Friday, November 7, 2008
News Handel throws Fulton under the bus
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 10:43 PM
Has Fulton County become the GOP's election scapegoat or is some ulterior motive at work in Secretary of State Karen Handel's call for a state investigations and threats of possible criminal prosecution?
As the AJC has doggedly been reporting, Handel has expressed outrage that Fulton took three days to count its absentee ballots, long after all other counties had turned in their results. Under state Elections Board rules, counties are supposed to keep ballot-counters on the job until they're finished – or unless the Secretary of State's office give them permission to break for the night.
Fulton officials called Handel's office early Wednesday morning to see if the counters go home to get some sleep. She said no. They went home anyway.
I'm told that Fulton's own election board approved the break because the ballot-counters – many of whom are retirees who'd spent a long day working working at the polls – were complaining of exhaustion.
For that decision – and, let's face it, for making us all wait to find out for certain that there'd be a senate runoff between Chambliss and Martin – Fulton has caught some heavy abuse from Handel's office, which blames the county for not having "proper staffing and procedures in place" to meet the counting deadline.
If the county broke the election rules and caused everyone inconvenience, perhaps it should suffer some kind of penalty – even though Fulton officials have apologized and promised to do better next time.
But the lady doth protest too much, methinks. And, frankly, the actions of Handel's office over the past few months make us wonder if Republicans might not be pushing for an investigation out of a desperate hope that some reason might be found to invalidate a chunk of Fulton's 31,000 absentee ballots, the majority of which went for Martin.
Just last month, in Lewis v. O'Day, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed that an election result cannot be invalidated simply because an election official made a minor screw-up – or words to that effect. But if the Fulton investigation were to reveal that election officials didn't properly safeguard ballots from overnight tampering, then maybe, just maybe…
My god, how cynical we've become here at CL. But, given this country's experience with election shenanigans over the past decade, can you blame us?
Comments (2)
Showing 1-2 of 2
Even easy-as-Saturday-night-at-Lenny's, our fave media 'ho Newt Gingrich isn't fumbling around looking for the media bra hook right now as much as Handel is. Her strategy's a bit off though. She should trot out some good Bible quotes soon. Before the runoff at least. Katherine Harris did and that got her all the way to Congress! That and her (Harris') 18" waistline. Hmmmm... I suggest, as part of my overall Sashay Up To Congress in 2010 Big Media strategy for Handel - Jenny Craig AND a Bible! Gawd it's almost sinful how much money I make teaching pageant stuff like this. Almost.
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I hope Handel is the one who is under investigation. During the weeks of early voting when lines got long, I called her office to see if the Secretay of State's office had provided any guidance or support to help with the problem. The answer was NO. They did nothing and had nothing to say about it. Georgia's early voting was the Katrina of elections. Likewise for Fulton County's absentee ballot count. The local officials were overwhelmed and the people who could and should have helped just didn't care.
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