Clark County GOP Convention Rocked by Delays, Chaos, Confusion, and Charges of Fraud; Irregularities
VANCOUVER, WA — More than 1,000 Clark County Republicans gathered on Saturday in an emotionally charged convention at the Vancouver Hilton to elect delegates to represent various legislative districts at the GOP State Convention in late May.
Delegates at the State Convention will vote on national delegates to represent Washington state at the GOP National Convention this coming August.
Saturday’s event was to finish business that began on March 3 at the local caucus events, which sent a majority of Romney delegates to the County Convention. Party organizers were again overwhelmed by the turnout, which resulted in hundreds of people waiting in line for hours and a delay to convene the proceedings.
Irregularities began before the event even started, said Romney delegate Rick Russell.
“Some lines are checking ID, while others don’t,” he said. “It seems like anyone can get in here if they get in the right line. They let some people in ahead of others. Some delegates are complaining because their name isn’t on the approved list, and they get turned away. They aren’t checking people in correctly. It’s a total train wreck.”
Dozens of people walked around unsure of where to go and what line to wait in. Emotions were running high before 9 am, and that was before the opening gavel.
The story continues after the jump (just below the photos):
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| GOP delegates gathered at the Clark County GOP Convention at the Vancouver Hilton. |
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| Delegates spent nearly 12 hours at the convention, which was beset with delays and rule confusion. |
Once started, GOP candidates or surrogates from every level spoke on themes of party unity, limited government, taxes, health care, beating the opposition and taking back the White House in November.
U.S. Representative Jaime Herrera spoke on party unity and “how debates are good.”
In her speech, the Congresswoman criticized President Obama’s spending and took him to task on increasing debts. She believes the current debates between factions of the party will eventually make the party stronger and are essential to a free society.
Earlier in the week, organizers from the Romney, Santorum and Gingrich campaigns had agreed on a “Unity Slate” that included 18thDistrict delegates who pledged to vote for the eventual party nominee. That Unity Slate plan was put on ice by an official Santorum representative, who said the campaign was not part of this agreement. He instead asked supporters to unite behind an Open Convention Slate.
Tensions started to rise at that moment.
Camas resident Susie Huckvale was worried that when the convention divided into individual districts that the Unity Slate plan would fail.
“I don’t feel good about this,” she said. “I smell a rat. The Santorum people are up to something. I think they’re colluding with the Ron Paul people, and double-crossing the Romney delegation.”
When the convention broke into legislative districts, Lacamas Magazine covered the 18th District’s proceedings. The convention was already 90 minutes late and confusion reigned as Mary Graham, the 18th District Legislative Caucus Chair, convened her district’s meeting.
The district meeting’s primary job was to elect 32 delegates to represent the 18th district at the State Convention. Initially, 134 delegates were slated but that soon ballooned to more than 170 as people could nominate themselves.
Katja Delavar, a Ron Paul supporter, consistently interrupted the proceedings by challenging rules and motions, much to the exasperation of many around her. One delegate asked to stop talking and emotions ran high. She and her husband, Mike, a former Washougal city councilman, left their seats and went to the back of the large room.
“I find that woman to be very disruptive and annoying,” said Huckvale.
Once nominations were closed, it was a requirement to allow the delegates 30 seconds to make a personal statement. Delegates attempted to amend this rule and allow no time for personal statements. Again, emotions ran high. The rule stood and the audience listened to the delegates make their case.
Delavar challenged nearly every motion or rule by speaking up or going to the district board at the front of the room.
“Who is this person?” said Huckvale. “She’s all over the place and she’s delaying everything – and look how wrong she is most of the time.”
One member of Precinct 960 is going to investigate why a lower numbered alternate from the caucus was in attendance as a delegate.
“Our entire delegation was here,” he said. “And he wasn’t on our list. Something fishy is going on.”
He plans to take photos of the alternate on Monday to the Clark County GOP and show them evidence of fraud.
The proceedings were delayed another hour as delegates waited on alternate voting to fill in delegate absences. Once that was done, the voting could begin.
The credentials representative reported that 213 delegates from the 18th District were credentialed and allowed to vote.
Instructions were vague and sometimes contradictory as ballots were handed out, and several delegates noted there were no safeguards.
“Nobody is watching how many ballots each delegates receives,” said Cynthia Haddock. “People could take more than one ballot and nobody would notice.”
Santorum and Romney delegates kept raising concerns to officials, only to continue to get brushed off.
“It’s not a perfect system,” said official Brent Boger, multiple times to multiple delegates. “We’re doing the best we can.”
One responded: “This whole thing is flawed. You’re not getting away with this.”
