UPDATE: Here is my report on the rescheduled caucus held on April 10. This time there was no fraudulent activity or broken rules and delegates were successfully selected.
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I’ve heard accusations of voter fraud in the Republican nominating process, almost always from Ron Paul supporters, and I never know if they’re just misinterpreting things or not understanding caucus rules or seeing what they want to see due to their bias when Paul doesn’t get as much support as they think he should.
Well, today I definitely witnessed blatant caucus fraud in my county. I’m not calling it voter fraud because, well, we never got to vote on anything….
The caucus was supposed to start at 10AM, but there were still long lines and they announced that everyone would be allowed in even though the event would start later and it was still supposed to be over by 1PM. (Turnout was probably a lot more than they were expecting. Police reported 2,500 but organizers said less than 1,000.)
So far so good, I thought, at least we won’t have any complaints about people getting turned away because they didn’t wake up early enough.
Sometime after 11AM they finally began to call the meeting to order. There was a temporary chairman, some local guy named Eugene Dokes, who was supposed to let everyone vote for a chairman as the first order of business. A political friend told me the chairman more or less controls the meeting, so the campaigns try hard to get one of their guys in as a chairman. (Some Ron Paul guys were actually handing out sheets in line telling supporters who to vote for chairman. They had a pretty good organization.)
First, though, Dokes went over some “non-negotiable house rules.” (It might have been the teacher from the high school that went over the rules. I actually think they might have taken turns as things got disruptive.) No food or beverage, turn off cell phones, no recording devices (except for “pre-approved media” people, of course). Everyone seemed OK about the food, but the recording devices rule really didn’t sit well with the crowd.
One guy refused to put his camera away, and Dokes refused to continue the meeting until he did. The crowd was booing the rule and chanting all kinds of things like “remove the chair” and “we make the rules.” Oh boy, I thought, here go Paul supporters looking disruptive again. But I was surprised to see Romney people just as agitated as the Paul supporters. And the crowd was being encouraged (as if they needed it) by a woman in front with a Romney sign and Romney sticker.
Well, they called some more cops in, and eventually everyone settled down and we did the pledge and invocation and it looked like the selection process was going to start. But instead of allowing a vote for chairman, Dokes rattled off some names of people he was appointing to various roles for the meeting (in this YouTube clip, you can hear him appointing a parliamentarian (sp?) at 0:20 and members of the credentials committee around 1:12). Apparently the elected chairman is actually supposed to appoint those people, but Dokes ignored the loud objections from the crowd.
Finally, he said it was time to select a chairman. A large portion of the crowd was audibly chanting “Brent Stafford” (the guy on the Paul sheet), but Dokes named some other guy, Matt Ehlen, and asked for Ayes and Nays and then said “The Ayes have it.”
A lot of people in the crowd objected and yelled out “Division” or whatever they’re supposed to yell to dispute an Aye/Nay vote, which means they’re supposed to count hands. Dokes ignored this as well. Paul supporters and Romney supporters were getting pretty outraged.
The guy at the mic (I forget if it was Dokes or Ehlen; I’ve seen claims of both but consensus is trending towards Ehlen) claimed the cops were gonna shut the place down if people didn’t behave. The crowd kept making lots of noise and suddenly the guy said something like “I entertain a motion to adjourn this meeting.” Somebody seconded it. He asked for Ayes and Nays again. This time I am absolutely certain the Nays were louder. The Ayes were audible, but the sound of the Nays physically hurt my ears.
But the guy adjourned the meeting and said it was all over and that our county would have no delegates! Then as people stayed outraged and refused to leave, they said if we didn’t leave we were trespassers who would be arrested. We finally vacated the building to see over a dozen cop cars as well as a police helicopter circling overhead.
To be fair, the crowd was pretty raucous while a lot of these things were going on, and it was hard to even hear what the guys at the mic were saying sometimes. Paul supporters complained that the local committee repeatedly ignored Robert’s Rules of Order, but I’m pretty sure mob-chanting “we make the rules” isn’t part of those Rules of Order, either. But I know without a shadow of a doubt that they at least violated the caucus rules that were clearly posted outside the gymnasium.
