Democrats show up for ballot drawing with temperature gun

Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Vin Gopal’s entourage showed up at County Clerk Christine Giordano Hanlon’s office today for the ballot positioning drawing, armed with a space age temperature gun.

Not Linda Baum

Linda Baum, a Middletown Democrat who has twice been defeated for Township Committee, and who got the Middletown Librarian fired when they conspired together to politicize library operations behind the backs of the Library’s Trustees, was on the scene in Freehold to take the temperature of the capsules containing the names Democrat and Republican for the ballot positioning drawing.

Gopal issued a press release this morning wherein he accused former County Clerk M. Claire French of refrigerating the capsules in the past in order that she could pick the cold one to assure the Republicans win the favored ballot position.

Baum, who’s  certification in temperature gun operation is unclear, pointed her gun at the capsules while Bertha Sumick, the Clerk of Elections and a Deputy County Clerk looked on.

Hanlon had recused herself from presiding over the drawing, because she is on the ballot in November.

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DiSomma Staying Out of Chairman’s Race

Sean DiSomma, the heir apparent to Jack Minton as Chairman of the Red Bank Republicans, told MMM that he is staying out of the dueling endorsements contest that the Monmouth County Republican Chairman’s race has become.  “I spoke with both Chairman Bennett and Sheriff Golden,” DiSomma said, “both expressed their commitment  to supporting Republicans in Red Bank.”

Minton endorsed John Bennett for Chairman earlier this week.

Red Bank might not be 100% in Bennett’s camp.  “I spoke to Republicans on both sides and asked them to help me fill the vacancies on the County Committee with people who want to be involved,” DiSomma said.   As of the primary on Tuesday night, 7 of the 18 Red Bank Republican County Committee seats are vacant.

Vacancies can be filled via appointment by a municipal chairperson.  In order for a County Committee member who was not elected in the primary to be eligible to vote at the GOP County Convention next Tuesday, the municipal chairperson for each town must submit a list of appointees to Bertha Sumick, the Monmouth County Clerk of Elections, no later than  4:30PM on Tuesday. Each appointee’s qualifications (residency and affiliation) will be verified before voting credentials are issued.

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Maybe it’s just good karma

The Democratic candidate for County Clerk got a boost of sorts today from the Asbury Park Press.

Michael Steinhorn is making an issue out of the fact that the Monmouth GOP won the first ballot position in 30 of the last 33 general elections and that a Republican Clerk was responsible for all thirty drawings.   There is apparently nothing else to write about in the Clerk’s race, because the APP gave Steinhorn free space and an inflammatory headline, Are the Monmouth Republicans cheating?

Ballot positions are chosen in public when two capsules, pictures of which on here on APP,  one with the word “Republican” and the other with the word “Democrat,” are put into a box, shaken up and Bertha Sumick, the Deputy County Clerk in charge of elections picks one.   30 times out of the last 33, the Republican capsule was chosen.  APP quotes two mathematics professors saying that the odds of the happening are 1.5 million to one.  Steinhorn speculates that the capsules have been marked somehow to feel different from each other.

Theoretically, the winning ballot position should be shared 50-50 on a valid random drawing.  Just to test the theory, I flipped a coin 33 times.  It came up heads 22 times and tails 11 times.

County Clerk M. Claire French insists the annual drawings are above board.  She noted that when the Democrats held the office of County Clerk in 1978 and 1979, that the Democrats won the first ballot position in each of those years.

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