Ed Martin Concedes

This morning, Ed Martin (R) called Russ Carnahan (D-MO) to congratulate him on winning last Tuesday's election. Martin has alleged voter fraud in the election; however, today he has acknowledged that to the extent that voter fraud occurred in Missouri's Third Congressional District, it does not account for the 4400 vote margin in the race. With almost 49% of the vote, Russ Carnahan will continue to represent the district.

Martin also updated his website with a post entitled election day review - final report which reads in part:

In the early hours of Wednesday, November 3rd we learned that a slim lead our campaign enjoyed disappeared in a surge of votes. At the time we understood that these votes were coming from as few as three precincts from the city of St. Louis. On its face this sudden end-of-night surge was suspicious. We understood that St. Louis had finished reporting. Mathematically, several thousand votes from a small number of precincts was implausible.

Given the history of St. Louis and the state of Missouri where our Secretary of State has refused to take responsibility for compelling local boards of election to purge voter rolls of ineligible registrants, voter fraud looms large in the mind of voters. A sudden wave of votes is easy to associate with an unscrupulous few who might have a few thousand votes on standby in case an election was close and their candidate needed help.

...

Since Wednesday afternoon we have learned that the votes were not from three to seven precincts in the City, but rather included unreported votes from the northwest precincts of St. Louis County encompassed by Missouri’s Third Congressional district. In light of this new information, the implausibility factor evaporates along with my concerns about voter fraud in that late surge. And, although I have concerns about other incidents and improper conduct on election day, I no longer believe these concerns are sufficient to continue our review of what has occurred or delay agreeing that this election is over.

...

Finally, after asking for input, we have heard from hundreds of citizens about problems with voting or voter registration. These problems are real and far too common – or so it seems. The heart of our republic is a voting system that works fairly, with regularity, and which inspires confidence. I fear that the legion of problems threatens the integrity of our voting system.

Our campaign was about empowering people to get involved in politics to change the course of our nation by stopping one-party rule in Washington. This has been accomplished by other victories even as we came up short. Our campaign also sought to instill confidence in the citizens that their voices and votesmatter. Mishaps and misconduct like we saw last Tuesday threaten this confidence. In the coming weeks and days, I will continue to seek to highlight the importance of protecting our voting system and will ask you to assist me in this effort.

Thank you to all and thanks be to God for the blessing that is the United States of America

Ed, thanks for running and best of luck in your future endeavors!

Ed Martin Update

While Russ Carnahan (D-MO) has claimed victory in Missouri's Third Congressional District, Ed Martin (R) has yet to concede. The News Tribune reported Thursday: "Republican Ed Martin is demanding an investigation of possible voter fraud after narrowly losing the election for Missouri’s 3rd Congressional District to Democratic incumbent Rep. Russ Carnahan."

At the close of Tuesday evening's election tally, Russ Carnahan was leading his three conservative opponents with almost 49% of the vote (99,016). Ed split the 51% of the voters that sought to return sanity to DC with the Constitution Party's Nick Ivanovich and Libertarian Steven Hedrick. Ed was a close second to Russ having garnered the support of nearly 47% of voters. Still, he trailed Russ by almost 4,500 votes.

That's a lot of votes to make up and Ed acknowledged that Friday morning on Jamie Allman's radio show on 97.1. You can listen to Ed's remarks from the third hour of Jamie's show. Ed comes on at about 3:45 and speaks for about five minutes:



(If the MP3 player above doesn't work, try this direct link.)

Ed's in a difficult position. Obviously, he doesn't want to be the next Al Gore, but as someone who worked to end voter fraud in St. Louis city, Ed feels an obligation to ensure a clean election. He's made three claims about Tuesday's election, but before we get into those claims, it is important to note that Russ Carnahan's sister, Robin Carnahan, is Missouri's Secretary of State. As such, she's ultimately responsible for election oversight and obviously has a conflict of interest in this instance.

Ed's first claim is that the seven-hour outage of the Secretary of State's voter verification system may have allowed ineligible voters to cast ballots. This allegation is supported by statements Jen Ennenbach of the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition made to the Daily Caller:

“We are also calling for an investigation into the Secretary of State’s office because we had an election judge come into the St. Louis Tea Party headquarters just to vent his frustration and let us know what was going on,” Ennenbach told TheDC.