They appointed some members they wanted before selecting a chairman, selected a caucus chairman who did not have a clear majority of the caucusgoers, refused to put it up to a counted vote, and then adjourned the meeting despite the overwhelming objection of the caucusgoers.
After the meeting, the Romney and Paul campaigns were trying to get everyone to call the local and national GOP offices to complain about the blatant violations of the local party officials.
Rumors are that the local officials wanted to tilt the election to Santorum, so they tried to appoint their guys into the caucus positions instead of letting everyone vote on it, and maybe they tried to ban recording devices so no one could document it.
I have no idea if these rumors are true, but they don’t sound unreasonable. Santorum carried the state with over half the vote in the meaningless primary last month, and it makes sense that local officials who support him would be concerned about other candidates controlling the caucus and securing the delegates. And it would explain why the Romney camp was also so upset about the proceedings.
Apparently the Paul and Romney camps colluded to minimize Santorum’s outcome, but whether this was a result of the local committee’s plans to break the procedural rules, as Brent Stafford claims, or the incentive for them to break the rules, we may never know.
Maybe it was a little of both. It sounds like the pro-Santorum officials wanted a chairman who would appoint delegates proportionally based on the possibly illegal “straw poll” we took via sign-up sheets at the beginning. The Paul and Romney camps wanted a chairman who would possibly split delegates between them and shut Santorum out; this was technically legal but arguably less “fair”. However, it should also be noted that Santorum benefited from a technical rule that kept Gingrich off last month’s primary ballot, and I haven’t heard any of his fans complaining about that.
Unfortunately media accounts so far seem to be focusing on the disruption caused by the no-camera rule, as if Paul supporters just didn’t like that and it’s their fault for almost rioting and ruining the meeting. The media is not focusing on the second disruption (after everyone calmed down and we said the pledge) caused by the violated caucus rules.
USAToday (yes, we made national news) does this, quoting Dokes as thinking “there was the possibility of someone trying to inflict personal injury or harm to me.” The crowd was definitely unruly and I could see how he might have been frightened, but I believe that unruliness was caused by Dokes repeatedly violating the caucus rules.
So what happens now? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch initally reported this:
Eugene Dokes, the county GOP committee chairman, said he talked with state party officials shortly after the caucus broke up about figuring out another way to determine who St. Charles County will send to the district and statewide conventions that will pick national convention delegates.
Another countywide caucus or township caucuses are possibilities, Dokes said, but no decision has been made.
After an update, however, the article quotes party chairman David Cole saying,
“the State Party plans to reach out to all parties involved. We will come to an agreement to ensure that St Charles County is fully represented throughout the nominating process.”
Regardless of the Santorum rumors, which may be completely false, this caucus fraud certainly does not follow the conspiracy narrative about Republican elites trying to rig elections for Romney. If anything, it’s just a case of local officials trying to influence the event for their preferred candidate. Some of the alleged fraud cases in other states may be similar. Note that most of the Missouri caucuses happened without incident.
I’ve tried to piece together an accurate summary based on my memory, video clips, and other online accounts, but if you were there and have a correction to anything I wrote above, please let me know in the comments.
You spelled “Dokes” as “Doakes” once. How I remember, the public teacher read the rules at the beginning, not Dokes. There was the uproar which settled down and then Dokes came on and enforced the rules and thus the whole guy with the camera thing ensued. Also, it was the new guy at the mic, Matt Ehlen, that ended up telling us we had to leave and determined to adjoin the meeting.
Thanks. Corrections and caveats made.
