I NEVER SAW THIS COMING (INSERT SARCASM HERE!)
A complaint has been filed against the Barack Obama campaign by Harrison County GOP Chairman and blogger Scott Fluhr. Fluhr alleges that when the Obama campaign gave out free tickets to this past weekend’s Dave Matthew’s concert that it was violating Indiana law by “giving something of value” in exchange for someone voting or registering to vote.
Good luck.
I already did the research on this when I heard the concert was being announced. Fluhr would have to prove that the people went out and registered to vote or voted because of the concert.
Good luck.
Events like this happen all the time. If a candidate has a cookout, the food has value. If they give out candy, it has something of value. If the Barack people were giving out cash or free TVs, that would be different.
From my understanding anyone with an Indiana ID could have gotten into the concert for free. Attendees did not have to show their voter registration cards.
If you’re going to try to beat Obamamannia, you’re going to have to do better than this. Sorry, make that a whole lot better than this.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
So true. For the record, my stepson at IU went and said they only asked him for his Indiana ID to get a ticket and asked “if” he was registered and had people there if he wanted to.
It was pretty clearly laid out accordingly to him that it wasn’t required.
Obama has a lot of national people in on this campaign running the state race. There’s no way they would have done anything so stupid as require registration. The fact this complaint was filed by a county GOP chair says it all
April 8th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
I think that part of the complain is that not all of the people giving out the tickets were as…umm…intelligently as described above.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Certainly, if questionable activity were so easy to prove, it is doubtful that the Obama campaign would ever engage in it or allow its people to do so; it certainly does not appear to be widespread (and I never contended in the complaint that it was). But several accounts and the general circumstances around the event indicate the potential for impropriety.
To determine whether anything happened is for the IEC to investigate and determine. There would never even be the possibility for the IEC to look into this if a complaint was not filed.
I don’t mind putting the issue before them (and that is basically all that the complaint does). They’ll either find it has merit or not, and in so doing they will make decisions and determinations that will settle this issue for other campaigns and elections in both this and future years.
And as for its chances, I said that the complaint was tilting at windmills for a reason.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:58 am
abdul…i disagree! he is providing a service for votes! Its not felony wrong, but, it is wrong!! where does the highway end
April 9th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Who ever said that tickets to a Dave show were “something of value”? Give me a break
April 9th, 2008 at 9:41 am
This is a bold precedent that may offer good motives but the news clips had uncomitted students on camera saying this sealed the deal for them to vote Obama. This quid pro quo is not in the spirit of the law and maybe worse. What’s next free cheeseburgers & fries? I’ll take a combo and hurry up about it.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:53 am
It begs the question of when does election reform get tackled. Since lobbyist reform can’t even get out of a committe in Indiana, I guess the answer is never.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Taxpayer834512 now you are catching on… I always found it interesting that when the democrats were in power they wanted daylight savings time and the Republicans didn’t. Then the Republican’s would be in power and the Democrats would fight it tooth and nail… Along comes Mitchy and he says, hey you all told the entire state I was a genius and if you don’t pass it my credibility is zilch. So they pass it. But, I always said, somewhere in President Lincoln’s papers in the basement of the Old Capitol Building in Springfield Illiois was a signed document that allowed Indiana back in the union and allowed us to have DST. Sure enough, they built a big old new Abraham Lincoln Library and in that shoebox was the papers that allowed Indiana to be a real State again. Now we have DST! I am so proud we are not citizens of the USA again.
April 9th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Meds imbalance alert. MD, step away from the keyboard. Those last few sentences were wacky.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I meant I am so proud we hoosiers are now citizens of the usa…. you knew that i hope. it was a joke about this states constant refusal to have dst…. i read it afterward and thought surely they’d know i meant now and not not….. oh anyway.