Ennenbach said the election judge, who she wouldn’t name, came to her after having witnessed busloads of mentally handicapped service workers, who are ineligible to vote per their medical condition, cast ballots during the timeframe when the verification system was down.

“The judges could not strike the vote because the verification system was down,” she said.

And there's no dispute about the verification system being down. Missouri.WatchDog.org reported:

A piece of computer hardware failed on Election Day, preventing poll workers across Missouri from being able to access the central electronic database designed to verify voter registration information for part of the day.

One of the load balancers — a piece of computer hardware that manages Internet traffic by determining how requests are sent to servers — is to blame for the problems with the system, said Laura Egerdal, spokesperson for the Missouri Secretary of State.

That's an odd thing to have happen.

Ed's second claim is that it was inappropriate for recently appointed St. Louis City Board of Elections Democratic Chairwoman, Eileen McCann, to hire a security company with close ties to Congressman Carnahan. The only way that I see this as a problem is if they security company was hired to transport ballots. In the audio from Jamie Allman's show above, Ed mentions some politics within the Board of Elections that may be relevant.

Ed's third claim is that a late at night dump from seven city precincts delivered an astounding number of votes for Russ Carnahan; however, Ed has since backed off of this claim. Daily Caller article mentioned earlier also has this:

On Wednesday, Martin’s team originally said a last-minute surge of Democratic votes from seven precincts looked suspicious, especially after he was leading most of the night. Now, though, after further investigation, his team discovered that the Democratic surge was from more than just the seven precincts – and he said that surge looks reasonable.

With that acknowledgement, it's hard for me to see how Ed can claim victory. Nonetheless, voters who have been disenfranchised or whose votes have been diminished by fraudulently cast ballots need someone to stand up for them. That person has to be Ed because the voters lack standing in court.

In addition to those three, other claims have emerged including Ennenbach's claim above that a St. Louis election judge witnessed fraud. On Wednesday, 24thState.com revealed some details about ineligible voters casting ballots in Missouri:

That said, we did identify 31 cases of registered voters who were possibly ineligible. And we know 8 that voted, at least one of which was not eligible to vote and should be taken from the rolls. That was based on just two locations. Because we had no villain, we held off reporting the information until after the election, as our plan was to work with cooperative election authorities rather than making a scandal out of what was really a systemic problem.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this is the indifference shown by Missouri's Secretary of State. As 24thState reported this past Thursday:

Robin Carnahan has stated in federal court that it is not her responsibility to clean the voter rolls, despite the violence done to honest elections during the time Missouri ACORN was active. Well, if Robin won't do it, then the people will do what government can't or won't do.

Conservatives obviously see this as a dereliction of duty on Robin Carnahan's part. I guess Robin could make the argument that she's saving tax payers money by outsourcing her job. It turns out that a MissouriWatchdog.org report has linked the deceased in Kansas and Missouri to active voter lists; however, Robin still hasn't scrubbed the voter roles.

That's not surprising when you consider Mindy Mazur, Robin Carnahan's campaign manager and former chief of staff. Between those two stints working for Robin Carnahan, Mazur worked for the progressive America Votes where she advocated for, among other things: election day registration, allowing 16 or 17 year olds to pre-register, removing proof of citizenship requirements, removing registration barriers for felons, etc. According to Wikipedia, America Votes has offices in twelve states and the District of Columbia, including Missouri. If you're conspiratorial, you wont be surprised to learn that Robin Carnahan was backed by George Soros's Secretary of State Project in her 2008 campaign. Maybe George was looking for some early dividends on this investment in the form of a Russ Carnahan win.

Perhaps Ed Martin's complaints about voter fraud will amount to nothing. That would be the best outcome. Due to our legal structure he's the only person with standing to bring these complaints and hopefully force greater scrutiny. To those that would nay-say his challenge, I would respectfully point out that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Protesting Voter Fraud in St. Louis

Members of the St. Louis Tea Party (and two Russ Carnahan campaign staffers) assembled outside the St. Louis Board of Elections to protest voter fraud in the 2010 midterm election between Ed Martin and Russ Carnahan. The video above is from that protest.

