschle.

Senate voter turnout was up 27% statewide for this year's close contest compared with 1998, but in Shannon County turnout increased by 89%. Again, no other county in the state showed comparable turnout increases. Shannon County is largely Indian country, home to the Oglala Sioux nation, and is heavily Democratic. But Mr. Thune managed to receive only nine more votes there than did Mr. Daschle's opponent in 1998, notwithstanding the much larger turnout.

Mr. New points out that this is just a 4% increase in GOP votes over 1998. In the other three South Dakota counties where Indians constitute more than two-thirds of the population, Mr. Thune gained between 23% and 43% more votes than the GOP candidate in 1998. The Oglala Sioux would seem to give new meaning to the phrase "bloc voting."

Again. The WSJ article proves nothing. Fraud may have been involved, but it's not unreasonable to believe that the results are solely due to a massive GOTV opperation (and it's a known fact that SD Democrats conducted a massive GOTV opperation in Todd and Shannon Counties in 2002). They didn't need to conduct a massive GOTV opperation in 1998 in Daschle's last reelection, because Daschle didn't have a strong challenger, and the turnout in those counties didn't matter. In 2002 - it did matter and it provided the difference for Johnson.

The WSJ article above is simply anecdotal observations used to conclude that fraud was involved, when in fact the irregularities in Shannon and Todd can be explained by the fact that they have no county governments and they have to be transported to be counted, and by the fact that they are the two most heavily Democratic counties in the state, so in a highly contested election, it makes sense that the Democratic party would conduct a massive voter registration and GOTV drive in those counties.