One anonymous delegate reported she received two ballots that were stuck together.
“It was hard to punch through the chads and then I noticed two were stuck together, so I returned one,” she said. “A dishonest person can easily commit fraud.”
Whispers of concern ran rampant as voting for 32 state delegates began. Charges of fraud were audible as one Ron Paul supporter wearing a cowboy hat was seen and videotaped holding four ballots.
It wasn’t a pretty sight.
Votes were counted using a voting machine and party official Mike Gaston announced the first round was complete. “We have 12 winners out of 284 ballots cast,” Gaston said.
Chaos ensued.
Seventy-one ballots were in question. Delavar immediately ran around the convention hallway claiming a break down of the system. “How can that be?” she yelled out. “We only credentialed 213.”
She then returned to her supporters.
Delegates were aghast and concerned about time limits as it neared 4:30 pm. The event was supposed to adjourn at 6 pm and the voting was nowhere near completion.
“We had a credentials report that said there were 213 credentialed voting delegates from the 18th Legislative District,” said Boger. “We think the 284 number is correct … but we cannot verify that, so we’re going to count everyone in the room … and if we are fairly close to 284 we can just accept that number.”
A worn down and exhausted delegation agreed to the proposal, but once again questioned the integrity of the entire process. Most kept looking at their watches wondering if there was enough time to complete the voting.
Once a manual count of delegates was completed, the original numbers stood, but that left 20 open slots, since nominees were required to receive 50 percent plus one in order to be seated at the State Convention. The first round of elected delegates were Santorum supporters.
“It looks likes the Santorum delegates betrayed the Romney people and colluded with Ron Paul supporters,” said Haddock. “I feel disillusioned.”
A second round of voting began but had to be scrapped because GOP rules require delegates with less than 10 percent in the first round to be dropped from voting in the second round.
Tension and frustration filled the hall.
Romney delegates were shut out completely in the second round as Paul delegates ran away with it. After the third round, Romney delegates realized they had been double-crossed by the Santorum people.
“It’s clear what happened,” said Doug Thurston. “The two other campaigns combined forces to shut the Romney people out.”
He said the disproportion of Ron Paul supporters to the Romney delegates didn’t make sense given the way the caucus turned out.
“Romney clearly won on caucus day,” Thurston said. “And there weren’t this many Ron Paul people that won. Something bad happened.”
Huckvale thinks fraud was rampant all day long.
“The Santorum people double-crossed us,” she said. “And the number of delegates compared to what was credentialed wreaks of fraud. Romney won the caucus and had a clear majority of delegates from the county to win this!”
In the end, only Santorum and Paul delegates were elected from the 18th District.
Delegate Kristy Wasson was saddened by anti-Mormon remarks by Ron Paul supporters. She said one delegate was making fun of Mormons, and then said he was only joking. Another reported several Ron Paul supporters make anti-Mormon comments. Mitt Romney is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I am at peace tonight,” said Delavar to her Ron Paul supporters. “I can happily lay my head on my pillow tonight for what we did. We wiped out the Romney people and our voice was heard.”
One of the supporters said they wouldn’t support Mitt Romney if he got the nomination. He said they hoped for a brokered convention and would embrace presidential candidate Gary Johnson.
Observers were dismayed by the day’s proceedings.
“There was a 30 percent discrepancy between the credentialed delegates and the number of people voting – that’s significant,” said Thurston. “Ballots were handed out and nobody was double checking – one guy had four ballots in his hand. There were no checks and balances in this system.”
Officials were overwhelmed by the process and kept brushing off complaints.
“The system today has been flawed,” said Romney delegate Joseph Burt. “Today we have had a lot of discrepancy, a lot of problems, complete disorganization. The chairman did not have the agenda until this morning. This has been a flawed system and I’m certain there will be challenges.”
Most delegates spent nearly 12 hours at the Hilton, and by 6 pm at least a dozen gave up and went home. The event ended just after 8 pm.
“That’s what the Ron Paul people do,” said Burt. “They delay, delay, delay, cause panic, cause confusion and get people to leave early so they can inflate their numbers. And today, it worked.”