Later in the day, Ed Martin's campaign held a press conference. I was unable to attend Ed's press conference; however, he issued the following statement:

Too Many Questions

Call for Investigation into 3 Main Questions

(ST. LOUIS, MO.) Nov. 3, 2010 –There are a number of questions surrounding the votes in Missouri’s 3rd district race. The people deserve to have these questions investigated and answered so they are assured our election process is fair and their votes are counted.

The three glaring factors which stand out involve the Secretary of State’s office, the sole decision of a newly appointed Democratic chair at the City Elections Board, and an unprecedented number of votes coming in late from the city.

The Secretary of State first of all is Congressman Carnahan’s sister, Robin Carnahan. She reported having irregularities and computer glitches early in the day. We have heard from countless voters who want those problems scrutinized. Many point out that the Department of Justice pursued, for three years, a case against Missouri for failing to clean up the process. “When filed in 2005, one-third of Missouri counties had more registered voters than voting-age residents. What's more, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan,… contended that her office had no obligation to ensure individual counties were complying with the federal law mandating a cleanup of their voter rolls.” (Wall Street Journal, John Fund, July 8, 2010)

People also question the motive behind a newly appointed St. Louis City Board of Elections Democratic Chairwoman, Eileen McCann, hiring a security company with close ties to Congressman Carnahan. Special Services was called on by Congressman Carnahan to do security for him as recently as August 26th. Carnahan paid the company $1400 at that time which can be seen in a quick review of his FEC filing.

Then just before midnight seven precincts within the city and county delivered an astounshing late night dump of votes. In such a hotly contested race and with so many voters concerned it only makes sense to make sure in fact every vote counts. Since Missouri’s Secretary of State is in fact Congressman Carnahan’s sister it is suggested she recuse herself from the investigation and appoint an independent investigator to look into these three main points of question.

“The people of this district want to make sure their voices were in fact heard and I pledged to them that I would fight to ensure it happens. We need to make sure the election process was in fact fair and that the numbers are correct. I saw several issues in my time at the St. Louis City Board of Elections and serious issues like this should and need to be addressed,” said Ed Martin.

We have been hearing about voting irregularities from a large number of constituents and are looking into all of these matters. We ask anyone who may have witnessed any sort of questionable acts regarding votes, ballots and the general election that they contact our office.

The New Black Panthers Case Returns

Andrew Breitbart at Big Journalism has mixed praise for the Washington Post report on the New Black Panthers case:

Congratulations to the editors at the Washington Post. Seventeen months after the Eric Holder Justice Department dismissed a slam-dunk case against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation, the Post gets around to printing a thorough vetting of the dismissal. The story is slated for Saturday’s print edition. While other media like Breitbart/The Bigs, Fox News, the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, Investors Business Daily, Pajamas Media, and Drudge have had dozens of stories on the corrupt New Black Panther dismissal, the Washington Post at last is in the game.

The story is a shocker too. The shock comes from the middle of the road and factual nature of the story.

Ed Martin Write-up in Riverfront Times

Photo: Jennifer Silverberg and Riverfront Times

Riverfront Times has an exhaustive bio of Ed Martin. Here's an important bit about his work confronting voter fraud in St. Louis city:

In April 2002, U.S. Senator Christopher "Kit" Bond, the Missouri Republican, brought an English springer spaniel onto the Senate floor in Washington, D.C. Making the case for national election reform, he wanted all to meet Ritzy. She'd been registered to vote in St. Louis.

The city had a bad reputation for voting irregularities, but the November 2000 election was truly a farce. Hundreds of citizens showed up to vote but found their names had been mistakenly dropped from the rolls. When a judge ordered an emergency extension of voting hours, a higher state court quickly reversed it — but folks kept voting anyway.

By the end of Election Day, Bond was pounding his fist on a lectern, declaring the whole thing "an outrage." Yet the problems persisted into the next year, when two prominent aldermen registered to vote — despite being dead.

