Gotta love the GOP Primary season. You couldn’t make this stuff up:
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-presidential-primary/210153-ron-paul-not-conceding-maine
Ron Paul not conceding Maine vote
But in Washington County, where Paul had expected to perform well, the caucus was postponed until Feb. 18 due to an expected snowstorm. Washington County Republican Chairman Chris Gardner told the AP he had no idea when the caucuses were postponed that his county would no longer count toward the grand total.
“This is an outrage,” John Tate, Paul’s campaign manager, said in an email to supporters. “But our campaign is in this race to win, and will stay in it to the very end.”
Perhaps another Iowa situation in the making:
Paul’s campaign has accused the local GOP of postponing the caucuses to prevent the results from being reported on Saturday, arguing that “just the votes of Washington County would have been enough to put us over the top.”
The campaign is also dismissing the notion that weather was a reasonable excuse for the caucuses to be put off.
“This is Maine we’re talking about,” Tate said. “The Girl Scouts had an event today in Washington County that wasn’t cancelled!”
Every vote should count and extenuating circumstances accomodated. Plus, his strategy has been delegate accumulation, so things aren’t always what they seem at the precinct level of caucusing anyway.
I think the only real excuse for shutting down vote is an apocalyptic event, not a snow storm. Maine knows how to deal with the snow, even bad snow.
Short of that, the state party should have immediately announced a make-up date and announced that no winner would be declared until *after* the make up date — loudly enough that it became a part of the media’s reporting.
…but Rachel Maddow is reporting tonight that Maine is still up in the air, and that some local GOP committees in the state are crying foul against the state party.