Here’s how it went in Warren County::Missouri Caucus: Warren County Caucus..1st order of business (after Pledge and Invocation)..Motion made to elect the entire preplanned slate, some one seconded the motion and at the same time to close the nominations to any other nominations…It was obvious to me that these people who made the motions were handpicked in advance, and that the Warren Count Republican Party had no intention of having “Regular” people select candidates. That’s when the fun began..A voice vote was held on the original motion, and the Nays were louder than the Yays but chair ruled that the Yays approved the motion…..(They were still trying to ram it thru).Another motion was made to have a standing vote on the original motion..of couse the Nays won, and the slate was not elected…WOW..Gotta love it when the non-politicians won’t drink the Kool-Aid…..So, a motion was made to allow other slates to be presented..of course no one had come with that in mind (except the Party Faithful)…but quickly 2 persons came up with slates..One was called The Rick Santorum Slate..and another was called “The Anti-Warren County Republican Slate” which was mainly Paul supporters..Along with that a motion was made to have candidates of all slates to stand before the crowd and show us who they were and who they supported…what an eyeopener..the first two of the preplanned slate said they were undecided..the 3rd person from that slate (the Warren County Republican Party Slate). said they were instructed to mark undecided on the preference sheet we all signed…so they would not be committed in advance….(they did not ever announce how many preferred who on the sign-in sheets)…But some success form the floor…all had to stand and let us know who they were…and some stated who they favored…some were “Undecided”…..The “Rick Santorum Slate” was pulled from consideration by the sponsor …leaving just 2 slates..In the end, the prearranged.preselected slate was. I lost count of the Points of Order.
If only they didn’t try to ram it down our throats…No wonder people hate Politicians!
Superb synopsis and research by the way.
Very well written. My husband and I attended the caucus, our first. Several weeks ago, we attended the St. Charles County Council Republican Central Committee (not sure if this is the exact name) just to learn how a caucus is run where we watched Dokes violate the rules of order on several occasions. Other members tried to hold him accountable, but he never really seemed to respond to them or try to reign himself in.
Oops. Rein.
Beforehand, my wife Michele and I had attended presentations about caucuses by a Ron Paul supporter and by an Eagle Forum staffer. Also, I had found out what I could about our caucus from St. Charles County Republican Central Committee event coordinator Bryan Spencer. Also, Michele and I had attended a monthly SCCRCC meeting chaired by Eugene Dokes.
At the entrance to the caucus, though, rules were posted that no one had shared during these prior opportunities.
Also, in order to be admitted to the caucus everyone had to fill out a form which called for them to name who they would vote for. It could be that it was okay to leave that part of the form blank, but in my case there were blanks below that part of the form that I hadn’t filled in, and I was asked to fill in those blanks too. The gatekeepers told me that the caucus vote counts were going to have to match the vote counts from these forms, or the caucus vote counts were going to be considered invalid.
I guess we could only speculate on how things might have gone if these incitements hadn’t been put forward upfront, if Mr. Dokes hadn’t led off with some contentious rules, and if Mr. Dokes had instead simply taken nominations for caucus chair and called for standing votes.
But apart from brief periods before Mr. Dokes had said a word, during the pledge, and during the invocation, I would say that the disruptive one-quarter of the crowd never actually came to order.
And my impression is that this portion of the crowd was willing to be forcibly removed rather than allow the rest of us to get to vote.
Michele and James, thanks for your perspectives. Interesting to hear confirmation of Stafford’s claim that rules were being violated even before the day of the caucus.
Agreed with other commentors that this is an excellent analysis of what occurred at the caucus. Thanks for posting this. I have a few things to add, all pretty small but worth mentioning.
– I’m no mathematician, but I did some rough math calculating the number of people in each row times the number of rows times the number of each section of the bleachers and came up with 1,736 people (yes, it was that boring in the morning!). Therefore I would make my personal calculation of people in attendance between 1,700 and 2,000.
– The High School teacher was sort of a “Master of Ceremonies” for the caucus. He was the one that originally stated the rules of the convention, and before things got started a bit after 11 (due to the delay in getting people in the door) he had made a brief announcement about removing cameras and cell phones and had called out the man mentioned here – he was sitting directly behind me – about removing his camera, which the man refused to do.
– The High School teacher returned a bit after 11 to begin the caucus and once again stated the rules and once again called out the man behind me, telling him to put his camera away. Two cops (who I think were the only ones there at this time) then came over and asked him to put the camera away. I didn’t catch everything they were saying, but one cop suggested they go outside to discuss the issue, with the camera guy replying that there was “nothing to discuss”. The cops walked away without taking the guy or his camera, and it was at this point that Doakes took the stage. Doakes then re-stated that there were no cameras or phones allowed and that he was not going to start the proceedings until they were all put away. Of course this let to a lot of yelling and shouting and there was a roughly 20-30 minute delay until Doakes began the process of picking caucus chairman, with everybody standing around waiting for something to happen and many people pulling out their cameras and phones. During the delay more cops came in; by the end of the meeting I counted between 20-30 cops inside the gym, with more outside.
