1,500 voters turned away from caucuses in Washington state
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By Madison Ruppert Editor of End the Lie [caption id="attachment_39852" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Three Rivers Convention Center (Photo credit: Scott Fischer/Panoramio)"] [/caption] A stunning 1,500 voters were told to go home when they went to the pooled Benton County caucuses at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick, Washington today. The local GOP claimed that the convention center reached capacity, adding that they expected around 2,000 people to show up when in actuality around 3,000 attended. Some of those individuals who thought they would be able to exercise their right to vote today arrived at 9 AM, just to see that the hallways of the convention center were already bursting at the seams with local voters. Potential voters were told that they could not enter the caucus rooms, leading to some quite justified outrage amongst those who attended and were prevented from voting. One such man, Ray Swenson, a lawyer from Richland, said that the local GOP officials did a less-than-stellar job of organizing the event and that all of the results from the day’s votes should be invalidated. “I think it’s illegal,” Swenson shouted to a crowd, according to TriCityHerald . “The Republican party leadership is taking away our freedom.” “I think it’s unconstitutional,” he continued. “Our right to vote is the most fundamental right in the Constitution. This is exactly equal to walking into a polling place and being told, ‘We’ve run out of ballots. We didn’t expect this many people. Go home.’” While I disagree with Swenson’s assertion that the right to vote is the most fundamental right (I would say it is actually the right to a fair trial which has been eroded by the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012), his point is a valid one. This is especially true when one considers the fact that the only defense the Benton County Republican Party members could come up with is that they underestimated the turnout. “We [were] overwhelmed,” the chairman of the Kennewick caucuses, Tony Benegas, said. “It’s tough because it’s all volunteers – nobody gets paid to do this.” That’s not much of an excuse either, given that volunteer organizations regularly pull off massive events without a hitch. I guess when it comes to voting, volunteers become incompetent, at least those who volunteer for the Benton County Republican Party. Benegas claimed that they quickly became aware that they didn’t have enough volunteers to check everyone in before voting, which usually entails crosschecking their voter registration on a county Auditor’s list and locating their precinct number. Any thinking person would likely ask at this point, “Why not just stay late to check everyone in and allow for the rooms which were supposedly filled to capacity to empty out? After all, it doesn’t take all day to vote.” Benegas might counter this by pointing to the perceived pressure on them to finish the process by 11:30 in order for the results to be tabulated and sent to the Washington state GOP. “We did pull the leadership aside and said, ‘What are we going to do?’” Benegas said. Benegas claims that the only choice available to them was to simply close the doors and thus block around 1,500 people from casting their votes. “I am extremely sorry we could not accommodate everyone,” he said. “I apologize to those folks who had to turn away. We fit in as many as we could, but we had more than we could physically fit in the rooms.” What isn’t clear is why they had to meet this seemingly arbitrary 11:30 deadline – and in the process strip the right to vote from some 1,500 people – instead of getting their votes in a little late as is so incredibly common. The Associated Press version of the story is a bit different, especially when it comes to numbers. Their reports claim that it was only “hundreds” and cite “about 800” via Benegas, instead of the 1,500 figure. They also claim that the organizers expected around 1,500 people, not the 2,000 published by other news outlets. Poor organization and a perceived need to meet a deadline are far from viable excuses when it comes to refusing the votes of Americans. Just about the worst thing that could come from this is the choice to move towards electronic voting machines to speed up the process, especially given that it could result in a write-in candidate like a cartoon character winning the whole thing . I just hope Swenson backs up his words and actually files a lawsuit in order to get the results invalidated. Did I miss something? Want to share a tip, opinion or some of your own writing? Email me at Admin@EndtheLie.com