Here I am posing outside the polling place at Martin Luther King High School with a cardboard Cindy Bass. MLK offered to host me and Bass for a discussion with students about civic issues concerning Northwest Philadelphia. The discussion never happened.
The first thing I want to do is give a big shout out to the voters in the 8th district who came out and voted for me and to my wonderful campaign staff and our dedicated volunteers and supporters: THANK YOU- YOU’RE THE BEST!
The second thing I want to do is talk about waiting. Democratic nominee Cindy Bass personally agreed to participate in a candidate forum with me and Chris Satullo, a big mahaf over at WHYY Newsworks personally agreed to sponsor it, just as Newsworks had done for the Democratic primary candidates. I’m still waiting for the forum so if you’re out there and have business to do with Philadelphia’s 8th District Council office, I insist you get in line behind me.
If Cindy had kept her promise to engage with me and the public, I might have asked her some of the following questions:
• As a “senior policy advisor” to Congressman Chaka Fattah, what exactly have you been advising him?
• What, besides hiring on your campaign staff, Steve Vaughn who was convicted of municipal corruption under sitting 8th District Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, is your job plan for ex-cons?
• What is this non-profit Northwest Fund you founded that does diddly for years then two weeks before the primary election acts as a pass through for a dump of $297,000 in the community of federal money through your boss?
The third thing I want to talk about is the election results; I’ve been asked by the press if I’m going to concede the election and the answer is no and here’s why.
I’ve been campaigning vigorously for months and have personally spoken with hundreds if not thousands of voters. Ninety-five percent of them did not know that Cindy Bass was running for 8th District City Council. Of the five percent who were acquainted with Bass, ninety-five percent didn’t support her candidacy.
Also, our experience in the field yesterday as reported back to me from pollworkers and from personally visiting many of the polls from 7 am to 8pm was that we were doing very well.
So I’m not sure how or even if she got the number of votes that’s been reported. I haven’t yet investigated how one verifies results in an electronic voting system such as ours – I mean, where do you even begin to look for the hanging chads? At a Bass victory party Democratic 22nd Ward Chair Ron Couser credits the 22nd ward with putting Bass "over the top." That expression is common in close races such as Bush's 2% win over Kerry in Ohio in 2004.
I registered a request for investigation on the District Attorney's election complaint telephone line by leaving a voicemail message. Seth Williams, the District Attorney, has been a prominent Bass endorser: ya think I'm going to hear back from the DA? (For background, read Means of Electoral Fraud through Voting Machines and an article on rigging elections by Josh Mittledorf of the 22nd Ward
[Addendum 11/10/11: I just did a little more study of some of the election results. In the 17th ward for example, where I personally campaigned, where my field team campaigned, where we ran cable tv ads, etc, Bass pulled 97% of the vote, supposedly, to Nutter's 84%. Could it be that I am totally blind to Bass's immense popularity? I mean these voters care so strongly for Bass that even the 16% who didn't vote straight party and voted Republican Brown and Independent Rahman made it a point to go down to the bottom of the ballot and vote for Bass???]
In the meantime, my campaign for a government guided by principles of open-ness, honesty, social justice and environmental sustainability continues. I am asking anyone spotting any of my cardboard signs to kindly put them in recycling bins or call the office at 215-259-3991 so we can pick them up.
TO BE CONTINUED
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