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There was a little buzz about Alan Keyes’ new TV ad yesterday. The spot attacks Barack Obama on tort reform and taxes.
Democratic media consultants, however, say Springfield is the only town where the ad is being broadcast, and it ran twice on two stations last night.
Meanwhile, the two US Senate candidates voted this morning.
A flier circulated by state Rep. Ricca Slone’s campaign mischaracterizes the Journal Star’s editorial endorsement for opponent Aaron Schock, newspaper editors said Monday.The Journal Star’s editorial board endorsed Schock, a Republican, in Saturday’s editions. But after the endorsement, Slone, D-Peoria, put out a flier that read “Journal Star explains why Slone is the best choice.”
The flier pulled several sentences written by the editorial board that were positive about Slone and critical toward Schock. The quotes were taken out of context, and the flier is “inaccurate and a misrepresentation of the newspaper’s editorial stance,” said Editorial Board Editor Barbara Mantz Drake.
The worst part for Slone is that her campaign was trying to make the case yesterday that Aaron Schock misrepresented an endorsement from a Democratic precinct committeeman who was no longer a committeeman and who is one of Schock’s tenants.
The District 150 School Board will set up a three-member, outside panel to investigate whether board president Aaron Schock violated policy in accepting public political endorsements from district employees.Schock is the Republican candidate in a highly publicized race against Democratic incumbent Ricca Slone for the 92nd House seat in the Illinois General Assembly.
Board Vice President Alicia Butler announced the panel during the School Board meeting Monday, the day before the election. She said three people will be nominated, and the board will be asked to approve them at the Nov. 15 meeting.
The investigative process is triggered automatically after a public complaint is filed, board policy states. Activist Ernestine Jackson filed the complaint last week.
Schock allowed Harrison School principal Aurthur Perkins and Peoria Federation of Teachers union president Terry Knapp to make campaign ads supporting him.
Without authorization from its own candidate, the Sangamon County Republican Party mailed a flier attacking a Sangamon County Board Democrat for brushes with the law, including a drunken driving conviction eight years ago.County GOP Chairman Irv Smith said he wanted to send out the flier, which is aimed at Billy Earl, the incumbent Democratic board member in District 14. When party officials asked Earl’s Republican opponent, Joel Tjelmeland, about the idea some time ago, Tjelmeland refused to OK the attack mailer.
Circuit Court Judge Lloyd Karmeier (R-5th):
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has given $2.3 million for Karmeier’s campaign, mostly through the Illinois Republican Party ($2 million) and the Illinois Civil Justice League ($200K). The American Tort Reform Association has given $420K for Karmeier’s campaign, mostly through the Illinois Civil Justice League ($385K) and the Manufacturers ($36K).  The Illinois Coalition for Jobs, Growth and Prosperity PAC has also sent funds Karmeier’s way, giving $150K through JUSTPAC and $8K directly. For the general election, Karmeier has reported raising $4.2 millionAppellate Court Justice Gordon Maag (D-5th)
Trial lawyers have given at least $2.5 million to Justice Maag’s campaign, mostly through the Democratic Party (at least $2 million) and the Justice for All PAC (at least $500K). For the general election, Maag has reported raising $3.5 million.
Dozens of schools across the Southland are closed today in what appears to be a new trend — keeping kids away on Election Day. [Snip]School leaders say they need to schedule the staff development days anyway — and programming them for Election Day makes sense: There are fewer parking and traffic hassles for voters and less chance for strangers to come into contact with kids. In addition, it’s easier for teachers to get to the polls. [Snip]
Nearly half of suburban Cook County’s 1,400 polling places are located in schools, according to Scott Burnham, spokesman for the Cook County Clerk’s office.
The Southern Illiniosan has several local political stories today, including some updated only on the web. Several of the links appear to be broken at the moment, but they should be fixed soon. You can find them here, here, here, here, and here. That last one is about a local fortune teller who predicts a Kerry victory.
posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Nov 2, 04 @ 9:10 am
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Hey Capt Blog —you forgot to mention the weenies at the PJ-S whining about the Newspaper Guild being listed in the AFL-CIO ad endoring Slone.
Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Nov 2, 04 @ 11:35 am
I didn’t have to cuz’ you just did.
Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, Nov 2, 04 @ 11:40 am
Capt Blog — Here is the Wall Street Journal story on blogs — they don’t mention you, but I will straighten them out ASAP
ELECTION 2004
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Reporters, Voters File
Real-Time Web Updates
By ELIZABETH WEINSTEIN
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
November 2, 2004 12:31 p.m.
With voter turnout expected to reach record levels today, war stories from the polls are already starting to pour in from around the country. This election year, Web logs, or blogs, are serving as first-hand diaries for voters and reporters alike, who are posting their observations directly on the Web. Here are some of the highlights so far:
Swing-State Waits
Voters who thought they’d beat long lines at the polls today by voting right when the polls open have been unpleasantly surprised — especially in the all-important swing states. Reporters for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel1 reported that at 7 a.m when the polls opened, lines were already snaking around buildings. Reporter Tom Held said 141 votes had already been cast in one precinct on Milwaukee’s south side — about twice as many as normal, election workers told him. Voters in Wisconsin fill in arrows to select their candidates, a technique that confused a lot of people, Mr. Held reported.