A video component of this story is being produced and will also be at www.LacamasMagazine.com
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Thank you for this honest report of the actual events of the day. I was there as a Delegate in the 49th district. Our delays seemed to be more about printing issues, than individual Paul supporters distracting meeting proceedings. I did witness the lockout to Romney Delegates being elected into our first two rounds of voting; 5 Delegates receiving a majority vote in each round (5 Santorum, 2 Paul, 1 Gingrich, and two "undecided" – two or three of these Delegates being listed on both "the Unity Slate" and "the Open Slate" – which smelled a little fishy to me). The third round resulted in noone receiving a majority vote. So the top 36 vote getters left were announced and we hand wrote their punch numbers in 36 slots and then voted for a maximum of 18 to fill our remaining delegate slots. We finished up at 745pm. As of this morning, the remaining 18 Delegates have yet to be announced. The majority of us in the 49th stuck it out to the end. Once we began voting I felt a sense of pride and duty to do the right thing and get proportional delegates elected to the State Convention. I can only hope that Romney Delegates were in fact elected to a majority of those 18 seats remaining – since he did in fact win Clark County's straw pole on March 3rd.
The Santorum and Ron Paul groups met in a corner and said vote for Santorum the first round and Ron Paul on the second. They doubled their numbers and overwhelmed the Romney supporters that were there.
How disappointing! I am really disheartened by our so-called democracy in action. How can people that are supposed to be on a list to vote get kicked out when they were voted in as a delegate earlier this month? How can others not voted in as a delegate just walk in the doors and vote? That is crazy! Now we see how easy it is to have these events run amuck, no wonder the final notes in an election are so messed up!
All Santorum and Ron Paul people are doing is illegal! I hope their actions are caught on film and their delegates will be disqualified!
Ron Paul has programmed his minions to lie and deceive in order to get a delegate spot. While getting a spot at the conventions dishonest, it is not fraud. However, when this happened in Clark County, NV, it came out that many people had been frauded on voting day. Ron Paul has instructed his minions to insert themselves into the voting process by volunteering to help out with the straw poll/caucus. They then gave people false information on becoming delegates so they could direct only Ron Paul supporters on the correct way to become delegates. If you are a person who was told you were on the delegate list and showed up on Saturday only to find out you weren't, then if you remember who gave you false information, make sure to turn him/her in to the election board. This is a crime.
I am losing respect for Ron Paul
Remember people there are 2 sides to every story!!!! There are numerous videos for events where the Romney and Santorum people hijacked the caucus to get votes from Ron Paul. None of this is right, but as long as people are playing by the rules no one can complain. REMEMBER the STRAW polls are just beauty contests, they are not a direct reflection of the particular party. But it is already obvious that if you think Romney should be president you do not really understand what is going on in the world around you. Do you support teh troops or do you want them to stay in teh middle east getting killed? How about that 15.6 trillion dollars of DEBT the USA has?? Iran doesnt have a bomb!!! And when was the last time you bought gas and groceries? Have you heard how many trillions of dollars the fed has printed in the past couple yrs? Do you know the definition of inflation?
Was Ron Paul there coordinating this event? Do you lose respect for the POPE because a priest in your home town forces himself on a young boy? 15.6 trillion dollars of debt a federal reserve that is printing trillions and bailing out the bankers and your worried about a small event like this? OPEN EYES, LOOK AT WORLD and see what kind of hole America has dug for itself. You cannot fix a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it.
Santorum and Paul showing true colors.
If you think Washington is corrupt now think of what it would be like if they really had a chance
I was in the 17th LD and ours was run very similar. Thank goodness we didn't have Ms. Delavar in our room – or I think we would have had even more chaos. Romney clearly won Clark County's straw poll and came away with ZERO delegates from our district. We didn't even seat our 32 delegates – we only got through 2 rounds of voting by 8pm and only 15 delegates received over 50% of the votes, the majority of them Santorum delegates because Santorum played the fence on both the unity slate and the open slate. Way to go Santorum delegates – play both sides and backstab. Nice.
I was there, and this is exactly what happened. Delay, after delay, all with the intent of postponing the vote, until many Romney people had to leave at 6pm.
How can someone who won the caucus by such a large margin end up not having one single delgate; fraud, that's how.
Santorum instructed his delegates to collude w/ Paul(according to the article in the Columbian this AM)so I have lost respect for him. Do you know if Ron Paul asked his supporters to be in cahoots w/ Santorum supporters? I'd like to know.
I was there yesterday as Romney delegate for the 15th District. Anyone could have voted, even without being credentialed because no one checked once you got into your district room! The proof that you were truly a delegate was that you were given a STICKER w/ your name and district written on it in magic marker! No kidding! You showed your ID in the foyer, they wrote on a sticker, and then it was a free for all!
There was no way for the Romney delegates in the districts besides ours to have a voice because of the collusion between Paul and Santorum. Our district was too small to matter to the deal makers. Reminded me of Chicago politics.
After we finished electing our two delegates, we all went home except for three Paul delegates and a Romney alternate. A Santorum supporter from Oregon walked into the room and attempted to get them to throw out our voting and redo the whole thing on a technicality. To their great credit,they refused. Our delegates: one Romney, one Santorum. It will be interesting to see if our Romney delegate is the only one in the county. And we all know that Romney handily won the straw poll.
