Allegations of Voter Fraud Surface in Shelby County
by Glynn Wilson
Just when I was feeling good enough about the election of 2008 to take a camping trip to Buck’s Pocket and spend a few days behind the view finder of a digital Nikon, the zany brother of Judge Greg Shaw started an e-mail fight and alerted me to the fact that the race for Alabama Supreme Court is not quite over.
There’s an indication that an automatic recount may be triggered by the closeness of the race, and there’s some indication there may have been voter fraud involved, specifically in Shelby County.
The details of this are still sketchy and we are just now beginning to work the story — thanks to the crazy e-mails from a character who must by dying for a nomination for the Billy Carter Diddly Award, given to the “most amusing political relative.”
Shelby County has a long history of political corruption anyway that hasn’t been investigated adequately since the death of an old crusading editor at the Shelby County Reporter many years ago.
I don’t normally involve myself in local matters, and certainly not in Shelby County, but these e-mail zingers sent up all kinds of red flags that the relative of someone who might soon sit on the state Supreme Court could be a wildly unbalanced and possibly corrupt individual involved in who knows what kinds of nefarious activities.
So far what is being reported about the Supreme Court race between Deborah Bell Paseur and Greg Shaw is this.
Dana Beyerle, the Montgomery bureau chief for the three New York Times company papers in the state, in Tuscaloosa, Gadsden and Florence, is reporting today that Republican Greg Shaw claimed victory Wednesday in the “bitterly fought” state Supreme Court race, but that Democrat Deborah Bell Paseur is not ready to concede.
Shaw and the Republican Party want Paseur to concede Tuesday’s election, which Shaw appears to have won by 12,000 votes out of more than 2 million cast.
But across the state, there may be as many as 10,000 provisional ballots still to be counted next week by local canvassing boards, votes that could affect more than just the Paseur-Shaw race.
With all but six of 2,843 statewide precincts reporting, Shaw had a 12,832-vote lead out of 2.025 million votes cast, according to unofficial results. Shaw had 1,018,894 votes to Paseur’s 1,006,062 votes.
Shaw’s campaign manager Josh Cooper repeated to me what he told Beyerle, that even if Paseur were to get all 10,000 provisional votes, she would still lose, and said he thinks she should concede.
“We do think she should concede because it’s mathematically impossible to make up the difference,” Cooper said. “There’s no reason to stay in this race.”
But an activist liberal blog in Alabama is now reporting that the recount may be on, “as a matter of state law.”
“According to state law, when the results of a race fall within one-half of 1 percent, a statewide recount is triggered,” said Marion Seinfels, Deborah Bell’s campaign manager. “This happens automatically and not at the discretion of the candidates.”
The latest info, attributed to Republican Secretary of State Beth Chapman, is that “there will be no decision on whether an automatic statewide recount will be triggered in the Supreme Court race until the state canvassing board meets later this month in Montgomery.”
On that day, the state canvassing board — comprised of Secretary of State Beth Chapman, Gov. Bob Riley and Attorney General Troy King (an assuring trio of Republicans) will meet to certify the election results, the word is. Preliminary to that, by next Wednesday, all ballots should be counted by legal deadline, including thousands of provisional ballots, absentee ballots which include the votes of soldiers overseas, and late ballots, including some allegedly from Shelby County.
The biggest controversy in the race has been who takes more money from oil special interests, which was briefly outlined in the only blog post we’ve done in this race.
The upshot is that a shadowy group just outside of Washington, D.C., that goes by the misleading name of “The Center for Individual Freedom” pumped a total of $1,274,815 into the Alabama Supreme Court race on behalf of Republican Greg Shaw, according to FactCheck.org and other Websites that document these things, outspending even the candidate’s own campaign.
There were also suggested links between a Shaw consultant and oil and gas lobbyist, who was ostensibly working with the shadowy group on a campaign to influence federal and state judicial appointments and races.
Greg Shaw’s campaign claimed that his hands were clean of Big Oil money and influence, but apparently never answered the charge about the $1 million paid to a Washington oil lobbyist to help run his campaign, perhaps because no newspaper reporter in Alabama asked, at least that I can find a record of on the Web.
The Huntsville Times had actually done a story on allegations about unpaid taxes and liens on the Shaw family oil business in Shelby County, Shaw Oil, back in October.
Meanwhile, the Shaw campaign denied that Judge Shaw’s brother, identified as Larry on the Shaw campaign Website, was officially associated with the campaign. Cooper apologized for his behavior and said nothing like those harassing e-mails would happen again.
If I hear another word out of the guy, I will publish them.
But it may be too late. The word has been spread far and wide to all kinds of local and national media outlets and investigators, and the investigation into voter fraud in Alabama is now on.
Buck’s Pocket will have to wait a few days, I guess : )
Meanwhile, our inquiry got the post on Shaw changed at Judgepedia.org, which had declared Shaw the winner.
This is worth looking at closely, considering how George W. Bush’s political swami Karl Rove mucked up the Supreme Court in Alabama in the 1990s by abusing key hot-button phrases such as “jackpot justice.”
Maybe we should coin another phrase for this race. How about black gold justice? He who has the most oil money wins a seat on the court?
Only in Alabamaland … or maybe in Alaska, also : )