“About a half dozen of the early voters had their ballots rejected initially, either for voting twice in one race or making the lines connecting the arrows too thick,” he noted.
Fifteen minutes before polls opened at 6 a.m. in Kansas City, Mo., 30 people were already cooling their heels waiting to get into the polls, writes Ellen Dunkel2 for Knight Ridder’s election blog. Barely a half-hour later at another polling place, she saw lines out the door. Ms. Dunkel said voters kept their sense of humor though.
“Hey,” said a woman arriving at the end of the line, “this is what democracy looks like,” Ms. Dunkel wrote about an exchange she observed.
In Florida, voters were up before the sun to cast ballots, their moves being watched carefully by a slew of international election monitors and poll watchers from both campaigns. Reporter Darran Simon for the Miami Herald’s blog3 says when polls opened at 7 a.m., many people had already been waiting for two hours. By law, the election monitors, kept their distance.
“Several poll-watchers stood about 50 feet from the two precincts, including volunteers from Election Protection and NAACP International Observers from England, Kenya and Mexico. By 7:10 a.m., 19 people had voted in two precincts at the poll, according to two Kerry poll-watchers who were clicking away on a hand-held silver counter,” Mr. Simon reported.
Photographer Mark Hertzberg of the Racine, Wis., Journal Times writing in on the Battleground Wisconsin4 blog, says partisan election monitors are keeping close tabs on who’s coming to the polls, and he worries their presence could intimidate voters.
“County Board Supervisor Andrew Kallin from Waukesha, wearing a bright orange HAVA [Help Americans Vote Act] shirt and Jim Ferguson, an attorney for the state Republican party who says he was sent here by the Republican National Committee in California, have a list of more than 50 people which is marked at the top “Potential Problem Registrations” and “Challenge These Individuals,” writes Mr. Hertzberg. “… I asked Kallin, who was holding the list, and Ferguson what the list represented. They professed ignorance.”
Poll-Worker Confusion
In Ohio, initial complaints seemed focused on election workers, according to posts on Cleveland.com’s blog.5 Readers wrote in to the site to report their initial impressions from the polls, and most of their posts started sounding the same after a while.
“One of the problems seems to be that poll workers are going VERY slow,” wrote Cleveland.com blog contributor Garry. “No ID was being checked, all you had to do was sign your name, although there had been five challenges of the first 35 voters.”
“Just your normal, confused volunteer stuff. As with everyone else, I was never asked for an ID. I simply helped the poll workers find my name, scribbled my signature, and voted,” wrote J. Jodon.
“If Ohio has problems with voting it is not due to the lawyers or the challengers, it is due to the poll workers who seem to be untrained. At my polling place the woman working were so confused we had to wait almost 5 minutes for them to decide what number ballot we were on,” complained another writer, Leah.
Red Alert from Matt Drudge
The Philadelphia Daily News’s blog6 — and several others this morning — are already buzzing about a report from Matt Drudge’s Web site7 reporting voting irregularities at Philadelphia’s polls. Before voting began in the city, poll watchers found nearly 2,000 votes already planted on machines scattered throughout the city, Mr. Drudge’s site reported this morning. Mr. Drudge later removed the report. He cites at least four locations where the votes were found, but the Philadelphia Daily News blogger William Bunch says the paper is working to determine whether the claims are valid.
“It … strikes us as odd though,” Mr. Bunch writes. These are heavily Democratic and predominantly black (and some Latino) wards in North Philly areas … These could be premier areas for fraud, but wouldn’t such large numbers of fake votes also raise turnout to obviously fake numbers? We’ll do some more research.
You’ve Gotta Laugh
Election Day is making people a little jumpy in some parts of the country. In Milwaukee, police are already getting some interesting calls, according to the Journal Sentinal’s blog.8 Early this morning Milwaukee police got a report on the scanner that a person with a rifle was standing on an overpass. The blog says police quickly corrected the report — it was two women standing on the overpass with a Kerry sign.
Also in Milwaukee police were called to a John Kerry campaign office before 6 a.m. because at least two people were blocking the parking lot exit, preventing Kerry supporters from leaving the parking lot and screaming and spitting on cars. The officers removed the disruptive people but no arrests were made.
Knight Ridder reporter Ellen Dunkel writes9 that in Camden County, N.J., at least two voters needed the help of a higher power to cast their votes:
“Between 7 and 10 a.m., 50 people stood up before Superior Court Judge Frederick J. Schuck to prove they were registered. Among them were nuns Kathleen Aherne, 64, and Judith Terrameo, 55, who planned to vote this morning in Haddonfield but couldn’t because there was no record they had registered. They didn’t tell the judge that they are both Franciscan nuns, but he believed them anyhow and they were granted the right to vote.”
Write to Elizabeth Weinstein at elizabeth.weinstein@wsj.com10
Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Nov 2, 04 @ 12:13 pm