Corruption from the very people who preach against it.
Ron Paul has a literal training manual out. He instructs his minions to not reveal they are RP supporters and to say they are supporting other candidates (who earned the delegates) then abstain from voting in first round at national convention. He also has trained them to insert themselves in the election process and to misdirect people wanting to get on the lists of people who want to become delegates. A lot of people were showing up thinking they were on that list, only to find out they were not. Ron Paul can't get votes so he has brainwashed an entire section of our population who either really want pot legalized or who do not want to have to fight in any wars. There are a handful of legitimate RP supporters who are not brainwashed, but they are minimal in number.
If you remember, the system was flawed for the 1st round where we did not know if it was one man one vote. Who took that round of voting? Yep, every single Santorum supporter on both slates won. Noone else got anything. Then Mrs. Delavar made the motion to have a one man one vote system. So she recommended that we all stand and count off as we pick up our ballots. We did that every round thereafter. It took so much time that we did not have an opportunity to vote on the last ballot. But, it was not fraudulent by any means.
Unlike most of the people posting here, the Ron Paul supporters understand the process. Yes, Romney won the straw poll at the caucus, but not with a majority. The more important business at the caucus was to elect delegates to the county convention. The Paul supporters handily won that and sent at least 100 more people at the convention Saturday than the Romney team. The Unity slate was a trick of the party bosses to boost Romney and it backfired once the Santorum campaign got wind of it.
Michelle, Romney began the coalition slate stuff. They held a meeting last Wednesday night to urge Santorum and Gingrich supporters to vote for their "Unity Slate," and they gave the clear impression that the other two campaigns were behind the effort, although the truth was the Santorum campaign hadn't signed on.
The Santorum and Paul camps instead developed their own coalition slate at a meeting Friday night and asked their followers to vote *it*.
Two coalition slates, and the second one won. Nothing illegal there. The truth is that most Republicans in the county don't want Romney as their candidate–he couldn't win a majority at the non-binding straw poll on March 3rd–and the majority who doesn't want him banded together Saturday. Nothing illegal there.
I think the delays at the convention were simply the result of organizers not being ready for the crowds that showed up. But if you want to posit a conspiracy theory regarding the delays, you'll have to pin it squarely on Romney wanting to shut down the convention to avoid a Paul-Santorum win, because the delays were clearly caused by the disorganization of the organizers, and the party leadership, almost to a man and woman, are Romney supporters.
Here's another good account of the proceedings Saturday:
http://crybelovedcountry.com/2012/04/what-really-happened-at-the-convention/
You need to do the math. We have the numbers from Caucus. We have the numbers at the convention. They don't add up. I have evidence that seated delegates were disenfranchised. They were told there were mistakes and they were not delegates after all. Then, the Paul supporters who were alternates were then seated. How does that happen? My name was crossed off the list! Who had the power to cross my name off? I fought it and got in the room. This reeks of fraud. This will NOT be brushed under the rug. It is being brought to the national GOP level. Paul and Santorum stole disenfranchised delegates opportunities to go on to state and then National conventions. Romney will be the nominee, and we support him. Because of this fiasco on Saturday, Many of us lost a shot at being there to support our candidate. Once in a lifetime opportunity lost. I am so frustrated.
There is a video of "what really happened", and it doesn't tell the same story your link does. There is one man (RP supporter) who had at least 4 ballots in his hand. 284 votes with 213 credentialed delegates??
Ballots in the 18th District were cast without photo ID's, and nothing prevented delegates from other districts from wandering over to our district and voting also. I saw people voting multiple ballots, others did not have their district # on their paper tag. Some delegates and alternates received letters prior to the convention informing them that they were not on the final credentialed list. I would say there was definitely fraud and many reasons to challenge the convention results.
Wow, you people are stupid. Why do you think Ron Paul supporters are being so loud and angry at these events? Its because they're tired of getting pushed around by the GOP / RNC … and they are mad. There is more and more growing evidence about anti-Ron Paul vote tampering and fraud to benefit all the other candidates… so a very FEW Ron Paul supporters are loud, and an individual was seen with 4 ballots… who saw the person and is there any proof other than heresay?
I could say I saw a pig moon walking but until there is more than one person saying it-and there is proof, don't believe it and don't get twisted about it.
This thing sounds like it was set up to fail on purpose after reading the article.
Heard Ron Paul had big numbers in the county voting before all this delegate business happened weeks later… so if the GOP/RNC just happened to be shady like some are feeling they are… why not set this up to fail?