In 2003, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board blasted the Board of Election Commissioners as an "unconscionable mess," where patronage employees "who owe their allegiance to politicians have never been known for their devotion to long hours and hard work."

Enter Ed Martin.

He'd been busy since leaving the archdiocese, clerking for a federal appeals court judge, getting married, having a baby and practicing law at Bryan Cave. Governor Matt Blunt appointed him to chair the bipartisan board in May 2005.

Within three months, Martin and his two fellow commissioners had fired or demoted seven top staffers, including some Republicans. They refined the duties of those remaining with a clear message: Do your job, or lose your job. Martin also handed over evidence of voter fraud to the authorities.

Even Democrats who wouldn't dream of supporting Martin's current bid for Congress give him props for his tenure as chairman.

Jeff Rainford, St. Louis mayor Francis Slay's chief of staff, lauds Martin for recruiting able workers to get the trains running on time. By November 2008, Rainford observed, the board of elections was "like night and day" from its 2000 woes, which he finds ironic, given that it probably hurt Martin's party.

"Though he is obviously one of the most partisan guys around," Rainford says, "Ed still wanted the place run right, even if that meant more Democrats would vote."

Some would argue that top city Democrats are supporting Ed Martin against Russ Carnahan. Nonetheless, Ed's work cleaning up election irregularities and voter fraud is one of the reasons he's the hardest working politician in Missouri.

Mayor Francis Slay and Ed Martin

The St. Louis American's Political Eye column seems to think that Democrat Mayor Francis Slay has all but endorsed Republican Ed Martin:

Politics, it is often said, makes for strange bedfellows. The 2010 midterm elections are making for quite the strange bedfellow matchmaker.

Take as evidence these photographs of Ed Martin, far-right Republican candidate for Congress, buddying up with Mayor Francis G. Slay this weekend at the Columbus Day Parade in St. Louis.

And then further down:

Slay campaign communications operative Richard Callow tends to be more talkative. So we asked him.

We asked, “What is this supposed to mean about the mayor's professed support for Russ Carnahan? I need to check my calendar, but it seems like Nov. 2 is awfully close to be playing those sorts of footises with someone you are trying to beat. Unless, of course, you aren't really trying to beat the person you say you are trying to beat.”

Callow wrote right back: “You probably missed this tweet from @SMGregali: ‘Walking in the Columbus Day Parade with Mayor Slay & Cong. Carnahan.’”

The EYE wrote back: “And he probably hoped we would miss the cozy photos. Some mouths have two sides – some tongues, two forks.” As former Comptroller Virvus Jones likes to say, What it is, it ain’t.

 As Editor at 24thState reported in September, someone—presumably Mayor Slay or someone close to him—has registered the domain: www.SlayForCongress.com. Maybe someone should ask Callow about that. Maybe someone already has.

Obviously, a Democrat like Mayor Slay has to go through the formalities of fund raisers for Russ Carnahan (D-MO). However, Slay can also see that the Tea Party tide might well wash Russ from office. Having served as Mayor of St. Louis for nearly ten years, it's not surprising that he might look to move on to Congress in 2012.

During those years of service, Mayor Slay would have worked with Russ's opponent Ed Martin as Ed served on the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners. While serving on the Board, Ed took an active role in renewing the Board's commitment to free and fair elections. A lot of people have forgotten that. And I don't think Ed talks about his work improving the integrity of St. Louis city elections as much as he should.

St. Louis city had serious voter fraud problems prior to Ed's service. John Fund is quote at Heritage.org: "...in St. Louis it was discovered that voter rolls included 13,000 more names than the U.S. Census listed as the total number of adults in the city." Meanwhile, RottenAcorn.com's tally of vote tampering reports: "Of 5,379 voter registration cards ACORN submitted in St. Louis, only 2,013 of those appeared to be valid. At least 1,000 are believed to be attempts to register voters illegally."

By cleaning up city elections, Ed Martin burnished the credibility of subsequent elected officials, including Mayor Slay. So it's hardly surprising that Slay has a soft-spot for Ed.

Here's a video of Ed Martin at McArthur's Bakery from August 2009 talking about vote fraud and his work to mitigate it when he served on the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners: