Two super alert citizens, Frank Pearson and John Washburn, each hit me with spreadsheets about the same time, proving that Maine's caucus results don't even add up. As the precise John Washburn says, "their spreadsheet lacks internal integrity."
Because of the relatively open, public process, we've all been treated to a public display on lack of election integrity. I'm hearing whimpers of "bring in the voting machines" from news outlets like The AP, but we all need to remember that with the machines, the public can't see the counting process and wrong totals cannot be detected by the public.
You've probably already heard they decided to just not count
Washington County, with 6,876 registered Republican voters, and that
the "winning" result announced by the GOP for Romney was only 194 more than Ron Paul.
Registered voters in each Maine County by party as of Feb. 13, 2012: http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/2012/21312r-e-active.txt
You've probably also heard that they reported "zero" for all the Waldo County locations that voted, even though the results were called in timely.
You've probably even heard that the state GOP ordered caucus locations to keep the count secret, but that Belfast took a vote to NOT hide the count and instead to announce it out loud, and that the actual Belfast votes were not at all what the state GOP reported for Belfast.
But you may not yet have heard that even for the counties they DID list votes for, their own numbers don't even add up!
FOR EXAMPLE:
In Penobscot County, City of Bangor, the GOP results which you can see here:
http://www.mainegop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/me_gop_caucus_results.pdf
they have these numbers:
Mitt Romney: 26
Ron Paul: 36
Rick Santorum: 9
Newt Gingrich: 4
Other: 2
Total: 0
Add "em up yourself. The total is 77.
In Penobscot County, town of Alton, they added 2 votes for Ron Paul and 1 vote for other (no other candidates show any votes), and came up with a total of zero.
In Cumberland County, town of Gorham, you be the teacher and the GOP can be your third grade student. The numbers are:
Romney 24
Paul 23
Santorum 8
Gingrich 4
Other 0
The state GOP added these up and came up with 56.
I think all third grade teachers will agree that the total is not 56, but 59.
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