LOL
It wasn't a Santorum "double cross" as explained in one quote here (although I don't doubt some people may have had that perception. A lawyer/representative from the national Santorum campaign came out to a Slate meeting that was put together by a Romney supporter to compensate for and to discuss the unethical behavior of the Washington Ron Paul campaign: voter suppression, delay tactics, and lying to get elected as delegates to precincts that voted for other candidates in the straw polls, etc.
You can imagine why it rubs people the wrong way to hear "'I am at peace tonight,' said Delavar to her Ron Paul supporters. 'I can happily lay my head on my pillow tonight for what we did. We wiped out the Romney people and our voice was heard.'"
The lawyer at the slate meeting told his supporters to cut a deal with Ron Paul supporters (in order to shut out Romney and any progress towards the 1,144 votes needed to wrap up the election). I heard him tell his supporters first hand.
The national Santorum campaign fired the State Santorum campaign manager for not being willing to participate or endorse the activity.
If Santorum gets votes, he wins. And if he can destroy the voting process to keep delegates from being elected, he wins again because it keeps people from being able to support Mitt Romney. In any contest with three runners (without adequate guidelines in place), if the winner doesn't have greater than both of the other candidates combined, the other two could conceivably join together to shut out the winner, and then battle over the spoils at the end… well among unethical competitors who have no respect and who desire to abuse the Democratic process.
The full name of the "Open Slate" (used by the Santorum/Paul pact) is actually the "Open Convention Slate". And it was endorsed and orchestrated by the national Santorum campaign and the State Ron Paul campaign. It was put into play specifically to keep people from being able to vote for Romney. Supporters of the slate at the convention wore stickers that said "No 1,144".
Voting should not be suppressed – even if your candidate isn't the one who will win. If you have to resort to those techniques, it's probably because not enough people want to elect you.
The Republican party is recognizing this desperate behavior from a candidate who thinks he "can still win this thing." He used to have my respect, but lost it completely late in this contest. He's damaging his own party in the process. If he's not completely deaf, the plethora of endorsement by respected Republicans for Romney should speak loud and clear of their opinion of these tactics – tactics I saw at their most terrible in the 17th district voting.
Much like the Constitution, the voting process requires cooperation, mutual respect, and moral values to keep it working – it's not a natural law, but a civil agreement. I appreciate the ethics and honesty of Ron Paul, Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney delegates who ignored the Open slate and voter suppression, and who stuck it out for more than 12 hours at that convention.
from an 18th district delegate:
I started as an alternate and watch as Mike Delavar hovered over Boger's shoulder as Boger was calling out names of those to be delegated. I thought at the time that these where strange behaviors but Boger was not stopping him! Hmm!
When 6PM arrived and the 2/3 vote had to be taken it was alarming how it was handled and it appeared the Greg Kimsey and Brent Boger where very much in support of the Paul/Santorum group. Otherwise, when we were told to move to the east side of the room to be counted as against extending the time to 8 PM we were given 2 minutes to move around hundreds of people. When many of us objected, I personally was told by Kimsey to sit down because that was the way it was going to be! Those of us who believe in the democratic process had our eyes opened Saturday the the steet thugs are alive and well in our party as well as with the Obamas!
All we have are your accusations and no evidence. Why is that?
I haven't actually met any serious Ron Paul supporter who smokes. Didn't see any at the convention either.
There was nothing dishonest about having an "open convention slate." It was publicly known what the purpose was and it was voluntary to vote for it. It's called a winning strategy. But if you are on the losing side it now becomes "Votor suppression." Now that is worth a LOL.
Truth lover, as a fellow Truth Lover, who has WITNESSED another convention that had the same things reported as "going on", when in TRUTH it was ANTI-PAUL people pulling it, I don't for one minute buy this report. It is biased. Heavily.
SOME Paul people did a dumb thing at our Convention, and made FULL apology and restitution. The Anti-Paul people however (I don't know whether to term them Pro-Romney, I just know who they were against!).
The other thing you have with Paul people is – in general – these are not politics-as-usual people. These are regular ol' Americans who have been awakened by the tsunami of BS sent out from Washington they are coming out, showing up and getting involved – often clumsily – and I give them credit for wanting to save this country they LOVE.
NO MORE STATUS QUO.
Truth Lover, if you truly love capital "T" Truth… get to the Truth… you might have to dig for it.
Would that have been someone collecting the ballots? If this was a REAL issue, you had a Chairman to bring that to the attention of and DEAL with it.
Watch the video on this blog and educate yourself you dork! You can see the proof for yourself! Funny that you try to argue something you know nothing about or haven't even investigated.