The Associated Press is reporting that Senator Dick Lugar’s challenger in the recent Senate race, Libertarian Steve Osborn, has filed a petition for a recount despite having lost by more than 1 million votes. Specifically, Osborne has requested a recount in 10 precincts in Howard, LaPorte, Porter, and St. Joseph counties. Osborne has no comments at the moment but says he would comment after the counts are done. Apparently the recount commission will proceed with the request unless someone from the Lugar campaign objects.
I’ll certainly be interested in finding out Osborne’s reasoning. My best guess is that he suspects some sort of impropriety or defect to which he wishes to call attention even though it won’t alter the overall result. But, like I said, that’s a guess.
Seems like sound reasoning to me. Consider:
* While the Democratic Party didn’t field a candidate against Lugar this time, if they had, the so-called liberal media (SCLM) would be all over that candidate for doing this as a case of “sour grapes”.
* While the SCLM can do the same thing to an LP candidate who lost by a million votes, at some point even oligarchs understand when an attack is disproportionate to the target.
* Election irregularities are widespread and getting more so as electronic voting machines without voter-verified paper receipts become more ubiquitous. It would be useful to know what voting technologies were used in these 10 precints.
* Lugar need not waste his time trying to fight this, as the chances that there are 1 million voters in just those 10 precincts and that he in fact lost the election seem vanishingly small.
* If the recount does turn up irregularities, by not trying to squash it now, Lugar can get on the right side of the issue by expressing “grave concern” over the bogus voting machines or bad counting procedures used, co-opting Osborne.
This looks like a win-win for everyone involved, unless of course the SCLM refuses to cover the results, or (more likely) buries it in a back-page story.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
Of course, this could also be a part of a strategy by Osborne to have his name still in the papers. Ah, the smell of publicity!
Sorry for the double comment, Doug, but I also wanted to say to you and your family: Have a truly Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanks Matt. Same to you and everyone else.
Matt,
Your theory works, too. :)
The panelists on Indiana Week in Review were typically unimaginative and disappointing on this subject on Friday’s show. Every single one of them condemned Osborne’s 10-precinct challenge as a waste of taxpayer money.
Not a single panelist advanced the argument that votes should be counted accurately even when doing so cannot change the outcome of an election, nor did any exhibit enough imagination to note that a system of randomized recounts at the precinct level, similar to the randomized inspections that are a de rigeur part of many quality control systems in private industry, could be in the least bit helpful to uncover flaws or tampering in our electoral process.
John Ketzenberger, John Schwantes, Anne Delaney, and the GOP mouthpiece (whose name I cannot recall that, and who subbed for Mike McDaniel this week) are evidently so comfortable in their roles of paid punditry that they cannot conceive of democracy as anything other than a platform for pontification. It evidently does not take much to lose sight of the principle that every vote should be counted. I wouldn’t have guessed that a sinecure position on a local PBS/NPR taling-head show was enough to do it. How mortifying to be mistaken.