5 Comments on “You can fool some of the people some of the time…..”

1. 
   Monmouth Girl said at 9:25 am on April 3rd, 2012:

   Art,

   Did Anna file?

2. 
   ArtGallagher said at 9:32 am on April 3rd, 2012:

   Monmouth Girl,

   She showed up in Trenton yesterday afternoon. A source told me she was still at the Sec State’s office at 8:20pm waiting for her petitions to be reviewed and certified.

   I don’t know anything beyond that. I’ll post when I know.

3. 
   Freespeaker1976 said at 11:25 am on April 3rd, 2012:

   Yes, Anna was there till after I left about 6pm

   NOW, about yesterday.

   Before anyone ever complains about a state worker and the Division Of Elections, let me stop you there. Against all odds and stacks and stacks of petitions, all employees showed professionalism and courtesy through out the process yesterday. They were working under trying circumstances are to be commended.

   Now, about the PROCESS.

   It is tremendously flawed, especially on two fronts. The Division Of Elections has nothing to do with this, they only enforce the laws and policy, actually lack thereof with regards to point #1 below.

   1) Besides being a tremendous waste of paper, there is something inherently wrong with a candidate bringing in 5, 6 or 13 times the amount of signatures required. Romney brought in 5,000 and Menendez 13 times the required 1000 signatures. This is nothing but an ego game, mine is bigger than yours.”

   YES, you need extras to cover challenges, but come on folks, Menendez putting in 13,000 and Romney 5,000 Plus for seats requiring only 1000 signatures?

   EACH of those petitions (note I said EACH OF THOUSANDS) must be checked for completeness and accuracy, EACH of the solicitors had to have their party affiliation checked and EACH logged into a record book with the signature total. EACH PAGE had to be checked for readable signatures and signatures counted.

   Quantities like the above delayed the process and and added not only a burden to the employees at the Division of Elections, but delayed other candidates filings to the point of the following…

   I was told this morning that the Division of Elections will work to put a stop to such excess petition gathering.

   2) Each solicitor and each delegate’s residency needed to be checked. Because of those kinds of delay in doing that work as a result of the UNNECESSARY extra signatures; information took hours to verify.

   I checked in before 10am. It wasn’t until after 4pm (doors closed to new business) that I found out I had two potential delegates out of district which ultimately cost me 4 delegates because of a lack of signatures in one district.

   WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?

   We needed to use the NEW Congressional Districts for delegates. The sources we had available to figure out where the new lines were were sketchy at best. The NJ Redistricting Commission was no help in this area, only pointing us to the stupid pdf map which did not list every town and a pdf listing where towns were. Entering Bayonne into the pdf search bar and I got CD 8, where as my delegate’s address was in CD 10, NOT 8, where I assigned him. Losing him in the 8th lost us signatures and thus the whole slate.

   DUMB LUCK of having two delegates just outside the line of where you thought they were is no way to run a primary.

   Despite extra staff brought in, the staff was so overwhelmed by the UN NECESSARY extra petition signatures that they could not process the party affiliation and residency requirements fast enough.

   THE WRONG CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT RESIDENCIES INFO CAME TOO LATE

   IF the information about the delegates being in the wrong district was provided to me earlier in the day, soon after I walked in; I would have been able to rectify the situation and assign new delegates before it was too late. However, thanks to folks like Senator Menendez, the staff was overloaded with work.

   KNOW ALSO, I was told earlier this morning by the Division of Elections that other campaigns suffered the same fate with a loss of delegates due to them not being allocated to the proper congressional district because of poor information.

   WE CAN SEND A MAN TO THE MOON, BUT WE CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHERE DELEGATES LIVE

   FINALLY, the worse point of the day was after waiting nearly 6 hours, I had to sit in a room with a narcissistic Joe Rullo, listening him to bloviate and pontificate.

   Trust me, I am no 100% fan of Joe Kyrillos; but Joe Rullo should not be allowed anywhere near a ballot petition. This is the same guy, who the last time I checked; did not have the correct phone number on his website.

   This is the same guy who had to have Division Of Election employees tutor him on collector affidavits and the same guy who wanted to sign multiple presidential petitions despite being told that he couldn’t.

   So, I was forced to sit there for two hours listening to him pontificate about how he was going after Joe Kyrillos, Yup, the same guy who I understand hasn’t gotten a single vote at a county convention.

   Joe, I shook your hand only out of professional courtesy and I was sitting in front of a very professional Division of Elections employee who actually grimaced at every word you said. I mean that. I didn’t want to start something. However, I was thinking about how much of an arrogant ares you and your Rullobots are.

   And yes, when I am away from this keyboard and I should happen to be in front of you some day; I will say that to your face.

   NOW, I will close with this. I have something to say more about this primary, things I went through while on my great adventure to get involved at a deep level on a primary campaign, as well as voter’s thoughts about the candidates and such.

   I will share them with Art and maybe he might write an article about it.

4. 
   It'a also scary said at 12:02 pm on April 5th, 2012:

   that some town clerks and assistant clerks don’t seem to remember the process and requirements, from year to year: differing instructions were given out at a few town halls, some were made to drive to Freehold, some were refused acceptance because people signed their own petitions, which is perfectly ok, so now they have to run write-ins to fill their seats for Nov….I suggest respectfully that another mandatory training session be given to all municipal offices on the current election laws and procedures.. some do fine, but others are like deer in headlights when they actually have to do this once every two years, in the case of county committees.. yikes!

5. 
   Freespeaker1976 said at 6:29 pm on April 5th, 2012:

   I understood that you ARE supposed to sign your own petitions. I have had petitions refused because of the lack there off. Had to drop one off in Trenton today to cure that problem.