– Ehlen was the one saying that the cops were going to shut down the meeting. Earlier in the day a Santorum supporter had come over to our side of the gym and tried to garner support for Ehlen as chairman, much like the Paul people did for Stafford.
– The violated caucus rules were more disruptive to the proceedings than the camera rule, I believe, but the importance of the camera rules in setting the tone for the caucus should not be diminished. Many people were extremely outraged that they could not videotape the proceedings, which were ostensibly started in the first place in order to ensure a fair election of delegates. This made a lot of people hostile to Doakes and the St. Charles Republican leadership; just about anything they did after trying to enforce the camera rule wasn’t going to amend the situation.
Thanks for your excellent additions, Nick. If a Santorum supporter was rallying support for Ehlen, I consider that pretty good evidence that the local committee officials were playing for Santorum.
I don’t know if I trust your bleacher math just because of how variable the density was, and there were a lot of openings as well. Although the exact number is a fairly minor detail here; I’ve already seen two completely different numbers in the media.
I also wholeheartedly agree with this statement:
Unfortunately, the “house rule” about the cameras was ambiguous enough that Santorum supporters could get upset about people not following the clearly posted rules and Paul/Romney supporters could get upset about whether or not they had the authority to create and enforce such a rule, especially since many were already concerned with transparency and essentially biased against the local officials; such a rule only confirmed those biases, and then the violated caucus rules was just too much to take.
You are probably right in regards to my bleacher math. I too read comflicting reports about the numbers, but I can almost wholeheartedly say that there were definitely more than 1,000 people there. I read at least one report saying there were only 900 and I don’t think that is accurate.
The Ehlen supporter on my side of the gym was walking around the bleachers and asking everyone who supported Santorum. This was around 10:30, while we were waiting for the caucus to start.) After a few people said that they were supporting Santorum, he gathered them together in a group (he was still loud enough for me to hear him) and stated up from that he was a Santorum supporter. He argued for the election of Ehlen because he was the guy that was going to pick delegates “based on Proportion” of supporters, even going so far as to say that he would give more delegates to Paul and Romney if they had more support. He also stated that Brent Stafford (the proposed chairman Paul supporters wanted) was not going to do this, although he didn’t explain how he knew this. Whether or not Ehlen would have apportioned delegates this way is anybody’s guess.
We will see what happens from here.
After standing in line for more than an hour, I made it to the gym. There were few seats left on the Dist. 2 side, so I was pretty far from the speaker. I’d say attendance was about 1400.
I was in a section full of Santorum supporters and others just quietly trying to know what was going on. There was a young man standing in front of our section, looking frustrated that we just sat there, and taking cues from other people in the gym. As he joined others calling for a “point of order” when the meeting hadn’t even started, we calmly explained that we could vote on rule changes after the meeting started, and he settled down a little. It seemed like a few people were trying to just be disruptive, while Mr. Doakes(?) was being stubborn and obstinate. A neutral, impartial chairman would’ve helped, but it was pretty embarrassing.
There was some people posting (supposedly people from the county in the know) That Doakes had said that “If Ron Paul is going to win, I will throw the caucus on a technicality.”
It doesn’t fit the conspiracy model that Romney SUPPORTERS were outraged… but it does fit that ORGANIZERS in a majority of Ron Paul favourable situations, cause fraud sometimes in romney favour, sometimes santorum.
What makes it more obvious, is that in almost EVERY case of fraud, where there is enough videos to prove without “he said she said” that there is fraud happening… the MSM desn’t report it, or mention it with any kind of bias.
And yet, the MSM likes to cover how corrupt the Putin leadership race is.
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1817478/pg1
this is the kind of voter fraud that has been happening to Ron Paul from day 1… These guys planned it.