Stephanie Says – Velvet Underground
Call It Clear – Halloween, Alaska
So seriously, WTF Alaska. Based on the ballots so far, the polling wasn’t just off, it was catastrophically wrong here. And not just for the Stevens race. According to Chris Bowers, all three races there have shattered records for polling inaccuracy.
Nate Silver attempts to shed some light on the situation, noting that early and absentee votes very well may make up the difference (at least in the Senate race). And that may well be true, but there still remain two unanswered questions. First, what exactly is taking so long? They’ve been sitting on the same numbers for like three straight days now. Where are these ballots and why aren’t they being, you know, counted? Second, even if it does tilt things back and Begich wins in a squeaker, that still means that almost half of the voting population in the state wants to return a seven-time convicted felon back to the Senate.
Some folks would argue: “they’re not really voting to bring back Stevens. It’s just a strategic vote to allow him to resign and force a new run-off, thus preventing a Democrat from de facto winning the seat.” I have two responses.
First, that is just a little too cynical for me to deal with. I’m all about the idea that the institutional effects of elections are more important than which particular suit takes office – and the correlative idea that you make a strategic decision to vote for your party even if the candidate is terrible simply to deny power access for the opposition. That said, there has to be a limit, doesn’t there? And surely multiple felony counts is well beyond it.
Incidentally I feel the same way about, say, William Jefferson. And I agreed with publius’s take on why it wouldn’t be so bad if Murtha got booted.
Second, it’s not like they didn’t have a chance to choose a different guy to run in this race. This whole scandal was all over the place when the primary was going on. If Alaska Republicans wanted to run someone else, they had every opportunity to actually do so. It’s not like the primary was 12 months ago or something. It was at the end of August.
Anyways, I love the idea of Alaska. Open spaces, snow, Northern Exposure, etc. but I can’t say I’m in favor of the politics there.